Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/349

This page needs to be proofread.
Hunter
329
Hunter

he showed ninety-seven pictures in all. Many were acquired for public collections. The 'Salmon Stake Nets' (1874) went to Sydney and Waiting for the Homeward Bound' (1882) to Adelaide. 'Their Only Harvest' (1878), one of the best purchases of the Chantrey trustees, is in the Tate Gallery, London; 'The Herring Market at Sea' (1884) at Manchester, and 'The Pool in the Woods' (1897), a charming landscape, at Liverpool. The Glasgow Gallery contains 'Goodnight to Skye' (1895) and 'Niagara Rapids' (1901), the latter a reminiscence of a visit to America. Preston possesses 'Signs of Herring' (1899), one of his finest works. In 1884 he was elected A.R.A.

Hunter's handling of oil-paint was heavy and lacked flow and flexibility, and his drawing was effective and robust rather than constructive and elegant; but he had an instinctive feeling for ensemble and chiaroscuro, was a powerful, if restricted, colourist, and possessed a poetic apprehension of certain effects of light and atmosphere. He was at his best perhaps in pictures in which some incident of fisher-life or sea-faring was associated with the pathetic sentiment of sunset or dusky after-glow, and his most characteristic pieces are low in tone and somewhat sad in feeling. Occasionally painting in water-colour with vigour and freshness, he was a member of the Royal Scottish Water-Colour Society. As an etcher he also attained some distinction, his plates being effective in arrangement, sparkling in effect, and drawn with vigour and decisiveness.

Some time before his death Colin Hunter's health failed and his right hand was paralysed. He died at Lugar, Melbury Road, on 24 Sept. 1904, and was buried at Helensburgh. He married on 20 Nov. 1873, in Glasgow, Isabella, daughter of John H. Young, surgeon-dentist. His wife, with two sons (the elder of whom, Mr. J. Young Hunter, is an artist) and two daughters, survived him. Mrs. Hunter possesses a portrait of her husband, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1878, by John Pettie, R.A.

[Information from the family; exhibition catalogues; Sir W. Armstrong's Scottish Painters, 1887; Art Journal, 1891, vol. 43, p. 187; J. L. Caw, Scottish Painting, 1908; Wemyss Reid's Life of William Black, passim; Scotsman, 26 and 29 Sept. 1904.]

J. L. C.


HUNTER, Sir WILLIAM GUYER (1827–1902), surgeon-general, born at Calcutta in 1827, was eldest son of Thomas Hunter of Catterick near Richmond in Yorkshire. Educated at King's College school, he began his professional training at Charing Cross Hospital in 1844; became M.R.C.S. England in 1849; F.R.C.S. Edinburgh in 1858; M.D. Aberdeen, and M.R.C.P. London in 1867, and F.R.C.P. in 1875.

Nominated an assistant surgeon in the Bengal medical service in May 1850, he served through the second Burmese war of 1862–3 which led to the annexation of Pegu. For this campaign, during which his life was endangered by cholera, he received a medal and clasp. In 1854 he received high commendation from the Bombay Medical Board for successfully establishing dispensaries in Raligaum, Ahghur, and Shikapur, and in 1857 the thanks of the government for zeal and skill during a fever epidemic in Shikapur, and for repressing a revolt of eight hundred prisoners in the jail of that station. During the Mutiny he acted as civil surgeon in Upper Scinde and obtained brevet rank of surgeon. He again received the thanks of government and was granted a medal. His health being shattered by the experiences of the year he came home on furlough, but was recalled to Bombay to take up the appointment of physician to the Jamsetji Jijibhoy hospital and professor of medicine in the Grant Medical College, of which he was made principal in 1876. The institution prospered under his administration; he found it with sixteen students, he left it with two hundred. He was made deputy surgeon-general in 1876, and was specially promoted to the rank of surgeon-general in 1877, when he received the thanks of government for organising the medical and hospital equipment for active service when troops were sent to Malta from India. His scheme was ultimately adopted throughout India.

In 1880 he was appointed by Sir Richard Temple [q.v. Suppl. II] vice-chancellor of the University of Bombay, a distinction usually reserved for members of the legislative council and judges of the high court in India. On his retirement from the service in 1880 he received much honourable recognition. He was appointed honorary surgeon to Queen Victoria; the inhabitants of Bombay presented him with a public address, gave his portrait to the Grant Medical College, and founded a scholarship. On his return to England he was elected a consulting physician to the Charing Cross Hospital, London.

In 1883, on the occasion of a severe outbreak of epidemic cholera in Egypt, Hunter