In the final decade of the 18th century the enthusiastic French art collector Napoleon Bonaparte embarked on a lengthy Grand Tour of Europe and the impressive number of paintings he acquired formed the collection of what was to become the Louvre Museum. Unfortunately, when men like Napoleon decide to take a trip abroad they do rather prevent others from enjoying the same freedom of movement, and it wasn’t until he retired to his island villa in 1815 that European travel was once again possible for everyone else.
Before the Napoleonic Wars many fine British painters enjoyed regular sketching tours to the continent, typically taking in the Low Countries before travelling across the Alps or through the kingdoms of the Holy Roman Empire and on to Venice. With international borders now reopened art and commerce could recommence; British artists resumed their trips to Italy and Venetian view paintings by Italian artists once more began traveling in the opposite direction.
It was the ex-pat art dealers Owen Sweeney and Joseph Smith who did much to popularize these view – or vedute – paintings in Britain. Resident in Venice from around 1720, Sweeney and Smith began buying up pictures by a local painter called Giovanni Antonio Canal, better known to us today as Canaletto. By the 1730’s the two men were regularly sending his canvas’ back to England, supplying the Palladian properties of the aristocracy with scenographic views of the Grand Canal, St Mark’s, and the Salute.
‘The Feast Day of St. Roch’ (circa 1735) by Canaletto (and his camera obscura)
Image courtesy of the National Gallery, London
As well as delighting barons and earls, the paintings of Canaletto and his followers encouraged a wave of British artists to visit Venice but although David Roberts, Clarkson Stanfield, Samuel Prout, and J.M.W. Turner (who was actually always more interested in Rome than Venice) all famously painted the city it was not to the exclusion of all else, unlike a group in the generation that followed who made a career from painting virtually nothing else.
These Victorian painters of Venice can be divided into two groups. On the one hand we have the opportunistic Turner copyists and potboiler painters of capricci such as James Salt, William Meadows, Frank Wasley, Francis Moltino, and that one-man souvenir-of-Venice production line Alfred Pollentine. And on the other we have the quality, artists who set out to accurately record faithful views of the city at first hand: William Wyld, James Holland, and Edward Pritchett.
‘Gondolas and fishing boats at the mouth of the Grand Canal’ by Edward Pritchett
Image courtesy of Sotheby’s, New York
Prichett’s scenes of the city and its people are harmoniously coloured and full of fine detail which – unlike Canaletto and his followers he did not capture with the aid of the camera obscura. It is no coincidence that the great era of these famous vedutista came shortly after the invention of the portable camera obscura. This handy contraption – a more complex version of a pinhole box camera – could be set-up by the artist onsite within a tent. Quite simply, light reflected by objects in the natural world (say for example, St. Mark’s Square in Venice) would enter the box through a biconvex lens and across an angled mirror that would then project the image (in reverse) onto a glass plate. Place a piece of paper over the glass and, as the Venetian architect Daniele Barbaro noted in 1568…
“There on the paper you will see the whole view as it really is, with its distances, its colours and shadows and motion, the clouds, the water twinkling, the birds flying. By holding the paper steady, you can trace the whole perspective with a pen.”
This time-saving shortcut (which might also be described as an artistic-point-destroying hack) meant an artist could achieve perfect perspective and enormous detail without the need for extensive preparatory sketches. There has been much discussion over the years as to why Canaletto’s technique changed so significantly during his decade living and working in London; his pictures painted in (and of) London being less precise in their excution and bearing uncharacteristic pentimenti (in particular changes of perspective and alterations to architectural elements). Could it be that whilst abroad he was working without his tented camera obscura?
‘Piazza San Marco’ by Edward Pritchett (left) & ‘Quai des Schiavoni’ by Richard Parkes Bonington (right)
Edward Pritchett’s decision to compose his views of Venice using only a gifted hand and eye confirms him as an authentic follower of the greatest painter of Venice that most people have never heard of; Richard Parkes Bonington (1802-1828). Just four years older than Edward Pritchett, Bonington was a prodigy who began exhibiting his oils and watercolours at the Liverpool Academy aged just eleven and was a star of the Paris Salon by the time he was twenty-two. His technically innovative vistas of Venice are wonderfully atmospheric and clearly guided Pritchett’s own work, not least his interest in watercolour painting and the importance he attached to it.
Richard Parkes Bonington visited Venice for the first (and only) time in 1826 – two years before dying of tuberculosis aged just twenty-six – but he made the most of his month-long stay, producing copious pencil drawings and watercolours. Pritchett also spent his one time in the city well, making dozens of sketches that would provide him with sufficient material for a lifetime. These detailed preparatory drawings formed the basis of, and inspiration for, oil paintings he would paint once back in London. In my opinion, no other British artist has ever got closer to the look and feeling of Bonington’s Venetian paintings than Edward Pritchett.
Watercolours of Venice from Edward Pritchett’s sketchbook
Every other biography of Pritchett you will have ever read will claim that “little is known of his life” other than he “spent more than three decades living and working in Venice”. As we will see, neither assertion is true. That said – unlike the aforementioned potboiler artists such as Pollentine whose liver-coloured Grand Canal paintings were copied from monochrome intaglio prints (which explains their odd colouring) without ever leaving England – we can be sure that Edward Pritchett did spend time residing and working in Venice, and in several other European cities for that matter.
The lack of (reliable) information about the life of Edward Pritchett partly stems from historical errors made on census documents and church records of his birth and baptism on which his surname was repeatedly misspelled “Prickett'” or “Pritchell”. However, a thorough study of Pritchett’s work, UK census records and those of the principal London art exhibitions of the period leaves me in no doubt that between 1827 and 1835 Edward Pritchett made one sketching tour of Europe before returning to London, where he was married, had a large family, and remained for the rest of his life.
‘Piazza San Marco from the Palazzo’ by Edward Pritchett
Now available to purchase from Academy Fine Paintings
Edward Pritchett was born in the village of Brackley, Northamptonshire in 1807. After moving to London, he married a young woman named Caroline Stubbs in July 1835. She was soon pregnant with the first of the couple’s six children who were all born in London between 1837 and 1852, meaning Caroline was pretty much perinatal for the first seventeen years of their marriage. So much for the oft-repeated theory that Edward Pritchett “spent more than three decades living and working in Venice”. Bearing mind his own dates of birth and death, the evidence of exhibition and census records, and the birth dates of his children it would have been impossible for Pritchett to spend three decades abroad, or even one for that matter.
It is my belief that Edward Pritchett left England for the first and only time in 1827, when King George IV was on the throne and Beethoven was on his deathbed. Back then, for a young man of twenty to up-sticks and travel abroad was no small matter and suggests that Pritchett had some form of support that he was able to draw upon, either financial or as favours from friends. Or, perhaps both.
A thorough examination of Pritchett’s exhibition history confirms that in the twelve months leading up to his departure the young artist had begun sending his paintings to the major London venues. This lead, in 1828, to his debut at the Royal Academy with a painting under the rather unprepossessing title ‘Radish Stall, Candlelight’. Probably inspired by the chiaroscuro market scenes of his Dutch contemporary Petrus van Schendel, Pritchett’s parochial painting (whereabouts unknown) sounds like a very different basket of radishes to the exotic Italian subject that would make his name. It is, however, of interest in one regard.
‘Piazza San Marco from the Palazzo’ (detail)
When any 19th century artist submitted a painting for exhibition the venue would naturally require them to provide correspondence details which usually meant giving their home address. A thorough study of Edward Pritchett’s exhibition history reveals he never once submitted a painting using his home address but instead gave that of either his dealer, framemaker, or a neighbour. Practically speaking, this obviously meant drawing upon a friend’s goodwill or making the most of an existing business connection.
The address given to the Royal Academy for the candlelight painting was “54, Parliament Steet, London” which, in 1828, was the newly opened premises of Leslie and Grindlay, a firm of what we today would call travel agents. A full 13 years before Thomas Cook organised his first shindig Grindlay’s was arranging sea voyages for military men, missionaries, Grand Tourists, and as it turns out, young painters. According to their advertisements, Leslie and Grindlay offered a full service to clients from baggage collection and ticketing to “the manufacture and supply of travel goods of all descriptions”. The co-owner was the former soldier and budding artist, Captain Robert Melville Grindley, late of the Honourable East India Company and future founder of the famous Grindley’s Bank. The fact that Grindlay was a painter too, and like Pritchett about to make his exhibition debut at the Royal Academy, makes it very possible the two men were acquainted, and that the former was in an ideal position to assist the latter with his travel arrangements. In giving the Royal Academy Grinday’s business premises as his correspondence address Edward Pritchett was, I feel sure, making the most of a friend’s goodwill and of a new business arrangement.
‘Heidelberg Castle and the River Neckar’ by Edward Pritchett (circa 1828)
With his baggage, tickets, and supplies (courtesy of Grindlay’s), Edward Pritchet left London for Northern France, and we can be quite sure he headed first to France as a painting entitled ‘Rue de la Sella, Rouen’ was exhibited at the Society of British Artists in April 1828. Forever associated with the murder of Joan of Arc and famed for its grand cathedral and Gros-Horloge, Rouen was then very popular with English artists and had been painted by Bonington three years previously.
We are able to follow Pritchett’s progress over the following months as he journeyed into Belgium, Saxony, Bavaria, and Bohemia because the landscapes he painted in these locations (Antwerp, Bruges, Heidelberg, Cologne, Leipzig, Nuremberg, and Prague) were all subsequently sent back to England for exhibition at either the Royal Academy, the British Institution, or Society of British Artists. On each occasion the correspondence address was logged by the venue and demonstrates that Pritchett was again relying on a favour from a friend or a business connection back in London to submit works on his behalf. Among others, during this period Pritchett exhibited paintings using the home address of the artist Joseph Harris (1791-1873) of Mayfair, and via the business premises of his frame makers George Tacchi of Marylebone and William Baker of King Street, and his dealer Edward Radclyffe of Pall Mall and High Holborn. Obviously, the canvas’ that Pritchett was shipping back to London (probably through Grindlay’s) were being framed by Tacchi or Baker and then either sent directly over to the exhibition venue or to one of Radclyffe’s galleries.
‘Santa Maria della Salute, Venice’ by Edward Pritchett
Image courtesy of Sotheby’s, New York
The theory that Pritchett was abroad during this period is supported by the national census of 1831 which records no evidence of Edward Pritchett resident in Britain, whilst exhibition records suggest that he had arrived in Venice by 1832. Two Venetian scenes – the first to be shown publicly by the artist – were selected for the British Institution Exhibition in the summer of 1833, meaning they would need to have been put before the hanging committee several months earlier. These two vedute paintings, entitled ‘Scene on the Grand Canal, Venice’ and ‘Column of St. Mark, Venice’, were submitted to the British Institution by Pritchett from “2, Southampton Street”, an address near the Strand in London that was then home to Captain John Charretie, late of the Honourable East India Company and future husband of the artist Anna Maria Kennell. The fact that Charretie clearly moved in artistic circles and both Charretie and Grindley were former captains in the East India Company is surely no co-incidence. However, being 20-years and 17-years older than Pritchett respectively, it is unlikely they would have been friends of the young artist but was there some family connection?
It is perhaps worth noting that during this same period the principal supplier of firearms and ordnance to the East India Company was the firm of ‘Pritchett & Sons, Gunmakers of London’. The owners, Richard Ellis Pritchett and Robert Taylor Pritchett, would become famous (and wealthy) for their invention of the “Pritchett bullet”. Guess what? Robert Taylor Pritchett enjoyed a second career as a Royal Academy artist whose watercolours were purchased by Queen Victoria. Edward Pritchett was a member of the Royal Watercolour Society. Were the two men from different branches of the same family?
Edward Pritchett’s banns of marriage confirm that he was back in London by July 1835, after which the newlyweds set up home at 19, Westmoreland Place (now Sedgmoor Place), Camberwell in South London. Pritchett was resident – and present – at this same address for the national census in both 1851 and 1861. During a 14-year period between 1844 and 1858 Pritchett exhibited nine paintings at the British Institution, all submitted from Westmoreland Place. He was still living there when he passed away on January 12th, 1876, aged sixty-nine.
Over the next one and a half centuries Edward Pritchett’s reputation as one of Victorian Britain’s finest painters of Venice only grew, but although his work now hangs in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Yale Centre for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut details about the man and of his life were lost. I hope that this article goes some way to begin rectifying that.
Between 1828 and 1864 Edward Pritchett exhibited a total of twenty-three paintings at the Royal Academy, the British Institution, and with the Society of British Artists at the Suffolk Street Gallery.
by Gavin Claxton
© Academy Fine Paintings Ltd 2024
Edward Pritchett’s timeline:
1806: born in Northamptonshire.
1827: leaves England on sketching tour of Europe.
1828: Royal Academy debut.
1828: British Society of Artists debut.
1829: British Institution debut.
1833: first two Venetian paintings exhibited in London.
1835: marriage to Caroline Stubbs, Lambeth, London.
1837: birth of daughter Caroline Mary, Lambeth, London.
1841: birth of daughter Clara Louisa, St. Pancras, London.
1844: birth of son Edward Henry, Camberwell, London.
1846: birth of daughter Elizabeth Ann, Lambeth, London.
1849: birth of daughter Marian, Camberwell, London.
1851: resident in Lambeth, London (UK census).
1852: birth of son George Henry, Camberwell, London.
1861: resident in Lambeth, London (UK census).
1876: died, Lambeth, London.