Chestnut Buds

Hunt, one of the founder members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, followed John Ruskin's dictum throughout his career that artists should paint nature only after close observation of its numerous varieties. Although he was in his seventies when he produced this work, Chestnut Buds demonstrates that Hunt remained committed to his meticulous techniques and attention to naturalistic detail, despite competition from the new medium of photography which, by the 1890s, had surpassed the hand of the artist in capturing leaf-by-leaf detail.