George Cattermole was a British painter and illustrator, his paintings chiefly in watercolours. Unusually for watercolourists of the period, most of his paintings are figure scenes, often interiors with a crowd of figures, illustrating scenes from history or literature, or just genre scenes in historical costume, and he "became the foremost British historical painter in watercolours". He was a friend of Charles Dickens and many other literary and artistic figures. He declined both a knighthood and the presidency of the "Old" Watercolour Society.
George Cattermole was a British painter and illustrator, his paintings chiefly in watercolours. Unusually for watercolourists of the period, most of his paintings are figure scenes, often interiors with a crowd of figures, illustrating scenes from history or literature, or just genre scenes in historical costume, and he "became the foremost British historical painter in watercolours". He was a friend of Charles Dickens and many other literary and artistic figures. He declined both a knighthood and the presidency of the "Old" Watercolour Society.
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George Cattermole (10 August 1800 – 24 July 1868) was a British painter and illustrator, his paintings chiefly in watercolours. Unusually for watercolourists of the period, most of his paintings are figure scenes, often interiors with a crowd of figures, illustrating scenes from history or literature, or just genre scenes in historical costume, and he "became the foremost British historical painter in watercolours". He was a friend of Charles Dickens and many other literary and artistic figures. He declined both a knighthood and the presidency of the "Old" Watercolour Society (now the Royal Watercolour Society).
After early success in his career, there was something of a crisis in the 1850s, when he largely gave up watercolours for a while, and failed to make an impact painting in oils. His health caused him problems, and he was greatly affected by the early deaths of two of his children in 1862 and 1863. He was fiercely criticized in Volume I of Modern Painters (1843) by John Ruskin; Ruskin's father at one point in the early 1840s owned four Cattermoles, and one remained on the drawing room wall in 1845.
George Bernard Shaw wrote of a Cattermole exhibition in 1889: "The whole man is there—cloaks, daggers, armour, trapdoors, State barges, falcons, gauntlets, moats, keeps, serenades, anachronisms, and all. To Cattermole there was only one historic period—the past, with one appropriate costume. Fortunately it was a romantic, stately, chivalrous past, and the costume was handsome and becoming. He had imagination; and though, like Don Quixote's, it ran mostly on things that never existed, he could draw and paint them with the pleasantest ease, grace, and skill."
Samuel Redgrave described his "brigands, armourers and pirates" as "rather types of their class than possessed of any distinct individuality, and thus, as he advanced in life, he worked himself out, resulting in tameness and want of variety". But when he chose to paint real historical figures, such as Charles I, the results were "feeble in comparison with his other paintings". Redgrave says that both landscapes and architectural details were studied with the eye and then painted from memory.
Family
His family contained many artists. His elder brother Richard Cattermole (1795 - 1858) began as an artist, mostly drawing churches for architectural books and prints, before becoming a clergyman in his mid-thirties. He wrote books, including histories that George illustrated. Richard's son Charles Cattermole RI (1832-1900) painted similar subjects to his uncle George, especially of the English Civil War, and in a fairly similar style. Three of George's sons were also artists. The eldest, Ernest George (1841-1863) died young after joining the Indian Army. Leonardo Foster George Cattermole (1843-1895) assisted his father, and was especially good at horses. The youngest, Sidney William George Cattermole (1858-1915) mostly painted animals, especially dogs.
Life
He was born at Dickleburgh, near Diss, Norfolk. At the age of fourteen he began working as an architectural and topographical draughtsman for the antiquary John Britton. Afterwards he contributed designs to be engraved in the literary annuals then very popular, then progressed into watercolour painting, becoming an associate of the Royal Watercolour Society in 1822, and a full member in 1833. In 1850 he withdrew from active connection with this society, and took to painting in oil; he later returned to watercolours, but not to exhibiting with the society. His most fertile period was between 1833 and 1850. At the Paris Exhibition of 1855 he received one of the five first-class gold medals awarded to British painters. He also enjoyed professional honours in Amsterdam and in Belgium.
Works and working practices
In the earlier part of his career he worked in pure watercolour, but then, from at least about 1840, introduced increasing amounts of opaque bodycolours. He favoured a particular type of paper, originally produced for packaging, which he later had made for him by Winsor and Newton, and was known by his name. This was "a thick absorbent paper, rather warm and brownish in colour", perhaps partly accounting for "an appeara
He was successful, living in The Albany before he married, in the same rooms previously occupied by Lord Byron and then the novelist and politician Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and belonging to the Athenaeum Club and Garrick Club. He was one of the 382 founding subscribers of The London Library, which opened in 1841. Unusually for the period, he took no paying pupils, and in 1839 declined a knighthood, after making paintings of Queen Victoria and her court, and completing at the queen's request a picture of the (2nd) Diet of Speyer (V&A), which he disliked doing as there was a great crowd of figures, and he had to follow old portraits of the main ones. A watercolour of 1835, Clarence Sleeping (from Shakespeare's Richard III) is in the Royal Collection, "probably bought by Queen Victoria". His The Grave of Little Nell, illustrating a passage from Charles Dickens' novel The Old Curiosity Shop (1841) belonged to Dickens, and after his death in 1870 it was bought by his friend and biographer, John Forster, who in turn bequeathed it to the Victoria and Albert Museum. The 100 watercolours donated to the V&A by the widow of Richard Ellison to found the national collection included ten Cattermoles, one of which was The Diet of Spires (Speyer).
Though high-spirited and very sociable in his earlier career, he was "a bit of a dandy", and unusually fussy about the use of language. His politics were Tory, and though he was religious, his many subjects showing medieval monastic life did not reflect his personal interests, or detailed understanding of it in matters such as costume. He was raised as a Baptist, and only formally entered the Church of England at the start of 1851, during a crisis in his health. Cattermole is buried in West Norwood Cemetery, near the tomb of his first employer John Britton.
