Biography provided by the Metropolitan Museum of Art)
 
There is the possibility of a confusion of identities here, for the name William Hunt turns up in a variety of photographic contexts. However, it seems most likely that these various personalities all belong to a linen draper from Leeds who enjoyed painting in Great Yarmouth. Washington Teasdale credited him with developing a rice water-based waxed-paper negative process but questioned his use of a common meniscus lens, feeling this hurt the quality of his photographs, while acknowledging Hunt’s “connected series of carefully made experiments on the use of the bromides.” In 1854 a frustratingly unidentified “well-known amateur” wrote to William John Thoms, the editor of Notes and Queries. Looking at his first photograph, made in 1845, the writer praised the contribution of George Smith Cundell, who clarified the operation of the calotype to the amateur, adding: “Mr. William Hunt, of Yarmouth, was my first friend and instructor in the art; and if there be any merit in the pictures I did before I knew you, the credit is due to him entirely.” Some of Hunt’s photographs survive, including in one of Thomas Damant Eaton’s albums.