Il Dolce Far Niente

The title of Hunt's painting literally means "sweet or pleasant doing nothing" or pleasant leisure; it appears on several other Victorian paintings. Hunt began to paint the picture using his then-fiancée Annie Miller and later retained her hair but replaced her face with that of his wife Fanny. Even though Hunt stated that Il Dolce Far Niente had no didactic purpose or meaning, he devoted much time and effort to rendering details of texture and surface. The flowers, the contrast of shawl and dress, the ivory and wood chair, the figure's jewelry, and the reflections all show Hunt trying to create a tour de force that implicitly challenges Rossetti's paintings, as if Hunt was trying to show the way they should be painted. This painting is for Bryan, one of our donors :)