Fallow Deer with Fawn
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Research by Katie Timson
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Acc No 71
Artist Samuel John Carter Artist dates 1835-1892 Medium oil on canvas Size 101.6 x 127 cm (40 x 50 in) Date painted 1885 Inscr: signed and dated 1885 Donor Alderman J H Dawson Date donated 22 May 1939 |
ARTIST
Samuel John Carter was born in 1835 in the Keeper’s Cottage of the Manor House in Dunham, near Swaffham, Norfolk. His father, Samuel Carter (born 1792), was the agent and gamekeeper for the local squire, Robert Hamond, and his mother was Frances Carter, nee Spinks, of Swaffham (1) (2). In 1845 Samuel John, then aged ten, won his first prize at the drawing school in Swaffham, which was supervised by John Sell Cotman, the renowned watercolour painter, illustrator, etcher and leading member of the Norwich School of Artists. According to Frederick Keeling Scott, vicar of Swaffham from 1908 to 1928, Samuel John became a pupil at the Royal Academy Schools, London, where he was the recipient of a silver medal in his first term. This connection is not confirmed by the Royal Academy records and it is possible that Samuel John was confused with his artistic son, William, who won multiple prizes and medals whilst attending the Royal Academy schools. (3) Whether he was awarded the medal or not, there is no doubt that Samuel John went on to become a successful artist, with animals his primary speciality. Between 1867 and 1889 he was also the principal animal illustrator for the Illustrated London News. (4) Carter’s base in London was usually in the Chelsea, King’s Road, or Pimlico area. He married Martha Joyce, nee Sands, a native of Swaffham and the daughter of a builder, in about 1858 and settled at 10 Rich Terrace, Kensington, ten years later. The house, bequeathed to Martha Joyce, was a ‘fairly modest terraced house with a garden’. (5) Within this garden lived a menagerie of small animals housed in large pens. They served as models for Carter’s sketches and paintings. (6) Carter also owned a ‘country cottage’ on the road to the village of Sporle, on the outskirts of Swaffham, which saw the birth of some of their eleven children. (7) Sadly, not all of them survived. Carter’s sisters, Fanny and Catherine (Kate), lived in the cottage and looked after it for Samuel John and his family who would holiday and paint there (8). Carter used Swaffham as the base for his work in the country, where he was in demand by landowners and local gentry. They would commission him to paint their prize farm animals, beloved pets, hunting horses and hounds as well as family groups. (9) Carter appealed to the sentiment and interests of his Victorian patrons, painting picturesque and occasionally dramatic scenes in a style befitting the times. This Victorian style is epitomised in the work of Sir Edwin Landseer; it is claimed by the Carter family that the original drawings for Landseer’s lion sculptures, situated at the base of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, were made by Carter. (10) His paintings were accepted for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions almost annually between 1855 and 1890 and he also exhibited at the British Institution and The Gallery of The Royal Society of British Artists. (11) (12) Carter appears to have used deer as subjects for many of his paintings and one of these, Morning with the Wild Red Deer (1876), depicting a stag, hind and fawn (not dissimilar to Fallow Deer with Fawn), is in the possession of the Tate Gallery. It was presented in 1894 by Sir Henry Tate, who donated his collection of artworks to the government on the condition that they would be housed in a suitable public gallery. (13) Tate also gifted a substantial amount of money to aid the construction of the gallery, which opened in 1897 as The National Gallery of British Art, now known as the Tate Britain. (14) Carter’s dramatic subject matters are exemplified by titles such as, A Chase (1855), Gelert: "The gallant hound the wolf had slain..." (1865), Rescued from the wolf (1866), A Duel on the Black Mount, NB "And 'twere a grand sight as the eagles came fighting down the mountains..." (1874), To the rescue: Norfolk coast. "A life-boat manned with gallant crew..." (1882) and The Bitter Bit (1890). (15) John Ruskin, the ‘greatest British art critic and social commentator of the Victorian age’ (16), complemented two of Carter’s paintings in the 1875 Summer Exhibition. He said of The First Taste: 'Altogether enjoyable to me; and I am prepared to maintain (as a true lover of dogs young and old) ... that this picture is exemplary in its choice of a moment of supreme puppy felicity as properest time for puppy portraiture'. Ruskin described The Little Wanderers as 'a most pathetic and touching group of children in the wood. You may see if you take an opera-glass to it, that the robin is even promising to cover them with leaves, if indeed things are to end, as seems too possible'. (17) Via the recommendation, or sponsorship, of Sir John Everett Millais, the famous artist who was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Carter was able to gain his sixteen year old son, William, entry into the Royal Academy Schools in 1874. (18) His other sons, Samuel and Vernet, and daughter, Amy, also pursued creative professions. (19) In return for scraping their palettes or washing their paintbrushes as a young child, Howard, Carter’s youngest child, would earn sixpences or threepenny bits. (20) Howard (later to become Howard Carter of Tutankhamun fame) was quite weak and fragile as a baby. Three of his brothers had already died before his birth, and as his mother had six children to look after in London, Howard was sent to Swaffham as a precaution. He was brought up by his unmarried aunts and later stated that ‘...soon after my birth I was taken in charge of a nurse to our house in Swaffham in Norfolk'. (21) Despite this, he described his mother as 'a small, kindly woman' who 'loved luxury’. (22) As a child Howard was encouraged by his father to draw animals, most likely using the animals in the garden of Rich Terrace for practice. From the age of fifteen he began to make money from his art with watercolour and chalk portraits of, in his words, "parrots, cats and smelly lap dogs". (23) In an autobiographical account Howard paid tribute to his father’s artistic talents: 'We all inherited from our father an inborn faculty for drawing: he being an animal painter of no little fame, and one of the most powerful draughtsmen I ever knew. His knowledge of comparative anatomy and memory for form was matchless. He could depict from memory, accurately, any animal in action, fore-shortened or otherwise, with the greatest ease.' (24) Although not as famous as some of his contemporaries, Samuel John was respected within Victorian London’s artistic circles. He died on 1 May 1892, at the relatively young age of fifty-seven, leaving Martha Joyce a widow. (25) |
REFERENCES
(1) James, T G H, (2006), Howard Carter: The Path to Tutankhamun, p5 (2) 1841 England Census available from http://search.ancestry.co.uk/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=8978&h=8505081&ssrc=pt&tid=73351726&pid=42272673273&usePUB=true (3) James, T G H, (2006), Howard Carter: The Path to Tutankhamun, p5 (4) Ibid, p6 (5) Ibid, p4 (6) Ibid, p6 (7) Ibid, p7 (8) Ibid, p7 (9) Ibid, p6 (10) Ibid (11) William Secord Gallery, (ND), Samuel John Carter, available from http://www.dogpainting.com/info_detail.cfm?&arts_id=SJC [29/07/2015] (12) Unknown, (1940), Survey of London: Volume 20, St Martin-in-The-Fields, Pt III: Trafalgar Square and Neighbourhood, p89-94, available from http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol20/pt3/pp89-94 (13) Unknown, (ND), Samuel John Carter - Morning with the Wild Red Deer, available from http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/carter-morning-with-the-wild-red-deer-n01559 (11/03/2015) (14) Unknown, (ND), History of Tate, available from http://www.tate.org.uk/about/who-we-are/history-of-tate (11/03/2015) (15) Unknown, (ND), John Ruskin, available from http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/ruskin/ruskin/jr.htm (09/08/2015) (16) James, T G H, (2006), Howard Carter: The Path to Tutankhamun, p6 (17) Ibid (18) Ibid, p7 (19) Ibid, p10 (20) Unknown, (2002), Howard Carter, Archaeologist and Egyptologist: a Personal View, Ancient Egypt Magazine, Issue Four, available from http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/GENBRIT/2003-02/1044224898 (01/08/2015) (21) James, T G H, (2006), Howard Carter: The Path to Tutankhamun, p7 (22) Ibid, p8 (23) Unknown, (2002), Howard Carter, Archaeologist and Egyptologist: a Personal View, Ancient Egypt Magazine, Issue Four, available from http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/GENBRIT/2003-02/1044224898 (01/08/2015) (24) James, T G H, (2006), Howard Carter: The Path to Tutankhamun, p7 (25) Unknown, (ND), England & Wales, National Probate Calendar 1858-1966 (Index of Wills and Administrations), available from http://search.ancestry.co.uk/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&db=UKProbateCal&h=4218256&tid=&pid=&usePUB=true&rhSource=8978 (07/03/2015) |