Te Norwich School John Crome’s River Painting John Crome (1768-1821)


Son of a journeyman weaver, Crome (often referred to as ‘Old Crome’ to distinguish him from his youngest son, also an eminent artist) was apprenticed to a Francis Whisler, sign, house and coach painter in 1783.


This early training doubtless inspired him to paint with focus on distance, a concept that he adhered to throughout his career.


About the same time, Crome formed a strong friendship with Robert Ladbrooke, then an apprentice printer, who also went on to become a celebrated landscape painter. The pair shared a room together and sketched the fields and lanes around Norwich. Crome and Ladbrooke were able to sell some of their artwork to a local print- seller, Smith and Jaggers of Norwich. Through the print-seller John met Thomas Harvey of Catton, a master weaver, a patron of the arts and a discerning collector. Crome copied from Harvey’s comprehensive collection of earlier Dutch and English masters.


In 1792 Crome married and became a drawing master to the Gurneys of Earlham, near Norwich, whom he accompanied to the Lake District in 1802. It was in 1803 that he founded the Norwich Society of Artists, of which he was President in 1808 and 1821, the year of his death. Along with many British artists, he went to Paris in 1814, just before Waterloo, to see the paintings looted by Napoleon that were exhibited at the Louvre.


His many pupils included Dawson Turner’s family of Great Yarmouth, James Stark, George Vincent, John Berney Crome (his son) and Richard Noverre Bacon, who remembered him as ‘my mirthloving, kind and earnest teacher’.


Crome died on 22nd April 1821.


Crome’s paintings were unmistakably modern, despite their roots in the seventeenth century Dutch masters (Hobbema in the Grove Scene and Van Goyen in the Yare at Thorpe) and in the eighteenth century English paintings of Wilson and early Gainsborough. In New Mills, Men


nature his dominant aim. Crome never signed his paintings, so working out what forms his oeuvre is not always easy. That said, his style was a distinctive one, and art historians have a good idea of what is and is not a John Crome work.


Contemporaries tended to be unkind, complaining that his work looked to be unfinished. They also found his monochromatic works difficult to appreciate, having been accustomed to the clear, crisp lines and colours of the Dutch masters. However, he is widely recognised as one of the first artists to paint trees in detail as opposed to a generalised form and


Wading of circa 1812 he achieved a freshness of vision and colour that is comparable to Constable’s revolutionary painting of the next twenty years. His rare watercolours have the firm design and draughtsmanship that underlie his oils, and in them he comes remarkably close to John Sell Cotman. His etchings, published posthumously in 1834, have a sensitivity for natural forms that surpasses their forerunners (the eighteenth century work of the Runciman brothers, Gainsborough and Cozens).


With very few exceptions, Crome’s subjects are taken from his native Norfolk, with fidelity to


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was certainly foreshadowing what was to come in the shape of Turner’s impressionism.


Crome’s genius lay in his use of light and colour, the latter of which became subtler as his career advanced. He was not a great artist in the sense that Turner and Constable were great artists because his vision was more limited than theirs, as was his range of subject and mood. He, therefore, enjoyed a very limited reputation during his life. However, since his death his work has become far more appreciated, and his powerful influence makes him a more than noteworthy artisan.


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John Crome’s Mousehold Heath oil


John Crome’s Grove Scene


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