This book is clearly a labour of love for its author, who sets out to provide a biographical guide to the life and achievements of John Hunt, art dealer and connoisseur, whose collection of archaeological and decorative-arts material, prints, paintings and sculptures is now preserved at the Hunt Museum in Limerick.

Hunt was a very successful dealer from the 1920s onwards but had great difficulty in parting with much of his stock, which then became the nucleus of the collection that was bequeathed to a trust. It was given not to the State, as Brian O’Connell says, but to an arm’s-length body with responsibility for the collection; a management board oversees the museum.

Nevertheless, the State has invested heavily in the housing and display of the collection, through the restoration and fitting out of the Custom House in Limerick, which was made available for the purpose of establishing the museum.

Hunt, together with his wife, Putzel, also made significant contributions to the restoration, furnishing and management of Bunratty Castle, one of the successes of tourism in the Shannon region, and to the creation of a folk park at the site. They also led the development of Craggaunowen Castle, where re-created ancient monuments were to be added to the museum-style display of some of his collection. That part of the project was never fully realised, and the whole collection was eventually housed at the Custom House after an initial display of part of it at the University of Limerick.

The collection has a number of important prehistoric and medieval pieces, some of them of outstanding quality, and the Hunt Museum is an important part of the cultural life of the midwest. As a centre for significant temporary exhibitions, the museum plays an additional cultural role in the region.

De

mystification
Hunt has always been regarded as a man of mystery, and the author's principal service

is the demystification of his subject’s life and work.

Born to fairly well-to-do English parents, Hunt had no particular connection to Ireland, which he first visited in his later 30s. Educated at a public school in Canterbury, he began medical studies after the first World War but gave them up for the antiques trade, which was growing because of the collapse of many socially prominent families’ fortunes after the war.

Many great houses were abandoned and their contents – sometimes whole interiors – sold off, mainly to the rich, and the museums, of the United States – something that happened also, to some extent, in Ireland after the War of Independence.

This trade boomed until the crash of 1929 took many of the collectors out of the market. Hunt, previously an employee and now married, found himself jobless, so he set up for himself, specialising in medieval antiquities.

In addition to buying in Britain he travelled extensively on the Continent, building up a network of professional contacts as well as sourcing material from private collectors and from religious establishments willing to turn some of their heritage into cash.

Besides matching objects with particular museum collections, he became a substantial supplier to private collectors, such as William Burrell, and a patron of museums by presenting judiciously chosen pieces to public collections. During the 1930s he clearly earned a substantial personal income, became an influential dealer and began to accumulate much of the collection that would later go to Limerick.

After the outbreak of the second World War the antiques trade with mainland Europe dried up, and in the face of tension about his German-born wife, who had become a British subject, the couple moved to Ireland. They did this not for the more lurid reasons claimed in recent years but in an orderly way, with the proper exit permits and permission to live in Ireland.

They acquired a pied-à-terre in Dublin but settled near Lough Gur, in Co Limerick, where the archaeological excavations then being carried out caught Hunt’s imagination and sparked an enthusiasm for archaeology that remained with him for the rest of his life.

While at Lough Gur the couple bought, extended and renovated a house, the first of a number of such projects. They also developed a lifelong association with the Limerick region and a deep involvement in its cultural and tourism development.

Much of the book is a somewhat repetitive account of Hunt’s success as a dealer, and the author overuses superlatives, some of which are misplaced. But in the main his is a balanced, credible and well-documented account. O’Connell is particularly strong on the allegations of complicity in Nazi-era expropriation that surfaced in the early 2000s, after the Hunts had died. He dismantles the case against them conjecture by conjecture.

Having had some involvement in the committee that oversaw the provenance studies at the museum, I can make an important correction here: the committee was set up not to research the collections but to enable the Hunt Museum to do so and to publish the outcome online, in accordance with standards established by what is now the American Alliance of Museums.

In the years since then, not a single object has been the subject of a claim or proven to have been tainted by Nazi-era theft. Given the distress that the accusations caused the Hunt family, this account of the life and work of John Hunt will likely bring them some much-needed solace.

Michael Ryan is a former museum curator and director