John Frederick Tayler

John Frederick Tayler studied at Royal Academy of Arts, Eton College and Harrow School. The recorded working language is English. Work by John Frederick Tayler is recorded in the collections of Minneapolis Institute of Art, Tate, National Gallery of Canada, Vanderbilt Museum of Art and Yale Center for British Art.

Frederick was the son of a country gentleman, Archdale Wilson Tayler and his wife Frances Eliza, and was born at Boreham Wood, Elstree, Hertfordshire, on 30 April 1802. His siblings included Henry Joseph (b.1787), Elisa (b.1789), Sarah Maria (b.1790), Susannah Matilda (b.1791), Julia (b.1793), George Robert (b. 1795), Charles (b.1796), Anna Frances (b.1797), Emily Susan (b.1799), Thomas Edward (b.1799), Joseph Francis (b. 1805), Joseph Edward (b. 1807), William (b. 1808). The elder Tayler was ruined by the dishonesty of an agent, and entered the army. He died while Frederick was still a child, leaving a widow and seventeen children, several of whom rose to a certain eminence in their careers. William Tayler, commissioner of Patna in India, was a younger brother. The family had influential friends and some clerical interest. • Illustration — "Cluny MacPherson, chief of the Clan Chattan," watercolour, touched with bodycolour (over graphite), by the British painter and printmaker John Frederick Tayler (1801–1889). 267 mm x 182 mm. Courtesy of the British Museum, London.

Frederick's uncle, Charles Henry Hall, was dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and the boy was educated successively at Eton College and Harrow School, and destined for the church. He soon, however, showed his strong artistic bent, and, in spite of domestic opposition, determined to become a painter. After studying at Sass's school and at the Royal Academy he went to Paris, and worked for a time under Horace Vernet, also frequenting the studio of Vernet's son-in-law, Paul Delaroche. From France he passed into Italy, where he spent some time, chiefly in Rome. While still a lad he met Richard Parkes Bonington at Calais, and a friendship sprang up between the two painters, who for a time shared a studio in Paris.

Tayler's fondness for watercolour was no doubt encouraged by Bonington, and though he made his début in the academy of 1830 with an oil-picture, ‘The Band of the 2nd Life Guards,’ he did not long hesitate in his choice of a medium. In mature life he occasionally turned his ambition towards oil, and even took some friendly lessons in Mr. W. P. Frith's studio (Frith, Autobiography). It was, however, as a painter of ‘elegant’ sporting and pastoral scenes in watercolour that he achieved the popularity which was maintained throughout his long career. His sporting subjects were of two classes, some dealing with the costumes and accessories of eighteenth-century stag-hunts, others with incidents of contemporary sport in the highlands of Scotland. Akin to these were his illustrative drawings of costume and scenery, many of them suggested by incidents in the ‘Waverley Novels.’

Many of Tayler's best known drawings, such as ‘Weighing the Deer’ and ‘Crossing the Brook,’ were engraved. He himself executed some two dozen ‘lithotints,’ which were published by T. McLean in 1844, under the title of ‘Frederick Tayler's Portfolio.’ A member of the ‘Etching Club,’ he etched a number of small plates for the various publications of that body (Goldsmith's 'The Deserted Village,’ ‘Songs of Shakespeare,’ ‘Etched Thoughts,’ &c.), and also made drawings on wood for several popular classics, such as Thomson's ‘Seasons,’ ‘Sir Roger de Coverley,’ and Goldsmith's ‘Works.’ His art, though now somewhat old-fashioned, had a great vogue in his day, some of his drawings fetching over £350. at public auction in the 1900s. His powers were best displayed in rapid and suggestive sketches, in which, says Mr. Ruskin, ‘the quantity of effect obtained is enormous in proportion to the apparent means’.

English artist and critic, Philip Gilbert Hamerton, described his style as having: • ".. two distinct manners as an etcher: the highly-finished modern way, depending greatly on crevés,* of various depth, and on dry-point whose bur is removed; and another manner, resembling the work of a draughtsman on wood, in which the peculiar powers of etching are abandoned."