The Hunt Museum: Essential Guide

This is the first comprehensive guide to the splendid Hunt collection, now housed in the eighteenth century Limerick Custom House donated to the people of Ireland. Born in 1900, John Hunt was brought up in England, although his parents came from Co. Limerick and Co. Clare. In his youth he studied medicine and architecture, before dedicating his life to the study of antiquities. He and his wife, Gertrude, opened an antiques shop in London in the early 1930s. Both highly knowledgable about art, they soon set about forming their own collection. The Hunt Museum was first opened to the public in 1978, two years after John Hunt’s death. Much of the collection pays homage to the impressive craftsmanship of Irish decorative art, such as the religious silver of the seventeenth century, but there are also examples from the Egyptian and Bronze ages as well as paintings and studies by Yeats, Renoir and Gauguin. This attractive selection reflects the high standards of design, craftsmanship and artistic merit so important to the Hunts in building up their wonderful collection.