Natural Landscape

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

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Another great landscape painter who during his lifetime never took the place in the world that his genius warranted was John Crome, frequently called ‘Old Crome,’ to distinguish him from his son, who also became a painter. Crome, who was born at Norwich on December 21, 1769, was the son of a poor weaver and began life as an errand boy, carrying bottles of medicine for a doctor, but when he was about fourteen or fifteen his love of art led him to apprentice himself to a house and sign painter. While following his trade during his apprenticeship, Crome took every opportunity of sketching the picturesque scenery which surrounds his native city. He was very, very poor, but he persevered and his perseverance gained him friends.

Chief among these friends was Mr Thomas Harvey, of Catton in Norfolk, who possessed a fine picture gallery and encouraged Crome to study and make copies of the pictures he had collected. Mr Harvey’s collection included landscapes by Richard Wilson—by whom Crome was greatly influenced—Gainsborough’s ‘Cottage Door,’ and many fine examples of the Dutch painters of the seventeenth century, notably Hobbema, for whose art Crome then conceived a passionate admiration which lasted all his life. Mr Harvey not only introduced Crome to other Norwich amateurs, but also obtained him some pupils to whom he taught drawing, though at this time the artist was only an awkward, uninformed country lad, whose deficiencies of education were to some extent compensated for by his great gifts and his natural shrewdness.

Meanwhile Crome had formed an intimate friendship with a lad of his own class, Robert Ladbrooke (1770-1842), then a printer’s apprentice, but also ambitious to become an artist. After living together for some two years, Crome and Ladbrooke married sisters, and abandoning their original trades they established themselves in partnership as artists, Ladbrooke painting portraits at five shillings apiece, and Crome selling his landscapes for what they would fetch—which was not always as much as five shillings! But for Crome’s practice as a drawing-master he could hardly have kept himself, let alone a family, in these early years, but gradually he acquired a local reputation and his landscapes found occasional purchasers, though at pitifully low prices.

In February 1803 Crome gathered round him the artists of his native city for their mutual improvement, and from this beginning arose the Norwich Society of Artists, founded in 1805. The Society held annual exhibitions to which Crome was a large contributor, for he rarely sent his pictures to London for exhibition and consequently was little known there. Crome’s pupils and associates, among whom the most distinguished were John Sell Cotman, James Stark (1794-1859), George Vincent, and his eldest son John Bernay Crome, formed what is known as the ‘Norwich School.’ The inspiration of this school was derived chiefly from Crome, but also from the Dutch painters by whom he was influenced.

Natural Landscape (continued)