His career there was distinguished; he won the Newdigate Prize in 1851 for his poem Nineveh, and became a Fellow of Corpus in 1853.

[1] Hunt throughout his career provided sketches to the Illustrated London News the first such, came about through being a witness of the Dee Bridge train disaster on 24 May 1847.

Hunt, aged 16 at the time was in the following train, his sketch of the incident was printed by the newspaper on 29 May 1847.

In 1861 he married, gave up his Fellowship, and in 1862 was elected as an Associate of the Royal Watercolour Society, receiving full membership in 1864.

[2] He was associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and the extraordinary detail apparent in his landscapes and the careful rendering of grass, leaves and trees is a consequence of this.