Artist: William Widgery. (1826 - 1893) |
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Subject: Fisherman’s Huts near Salcombe | ||
Medium: Watercolour Price: SOLD | Size: 357 x 535mm, 14 x 21” Order No.419 | |
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Artist's Biography:
William Widgery.
(1826 - 1893)
Born in Uppercot, North Molton, Devon, he was a landscape, and animal painter
who
began his working life as a stone mason plasterer. He later moved to Exeter
where he learned his craft by painting copies of engravings by Landseer.
He visited both Italy and Switzerland but is best known for his Devon and
Dartmoor scenes.
From Art In Devonshire' by George Pycroft pub. 1881.-
'landscape painter in oil and watercolour, born at Uppercot, North Molton,
1822, worked in early life as a mason, and is a capital instance of the truth,
that if there is genius in a man, it will come to the surface without any
help, and in spite of the most adverse circumstances. He began painting in
his leisure hours, and his friends thought much of his performances; but the
man who had most influence in determining his future path in life was the
late Thomas Hex, of St. Thomas, at whose inn the writer first saw Mr. Widgery's
clever reproductions of some of Landseer's works,only known to the painter
through the medium of engravings.
At Mr. Hex's advice Widgery gave up his trade, and trusted his all to his
success as an artist. He painted and sold many copies of Landseer and Rosa
Bonheur, made portraits of cattle and horses, and drew scenes from his neighbourhood
in oil; and although his work at first was of course that of a beginner, the
writer and the Dr. W. R. Scott, of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, an excellent
judge of art,
used often to look at them when exposed for sale, and agree that the painter
had a rare eye for, and was never wrong in his colour. Indeed, colour has
ever been his strong point.
Widgery had no instruction from any man, or any books. There was no art gallery
in Exeter to instruct his eye. He went boldly out into the fields, and sat
himself down with the colour that he gradually learned to select, and he painted
what he saw, with nature his only master. The consequence is that he has followed
no man. It is impossible to say that "Widgery is of the school of so-and-so,"
although at the present time all the young painters are copying him. He has
a style quite peculiar to himself, a style in which he catches effects,portrays
rural scenes and wild landscapes boldly, and with very little finish.
At the present date he has practiced art for thirty years. He has painted
over three thousand pictures, and has sold them all; indeed, they are generally
sold before they are off his easel, and any left the dealers are ready to
take immediately. He twice visited Italy and Switzerland, and for a time he
painted glacier streams, and snowy mountains and views Venice; but he soon
returned to the scenery of his native country. He has painted the coasts of
Devon and Cornwall, and is particularly happy in his delineation of wild seas
dashing on rugged iron-bound coast; but Dartmoor is the chief of his labours,
and in after years he will be chiefly remembered as pre-eminently the painter
of Dartmoor. He is a correct and spirited painter of animals, and introduces
them with good effect. His pictures are well composed, and he has the power
of selecting picturesque bits, and of arranging his subject in a bold easy
manner, that appears utterly unstudied. He possesses the ars celare artem
to perfection his touch is remarkably light and free; his colour is entirely
without crudity of heaviness; he never uses any blue but cobalt, and every
variety of green and grey he makes with this, the lightest of colours. He
mixes a little of the pigment with all his tints, and thus carries a softening
atmospheric effect over the whole of the work.'
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