George Cattermole

• Illustration — The Darnley Conspirators, V&A 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 known by his name. This was "a thick absorbent paper, rather warm and brownish in colour", perhaps partly accounting for "an appearance of fading" in many works.[20] He disliked the fashion of the day for framing watercolours with gold mounts, preferring plain white. • Illustration — Amy Robsart and her maid, watercolour, 1852, with the monogram and date on the footstool at right He exhibited a total of 101 paintings at the Royal Watercolour Society, though with the numbers varying considerably from year to year.[21] His contributions were highly valued by other members for the variety they gave to the walls, as a contrast to the landscapes which formed the great majority of exhibited subjects.[22] He very often returned to the same subject with compositions that were sometimes similar, but sometimes very different. Thus, the original lithograph that is Plate I of Cattermole's Portfolio of Drawings (see below), entitled Hamilton, of Bothwell haugh, lying in wait to assassinate the Regent Murray is very different from the two different watercolour versions of the subject in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and from another in the Ashmolean Museum,[23] though all four show a single figure in a narrow room by a window, holding a gun.[24] The 1911 Encyclopaedia Brittanica states that "Among his leading works are The Murder of the Bishop of Liege, The Armourer relating the Story of the Sword, The Assassination of the Regent Murray by Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, and (in oil) A Terrible Secret,[25] without saying which version of the second and third of these is meant. • Illustration — A Conference at the Monastery, in oils, but similar to many of his watercolours, Sheffield Cattermole usually signed his watercolours (at least from the 1840s on) with a "GC" monogram, typically placed low on a piece of furniture or similar. A year date may be added, but he seems only to have started doing this around the end of the 1840s, and museums are not able to date most of their works (an exception is the V&A's The Silent Warning, dated 1837). This makes it difficult to evaluate Ruskin's claim of a falling off in quality in the years just before he wrote Modern Painters (1843). Others see the 1840s as his best period. Martin Hardie prefers some of his less finished works to those worked up for exhibition.[26] The number of paintings exhibited at the RWS slowed in the late 1840s, and then stopped entirely after the exhibition of 1850. The next year a note in the catalogue said this was due to illness, and there was some crisis in his health around Christmas in 1850. Cattermole tried painting in oils, but found the different touch difficult "his hand felt weighted by the task of dragging the more viscous medium, and he soon longed again for the freer play that he enjoyed when drawing in water-colours".[27] According to Roget (who gives no dates) "he resumed the practice of water-colours. Withdrawn from the fashionable world and society, he devoted himself unceasingly to his art, often working at his easel from early morn to late at night."[28] But these paintings were not exhibited, and presumably sold direct to collectors. • James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh about to shoot the Regent Murray, at Linlithgow, on 23rd January 1570 • Illustration — Watercolour, 1833, Ashmolean Museum • Illustration — Book illustration, 1835.[29] • Illustration — V&A • Illustration — V&A • Illustration — Lithograph, 1848

• Illustration — Frontispeace to The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens, 1841 At the start of his career he was often employed by publishers, beginning by illustrating some of the Cathedral Antiquities of England produced by John Britton,[30] and later some of the Waverley Novels by Walter Scott and the Historical Annual of his brother Richard Cattermole (his scenes from the wars of Cavaliers and Roundheads in this series are among his best engraved works), and many other volumes besides. He collaborated with Hablot Knight Browne, or "Phiz", on illustrations for Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop,[31] and Barnaby Rudge.[32] Cattermole specialized in rendering scenes of chivalry, of medievalism, and generally of the romantic aspects of the past. His paintings were often engraved (or turned into lithographs etc) and in 1846 an anthology of 24 reproductions called Cattermole Gems was published, with various engravers including William Brandard, Charles Rolls, and James Tibbits Willmore. Survivals have often been mounted separately, and were no doubt treated as pictures to frame and hang.[33] In December 1848 a further set of prints were published as Cattermole's Portfolio of Drawings, which were all lithographs described as "all Originals, and painted by George Cattermole, on Stones, from which a number of Copies have been struck by the process of Lithotinte". The bound folios were 4 guineas plain, 6 for "proof copies" mounted, and 10 if coloured and mounted.[34] • Illustration — Battle of Hopton Heath, 1643, with Spencer Compton, 2nd Earl of Northampton refusing quarter.[35] The subjects were (as titled in the advertisement for the set):[36] • No. 1. Hamilton, of Bothwell haugh, lying in wait to assassinate the Regent Murray. Hist. Scotland • 2. Weighing a Scruple - The Sentinel's Temptation. • 3. Landscape - An Arrow from an unseen hand has delivered the Knight from a treacherous Ambush. • 4. Scene from "The Giaour". --- "despair, Is mightier than my pious prayer." • 5. The Dragon-slayer. • 6. The departure of the Knight to the Combat. • 7. The Convent Door - Distribution of Alms. • 8. The Abbot's Apartment - Reading the Scripture. • 9. Salvator Rosa studying amongst the Brigands and Outlaws of the Abruzzi. • 10. Wanderers Welcomed - A Scene of Old English Hospitality. • 11. The Monk's Refectory - Saying Grace. • 12. The Dwarf's Treachery - Secure in the Senechal's heavy slumber, he conducts the Stranger to the Castle Hall. Several of these subjects had been painted by Cattermole, but the lithographs seem to use different compositions (see No 1 described above) Like other artists of the day, his print output included worked up sketches by amateurs who had travelled to exotic places, for works such as "Views in India, China, and on the Shores of the Red Sea: drawn by Prout, Stanfield, Cattermole, Purser, Cox, Austen, &c. from original sketches by Commander R. Elliott... With descriptions by Emma Roberts". Cattermole himself never left Britain.[37]

• Illustration — Cattermole in the 1860s Cattermole's works achieved their highest ever prices (adjusting for inflation) at auction in the 1870s, with a number of paintings selling at Christie's for over £400, though the typical price was about half this, or less.[38] Possibly the last exhibition ever dedicated to Cattermole was held at the London gallery Vokins in 1889, and enthusiastically reviewed by George Bernard Shaw for The World, writing "The generation that knows not Cattermole should hurry to Great Portland Street to repair its ignorance.[39] His reputation remained high at this period; commenting on the controversy stirred up by James Orrock's push in 1890 to get the national museums to show more British art, The Speaker complained in passing that the National Gallery, London "half-secretes the peerless watercolours of Turner, De Wint, and Cattermole in semi-subterranean rooms, lighted, when the day is fine, by side-windows[40]...". Art UK records nearly 400 works in British museums; of which the Victoria and Albert Museum has the largest collection, including "242 sheets of studies of historical costume" most with many small sketches on each sheet, belying Ruskin's claim that he never made such studies, although they are generally treatments of historical costume, rather than studies of the fall of drapery.