Albany Fine Art : Biography of Samuel READ, RWS

Samuel READ, RWS

British, 1816-1883

READ © London Illustrated
News, 1883

Highly regarded Victorian illustrator and painter whose work combined his study of watercolours, architecture and engraving

Samuel Read was born in 1815 in Needham Market, near Ipswich in Suffolk, where he spent his childhood. He showed an interest and talent in art from a very early age and first trained as a lawyer in Ipswich, at the offices of a Mr Sparrow, Town Clerk, where he would amuse himself by drawing. He then took a significant step towards his future artistic career by becoming the assistant to an Ipswich architect, where he developed his skills as an architectural draughtsman.

Read moved to London in 1841, at the age of 26, to join his friend Josiah Wood Whymper, RI (British, 1813-1903), the wood-engraver and watercolour painter and with whom he studied both techniques. He also studied with William Collingwood Smith, RWS (1815-1887), the highly successful watercolourist, who also had the largest teaching practice in London. Read combined his watercolour, architectural and engraving skills in his later work.

He submitted his first architectural drawings to the Royal Academy in 1843. The following year, 1844, he illustrated Zoological Studies and, in the same year, he was commissioned to draw for the illustrated newspaper, Illustrated London News (ILN). He was to become a constant contributor “and a great favourite with our readers” for the next 40 years.

The ILN had been founded by Herbert Ingram in 1842 and was to become the 19th century’s leading illustrated newspaper. From the outset, Ingram had taken the decision that pictorials would be as important as journalism and to this end he gathered together a group of the greatest British draughtsmen and engravers of the time, of whom Read was one (for others, see below).

Why were Read and other such talented artists attracted to the ILN? Regular work and income no doubt but also because it was the biggest showcase for illustrators in Great Britain and The Empire. By 1863, for example, the ILN was selling over 300,000 copies a week, far in excess of the largest selling newspaper, The Times, at 70,000 copies.

Read was the first Special Artist ever sent abroad by any illustrated newspaper when the ILN despatched him to Constantinople and the Black Sea in 1853. This was just prior to the outbreak of the Crimean War (1853–1856) when Constantinople was part of the Ottoman Empire.

In his obituary, the ILN commented, “In the conception and delineation, most especially, of picturesque old buildings, rural mansions or castles, invested with an air of romance by their supposed associations with the lives of former generations, Mr Read’s power of this ideal kind was effectively displayed. His pictures also of the wild and sublime cliff scenery of our northern coasts had a similar quality of peculiar impressiveness…which our readers cannot have forgotten. Interiors of grand old Churches and Cathedrals were another class of subjects which he treated with great effect. As an artist in watercolours, he achieved considerable professional success, becoming a member of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours, and a frequent contributor to their yearly Exhibitions. But as an artist drawing on wood he was most notable for his peculiar mastery of the treatment of pictorial effects in black and white. Among the most prominent of his drawings for the Illustrated London News, during the past twenty years, were the series of views of the English Cathedrals, published in large Engravings; and the interesting small sketches of picturesque bits of architecture in many old cities and towns in England and Scotland, France, Belgium, Germany and Spain, entitled ‘Leaves from a Sketchbook’: some of which latter were reprinted in a volume published several years ago” (1875).

Read narrowly escaped death in the Staplehurst, Kent railway disaster of 9th June 1865, in which Charles Dickens, the foremost English novelist of the Victorian era, was also involved.

He was elected an Associate of the (old) Society of Painters in Watercolours in 1857 and became a Member in 1880. He married a daughter of Dr Carruthers, the proprietor and editor of the Inverness Courier and died in Sidmouth, Devon, in 1883. His remaining works were sold at Christie’s in February of the following year.

OTHER ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS ARTISTS & ENGRAVERS
(listed alphabetically)

Frederick Barnard (British, 1846-1896): also illustrator of Charles Dicken’s David Copperfield, Martin Chuzzlewit, and A Tale of Two Cities.

Randolph Caldecott (British, 1846-1886): one of the triumvirate of great British children's illustrators of the late Victorian period (with Walter Crane and Kate Greenaway).

George Cruickshank (British, 1792-1878): also illustrated Charles Dickens’ Sketches by Boz and Oliver Twist and became the most popular satirist of his day.

Sir John Gilbert, RA, PRWS (British, 1817–1897): artist and illustrator who is credited with creating over 30,000 drawings for the ILN alone.

Charles Samuel Keene (British, 1823–1891): pen-and-ink artist and caricaturist who was also one of the major illustrators for Punch for almost 40 years (1851-90).

Hablot Knight Browne (pseudonym Phiz, British, 1815-1882): the most famous of Charles Dickens’ illustrators.

Ebenezer Landell (British, 1808-1860): highly regarded wood engraver, illustrator, and magazine proprietor.

John Leech (British, 1817–1864): also illustrated Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

William James Linton (British, 1812-American 1897): Anglo-American wood engraver, author, and political reformer.

Walter Stanley Paget (British, 1863-1935): also illustrator of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.

George Housman Thomas (British, 1824-1868): also artist whose works were commissioned by HM Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and illustrator of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Anthony Trollope’s The Last Chronicle of Barset.