Selected Artist Biographies
Thomas Whitcombe (1752-1824)
Thomas Whitcombe was a prolific and dedicated marine artist, regularly exhibiting at the Royal Academy between 1783 and 1824. Much travelled, his output became topographical as well as depicting naval battles and skirmishes, and this made him very popular with a British public hungry for knowledge of their fledgling Empire. He was best known for producing 50 paintings to illustrate "The Naval Achievements of Great Britain", which were engraved and sold particularly well at the time. Whitcombe's work is crisp and fresh with great attention to detail, but it is his choice of varying subject matter that marks him out from his various contemporaries.
John Wilson Carmichael (1800-1868)
Born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Carmichael was apprenticed to a ship builder before becoming a marine artist. He exhibited at the Royal Academy, and was then asked by the illustrated London news to cover the Crimean War in the Baltic from 1855. He subsequently became one of the best of the Victorian maritime artists, along with E.W.Cooke and Clarkson Stanfield.
Charles Pears P.S.M.A., R.O.I. (1873-1958)
Charles Pears had already established himself as an artist before the First World War, regularly illustrating for periodicals such as the Illustrated London News and Punch. However, the outbreak of war prompted his commission to the Royal Marines and subsequent appointment as official war artist to the Admiralty. Despite the grim circumstances of war the position fuelled his lifelong passion for the sea.
Peter Monamy (1681-1749)
Peter Monamy is ranked as one of two leaders, the other being Samuel Scott (1701-1772), in the first generation of English marine painters. He spent his early life completing an apprenticeship for a specialised decoration business (the Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers) at Old London Bridge. He was later credited with Liveryman of Painter-Stainer's Company in 1726 to whom he donated the painting 'Royal Sovereign at anchor' which remains in their collection today. Although he spent much of his time in London it is known he spent many hours exploring coastlines and observing ports, working directly from nature.
John Frederick Herring Snr. (1795-1865)
John Frederick Herring Snr. is regarded as one of the finest and most renowned sporting artists of the nineteenth century. His oeuvre was of a consistently high quality - it is believed he destroyed works he felt were inferior - and this is why he is still so highly regarded today. He had a keen and discerning eye for horseflesh and his landscape backgrounds were extremely well observed and beautifully executed.
Herring enjoyed the life of a country squire and continued to paint up until his death despite ill-health and some physical incapacity in his later life. Indeed, he had so much commission work that his output greatly exceeded his exhibited paintings; for example he only exhibited eleven works at the Royal Academy, the first of these in 1818 (portrait of a dog). He also exhibited forty-four times at the British Institute and eighty-two at the Royal Society of British Artists in Suffolk Street, an institution of which he was later a vice-president.
The 1840's saw Herring's commissions augmented by some major patrons such as the Duc d'Orleans, who invited him to Paris to paint a number of works. He had been commissioned by both George IV and William IV before becoming painter to the Duchess of Kent (Queen Victoria's mother) in 1845. In 1856 Queen Victoria herself granted him her patronage and continued to commission him for the rest of his life. During this time Herring worked with some of the greatest artists of his era including Sir Edwin Henry Landseer (1802-1873). His passion for horses led him to own an Arab stallion called Imaum, originally a gift to the Queen.
