Thomas Seddon

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For the New Zealand politician see Tom Seddon

Thomas Seddon (28 August 1821 in

Pre-Raphaelite
movement, who painted colourful and highly detailed scenes of Brittany, Egypt, and Jerusalem.

Life

The Citadel of Cairo, 1856
Tate Gallery
)

Seddon was born on 28 August 1821 in

Aldersgate Street in the City of London, the son of a well-known cabinet-maker of the same name. He was educated at a school conducted on the Pestalozzian system by the Rev. Joseph Barron at Stanmore, and then worked for his father until 1841, when he was sent to Paris to study ornamental art.[1][2]

He then returned to work in the family business.

Society of Arts.[4] Meanwhile, he took lessons at Charles Lucy's drawing school in Camden Town, and attended life classes held by the Artists' Society at Clipstone Street.[5] In the summer of 1849, he went to North Wales, visiting Betws-y-Coed, then a popular destination for artists, where he made his first serious attempts at landscape painting.[6]The next year he went to Barbizon in the forest of Fontainbleau, where he made some studies in oil.[7]

By the beginning of 1848 Seddon had come into contact with the Pre-Raphaelite movement, having met

Royal Academy.[12] He visited Wales again in late 1851 and the following summer went to Dinan in Brittany where his sisters were staying;[13] a landscape painted there was shown at the Royal Academy the next year.[14]

Seddon spent much of the early part of 1853 preparing for a journey to Egypt in the company of one of the Brotherhood's founders, William Holman Hunt. In June he went to Dinan again, where he painted a large and elaborate landscape showing the ruined monastery of Léhon. Seddon left France for Egypt in November, arriving in Alexandria on 6 December,[15] and moved on to Cairo, Hunt not having yet arrived.

Seddon and Hunt set up camp near the Pyramids, with another Englishman called Nicholson, who was terminally ill, and died there.

Garden of Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives,[18] from where he painted much of the highly finished landscape Jerusalem and the Valley of Jehoshaphat from the Hill of Evil Counsel. He left the city for France in October 1854.[19]

Although the Valley of Jehosphat was exhibited with the subtitle Painted on the Spot during the Summer and Autumn Months, Seddon continued to work on it in Dinan, along with another oil painting and two watercolours also begun in Jerusalem,.[18] He finally finished it, with some help from Hunt, following his return to London in January 1855 and showed it for the first time at an exhibition in his studio in Berners Street in March of the same year.[18] His Eastern subjects were exhibited again the following year in Conduit Street.

In October 1856 Seddon visited Cairo again,

National Gallery.[2] John Ruskin pronounced Seddon's views of Egypt and Palestine to be "the first landscapes uniting perfect artistical skill with topographical accuracy; being directed, with stern self-restraint, to no other purpose than that of giving to persons who cannot travel trustworthy knowledge of the scenes which ought to be most interesting to them".[2]

A memoir of Seddon, by his brother, John Pollard Seddon, was published in 1859.[2]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Graves, Robert Edmund (1897). "Seddon, Thomas (1821-1856)". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 51. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  2. ^ a b c d e Chisholm 1911.
  3. ^ Seddon 1858, p. 4.
  4. ^ Seddon 1858, p. 5.
  5. ^ The Orientalists (Exhibition catalogue). London: The Royal Academy of Arts. 1984. pp. 227–9.
  6. ^ Seddon 1858, p. 7.
  7. ^ Seddon 1858, p. 8.
  8. ^ Staley & Newall 2004, pp. 106–7.
  9. ^ Seddon 1858, p. 11–13.
  10. ^ Seddon 1858, pp. 14–15.
  11. ^ Seddon 1858, p. 15.
  12. ^ Seddon 1858, p. 17.
  13. ^ Seddon 1858, p. 20–21.
  14. ^ Seddon 1858, p. 23.
  15. ^ Seddon 1858, p. 29.
  16. ^ Seddon 1858, p. 51-8.
  17. ^ a b Seddon 1858, p. 64.
  18. ^ a b c The Pre-Raphaelites (Exhibition catalogue). London: Tate Gallery. 1984. pp. 151–2.
  19. ^ Staley & Newall 2004, p. 120.

Sources

External links