The Norwich School of Painters
A group of landscape painters established in Norwich, East
Anglia, during the early part of the 19th Century.
The Norwich Society was founded at a meeting of the friends,
pupils and patrons of John Crome, the landscape painter.
Its purpose was 'An Enquiry into the Rise, Progress and
present state of Painting, Architecture and Sculpture, with
a view to point out the Best Methods of study to attain
to Greater Perfection in these Arts.'
This group was strong but diverse. It was described as
a school only because its leaders, John Crome and John Sell
Cotman, operated in Norwich as teachers and drawing masters.
Neither their own work, nor that of their pupils, displays
a common style, though the artists established close personal
and family links. While they concentrated for long periods
on Norfolk scenery and life, they also visited and painted
Wales and the Lake District, the Netherlands and northern
France. They formed strong connections with colleagues at
a national level, exhibited and sometimes lived in London,
and were often at the forefront of contemporary artistic
theory and taste. Even when regionally based, they were
never provincial in outlook.
The Society held fortnightly meetings and discussions,
and organized an Exhibition of 223 oil and watercolor paintings
by 18 members in 1805. The show was a success, and the Exhibitions
became an annual event, the first of their type outside
London. John Crome was President of the Society, and in
1807, John Sell Cotman joined the group, and became Vice-President.
The Norwich School was dominated by these two, and the members
can to some extent be divided into those who followed Crome's
realist manner, and those working in the more free style
of Cotman, who was not above painting pictures of places
he had not personally visited, working from other artists'
sketches. The Norwich Society flourished through to the
1830s, when the Exhibitions faltered and ceased in 1833.
They were revived in 1839, but never achieved the same success
as previously. Crome had died in 1821, and Cotman died in
1842. Artists of the Norwich School continued working through
to the 1880s.
The subjects of the Norwich School painters were typically
landscapes, coasts and marine scenes from around Norwich
and Norfolk. Rustic scenes were also popular. Often they
combined old-master style colors with a closely observed
realist observation of nature. The colors of the Norwich
School pictures as they appear today are often more reddish-brown
than originally, as apparently various of their colors,
notably the indigo blue, faded or became red over time.
Works by most of the Norwich School may be seen in the
Norwich Castle Museum. Crome and Cotman were big names and
their work is distributed more widely. Three examples of
the work of James Stark are in the Lady Lever Gallery, as
well as works by Cotman and Crome, including his important
English woodland scene Marlingford Grove (c.1815).
Artists of the Norwich School included:
John Crome (1768-1821) John Sell Cotman (1782-1842) Henry
Bright (1810-1873) Joseph Clover (1779-1853) Samuel David
Colkett (1800-1863) John Joseph Cotman (1814-1878) Miles
Edmund Cotman (1810-1858) John Berney Crome (1794-1842)
William Henry Crome (1806-c.1858) Revd. E. T. Daniell (1804-1843)
David Hodgson (1798-1864) Robert Ladbrooke (1770-1842) John
Berney Ladbrooke (1803-1879) Thomas Lound (1802-1861) John
Middleton (1827-1856) Henry Ninham (1754-1817) Alfred Priest
(1810-1850) James Sillett (1764-1840) Alfred Stannard (1806-1889)
Alfred George Stannard (1828-1885) Joseph Stannard (1797-1830)
James Stark (1794-1859) John Thirtle (1777-1859) .
