Young Girl with Incense Burner. Watercolor. Signed 'Esther Hunt' in pencil lower right (partially obscured by frame). Sight measures 11.5 in. high x 8.5 in. wide, (with frame 15.5 in high x 12.5 in. wide).

Esther Anna Hunt was born in Nebraska in 1875. She moved to San Diego in 1881 where she grew up on a ranch. From 1896 to 1900 she worked as an artist in Los Angeles. Upon moving to San Francisco, she studied art at the Mark Hopkins Institute. As a means to finance her art studies, she began painting Chinatown subjects which she sent to a New York dealer who readily sold them. After studying portraiture with William Merritt Chase in New York from 1905 to 1906, she continued her studies for six years in Paris. While in Paris her portrait of her sister was hung in the Paris Salon. Returning to California, she had a studio in Los Angeles for four years and from 1918 to 1927 she lived in San Francisco, then lived in Greenwich Village in New York from 1927 to 1931 and returned to San Francisco from 1932 to 1946. Her oils, watercolors, etchings, and colored ceramic figurines were very popular with the public during her productive years, having been reproduced commercially for postcards, calendars, prints and busts. 

Condition: In very good condition.