Hunt resolved to let her children go to study abroad to receive the best education of arts, even if it meant traveling across the ocean. This is both a courageous and risky decision as later in life, Mrs. Hunt told: "People did not then go abroad to study, and I was regarded as venturesome in the extreme; and in truth I did not realize what I was doing until we were half way across the ocean. Friends had done their best to discourage me, and the greatness of the undertaking was indeed oppressive, yet there was no way but to go on. (Knowlton 5).
Undoubtedly, his mother's help really changed the entire course of William Hunt's life. While walking on the streets of Paris, France, Hunt passed by an art store. Like Mary Cassatt who fell for the art of Edgar Degas when seeing his pastels in a window on the boulevard Haussmann, Hunt also accidentally saw the painting of Thomas Couture called The Falconer (fig. 0) and was so inspired. Immediately, he exclaimed: "If this is a painting, I am a painter" (McCullough 191). What he did after that was looking for Couture and becoming his first American student and his favorite among many current. At the studio of Thomas Couture and under his instruction, Hunt soon realized the difference between "the drawing of the school-room and that of a painter's studio" (Knowlton 7). He gradually revealed his talent and absorbed what was taught by Couture. Couture's method was based on "a combination of simple light and dark patterns developed first through thin sepia washes" (Bermingham 19). Even the average student in his class could gradually obtain this method after a specific period of time, and it cost Hunt nearly no effort to excellent in this. In discussion about Hunt, Couture claimed that Hunt really mastered the method, carrying his teacher's manner of painting "as far as it could go" (Knowlton 8). Even Hunt's The Jewess (fig.
