William Morris Hunt

In 1878 William Morris Hunt was asked to make two murals for the legislative chamber of the Albany State Capitol. After his picture Niagara Falls was rejected, he used a different method. He painted directly on the walls, but the chamber was so damp that the works began to deteriorate and the paint peeled off the wall. This so disheartened the painter, whose health was fragile, that it probably played a part in his later nervous breakdown. Hunt travelled to the New Hampshire coast to recover from severe depression, but in 1879 he was found drowned; he probably took his own life.

From the page of Niagara Falls