Lives of the Artists No.2: Edward Chatfield

Benjamin Robert Haydon, about whom enough has probably been written,  had several pupils, of whom Charles Lock Eastlake and the brothers Edwin and Charles Landseer were the most successful. Others have disappeared almost without trace,  though they may not have gone entirely unnoticed in their own time.

Edward Chatfield was  born  in 1800, the son of a distiller from Croydon.  Impressed by some paintings by Haydon, he obtained an introduction to the artist, who agreed to take him on as a pupil. His training with Haydon  included a course in anatomy, and close study of two of Haydon's special enthusiasms: the "Elgin Marbles" and the Raphael Cartoons. Although Haydon provided his tuition free, the master-pupil relationship would eventually cost Chatfield a considerable sum, as he had unwisely guaranteed  some bills for the man described by  Henry Vizetelly as "the unthrifty painter of colossal canvasses", and had to pay up when Haydon was arrested for debt in 1823. However he remained attached to Haydon, whom he often, rather oddly, referred to as "father".

Following the abrupt end of his training, he embarked on a career that mixed portrait painting - presumably for the money - with more  ambitious historical subjects. His works seem to have sunk into almost complete obscurity. There aren't any paintings - at least not recognised as such - in British public collections, and a simple internet search  turns up only a few prints after his works.

In 1825 he painted a deputation of Huron chiefs, who had came to London  in order to present their grievances to  George IV. Charles Hullmandell made lithographs of the pictures:

Three Chiefs of the Huron Indians Residing at La Jeune Lorette, Near Quebec, in their National Costume. Lithograph by Charles Hullmandel, after a painting by Edward Chatfield (1825). Image: National Gallery of Canada

Nicolas Vincent Tsawenhohi. Lithograph by Charles Hullmandel, after a painting by Edward Chatfield (1825). Image: Wikimedia Commons.

His painting The Otter's Cairn—a Scene in the Island of Islay,  with portraits, painted for "Campbell M.P. of Islay" and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1834, was, though,  in a Christie's sale in Edinburgh in 2008. Oddly enough it was catalogued as "Circle of George Sanders (1774-1846)", but if the description of the painting as "The Islay Otter Hunt with numerous figures, including Walter Frederick Campbell (1798-1855), and his son John Francis Campbell (1822-1885)" wasn't enough to confirm an attribution to Chatfield, the catalogue entry notes that an indistinct inscription on the stretcher,  reading "An otter hunt in Islay painted by Cha[tfield?] in Islay/Portrait of ..... Campbell of Islay...."

This is how The Sporting Magazine reviewed it:

Otter Hunting will lose none of its attractions by Mr. Chatfield's delineation of it—he has been very happy in selecting his points, which tell with considerable effect. The listening attitude of some, and the wary countenances of others while awaiting the dislodgment of the enemy from his retreat, is cleverly imagined, and the whole is heightened by the Highland costume of some of the party.

Other exhibited paintings by Chatfield included The Death of Moses, shown at the British Institution in 1823, and recorded at the time of his death at Salters' Hall, in the City of London;   Penelope's Grief over the Bow of Ulysses ( 1824), La Petite Espiegle (1825), The Death of Locke (1833); The Battle of Killiecrankie (1836)  and  Ophelia (1837), as well as various portraits. Are we missing much by not knowing these paintings? The Gentleman's Magazine was ambivalent about his achievement:

As an artist, Mr. Chatfield had never succeeded in doing perfect justice to the powers which he really possessed. His taste was formed upon a thorough understanding of all that was loftiest in art— but his hand, judging by his exhibited pictures, could not accomplish the tasks which he would have set it. His unceasing and feverish ambition to realise his pure views of art—to trace the forms which he saw in visions, peopled with the shapes and colours of the Old Masters whom he venerated —to pourtray the beauty, and work out the truth which lie felt so acutely—may have had its effect among the causes of his premature death. 

In other words, he was a victim of Haydon's high-mindedness. There isn't much more. He wrote articles  on art for various magazines under the pseudonym "Echion". In his last piece, ''On Poetic Painting and Sculpture'' for the ''Monthly Magazine" he criticised the works of Henry Fuseli in terms that, to the modern reader, might seem like an argument for dullness in art:  "The fantastic, the eccentric, the grotesque, the unnatural, the horrible, may all put in their claims to the title of Poetic, and some portion of the true Hippocrene may mingle with all; but a matured taste rejects from any affinity with the genuine fountain of the Muses, whatsoever is inconsistent with fine sense or propriety of character".

In Greek mythology Echion was, in the words of Lempriére's Classical Dictionary, the standard  reference work of the time and favourite reading of Haydon's friend John Keats, "one of those men who sprung from the dragon's teeth sown by Cadmus. He was one of the five who survived the fate of his brothers and assisted Cadmus in building the city of Thebes."  Chatfield's life was less epic. In 38 years it took him from Croydon to Bloomsbury, where he died at the house of his friend, the wood engraver Orrin Smith, with whom he had lived for several years, in   January 1839.

[[Sources: Obituaries in the Aldine Magazine and
the Gentleman's Magazine; Chatfield's entry in the Dictionary of National Biography; Henry Vizetelly Glances Back Through Seventy Years; The Sporting Magazine; The Monthly Magazine; Lempriére's Dictionary.]

Lives of the Artists 1: Richard Evans

Possibly the first of a series of mini-biographies of  randomly chosen less-well known painters.

Richard Evans was born in Shrewsbury. The year is usually given as c. 1783, but census returns indicate a slightly later date, of 1786/7  While young he became a friend of the Birmingham -born artist David Cox. N. Neal Solly, Cox's biographer records that when Evans was in need of money, Cox would lend him pen-and-ink landscapes to to copy and sell, Evans being less competent in the genre.   When Cox moved to London in 1804,  Evans and Charles Barber, the son of Cox's teacher, the Birmingham drawing-master Joseph Barber, both followed him south and took lodgings nearby (whether separately or together isn't clear), and all three would go out sketching together.

Evans became the pupil, and later assistant of  Sir Thomas Lawrence, the leading portrait painter of the time. He was employed painting draperies and backgrounds for Lawrence's works, and making duplicates, especially of   royal subjects. The National Portrait Gallery has Evans' copy of Lawrence's own self-portrait. After  Lawrence's death in 1830, his executors  paid Evans to fnish some of the many unfinished works left in his studio. 

Thomas Campbell, who was at once stage considering a biography of Lawrence said that no-one knew more about Lawrence than Evans, due to his exceptional memory, and his having lived in his master's house for six years. Evans promised to help Campbell with his book when time allowed, but when Campbell asked for assistance again, after a long delay, he found out that Evans had already told his stock of anecdotes to his friend Watts, editor of the "Annual Obituary" to use in his publication. Campbell shelved his plan for lack of  fresh material.

In 1814, Evans took advantage of the cessation of hostilities with France, to visit Paris, where he copied paintings in the Louvre. . Then, in 1816, in a rather surprising episode, he went to Haiti. A revolutionary general, the former slave Henri-Cristophe,  had declared  himself King of Haiti, although he in fact only ruled the northern part, the rest being under the control of his former ally, Alexandre Petion. The King created a system of nobility, and set up  a number of educational institutions, including  an academy of painting and drawing at his palace of Sans Souci of which  Evans was to become head. Evans' involvement   came about through Prince Saunders (Prince being his  given name, and not a  title), a black American activist and educationalist, who, while on a visit to Britain, had been persuaded to take an interest in Haiti by the anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce. An engraving  of Saunders by Charles Turner (dated August 1816),  after a painting by Evans,  was used as the frontispiece for his "Haitian papers".

The arrangements for Evans' employment in the Caribbean seem to have been a little vague. On July 10th, 1816,  Joseph Farington recorded in his diary a conversation with the sculptor John Charles Felix Rossi, whom Saunders had also invited to Haiti, in his case to make sculpture for the king's building projects.

Rossi called. He informed me that Evans, a young artist, & several other persons conversant in Arts & Sciences, met together at  Mr. Wilberforce's on a day in the last week, and Prince Sanders, the Black Man who lately came from Hayti was of the party. The proposal of Sanders which had been made to the above persons for them to go to Hayti was the matter for consideration & it then appeared that Sanders was not adequately commissioned by Christophe the King of Hayti to engage them, & the conversation with  recommendation to Sanders to return to Hayti for more authority to act in engaging persons to go to Hayti. — Sanders being rather pressed to answer questions which He was not prepared to answer, proposed to adjourn with Mr. Wilberforce only, to another [room] where He would hare something to say to Him.
This Mr. Wilberforce declined, saying that whatever communication He had with Him on the subject must be before the gentlemen present. — Rossi, now sd. that He saw no engagement cd. at present be made with Sanders, and further He had been told that the duration of Christophe's government is considered to be very uncertain. That the Government of France for the purpose of employing troops who wish to be so, proposes to send a considerable force to St. Domingo to support Petion against Christophe & in case of success to appoint Petion, who now favour  the French, to be Governor of that Island.

Despite the level of uncertainty, Evans left for Haiti in the company of Saunders and three other specialists he had engaged in England, an agriculturalist and two schoolmasters, arriving on the  on 21 September. He painted portraits of the Haitian royal family: his first version of  his portrait of the king (now in Puerto Rico)  was sent as a gift to William Wilberforce and another was sent to the Russian Tsar. In 1818 Evans'  pictures of King Henry Christophe  and his son Prince Victor Henry were shown at the Royal Academy.  The reactionary "New Monthly Magazine" praised the works, albeit in  unpleasant terms, saying they were "uncommonly good pictures, and prove that it is not impossible to attach pomp and dignity even unto a negro: they really look very king-like personages".

Presumably Evans returned to England no later than 1820, when Henry Christophe, facing military defeat at the hands of Petion, committed suicide. He was probably back well before that as he showed three portraits with no obvious Haitian connections at the Academy, two of unnamed subjects and one of Thomas Campbell. In 1821 Evans went to Rome in order to make copies, or organise and oversee the copying by Italian specialists, of Raphael's arabesque decorations in the Vatican loggia. They were commissioned by  John Nash, to ornament  his  gallery in Regent Street. After Nash's death the copies were sold to the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert) which eventually burnt them in a fit of spring-cleaning in 1960.

In June the  next year he set off for Italy again, this time in the company of his friend William Etty, another former pupil of Lawrence.  Etty at least had only intended to spend about six months abroad, but the trip turned out much longer.The two men travelled overland via Paris  arriving in Rome on 10 August.  After a fortnight, Etty moved on to Naples, leaving Evans in Rome, and  returned a month later. Etty wrote in a letter that "an arrangement has been made that would preclude my staying with him...but I must ever feel much obliged to him. He has gone about with me, and shown me things I should not otherwise have seen".  Evans based himself in Rome,  where he became a member of an academy set up by British artists, with Lawrence's backing but also visited Milan. while Etty spent seven months in Venice.  Evans and Etty were reunited in Florence in the summer of 1823  and after spending two months in Venice finally left for England in October.

While  in Rome he experimented  fresco-painting, and, on leaving the city gave a panel depicting "Ganymede Feeding the Eagle"  to the servant who cleaned his studio. The painting found its way into the possesion of Capranesi, a Roman art dealer, who sold it to  Sir Matthew Ridley in 1836,   claiming that it had been  taken from an ancient tomb in the Via Appia. In 1865, Ridley gave it to the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert)  where Evans, to his surprise, found it on displayed as a genuine antique example. He convinced the appropriate authorities that it was his work, and the label was replaced. Two other frescos,  given by Ridley to the British Museum may also be by  Evans.

He continued to exhibit at the Royal Academy until 1845, mostly showing  portraits. In 1825 he contributed a "Portrait of an Hindoo" and a double portrait of " Eustratius Rallis and Stamos Nakos, young Greeks now educating at Hazlewood School". In April of that year he wrote Lawrence what, from the summary published on the Academy website, seems to have  been a rather intemperate letter, railing against the conduct of the British artists in Rome, and voicing the suspicion  that Lawrence has turned against him. I don't know if Evans carried on working as Lawrence's assistant after his return from Italy. In 1830 though, after Lawrence's death, he was paid by his executors to complete some the many commisssioned works left unfinished in his studio.

In 1834 he showed a portrait of Harriet Martineau ( now in the National Portrait Gallery) at the Royal Academy. It didn't please its subject at all. She wrote in her autobiography:

I have mentioned Evans’s portrait of me,—of which Sir A. Calcott said to me, “What are your friends about to allow that atrocity to hang there?” We could not help it. Mr. Evans was introduced to me by a mutual acquaintance, on the ground that he was painting portraits for a forthcoming work, and wanted mine. I could not have refused without downright surliness; but it appeared afterwards that the artist had other views. I sat to him as often as he wished, though I heartily disliked the attitude, which was one in which I certainly was never seen. The worst misfortune, however, was that he went on painting and painting at the portrait, long after I had ceased to sit,—the result of which was that the picture came out the “atrocity” that Calcott called it. The artist hawked it about for sale, some years after; and I hope nobody bought it; for my family would be sorry that it should be taken for a representation of me.

Evans carried on showing at the Academy until  1843, mostly portraits, but a couple of mythological subjects crept in, and he also showed  six subject pictures at the British Institution between 1831 and 1856. In the mid-1840s he moved to Southampton, where he continued to paint until his death, at the age of 87, in November 1871.