Sand Bank with Willows, Magnolia

Sand Bank with Willows, Magnolia

William Morris Hunt

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hunt spent the summer of 1877 in Magnolia, a fishing village near Gloucester, on the Massachusetts coast. From there, he took short sketching trips in a wagon that served as a traveling studio. His biographer noted: “Arrived at the spot selected, Hunt would leap from the van, take a camp-stool and a block of charcoal paper, and, with a stick of soft charcoal seize the salient points of the subject to be rendered.” After his assistant reproduced the charcoal sketch on canvas back in the studio, Hunt would wait for the right moment, then “seize palette and brushes, and perhaps complete the picture in one sitting.”

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sand Bank with Willows, MagnoliaSand Bank with Willows, MagnoliaSand Bank with Willows, MagnoliaSand Bank with Willows, MagnoliaSand Bank with Willows, Magnolia

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.