Samuel Prout OWS

1783 - 1852

As well as being a sensitive and knowledgeable observer of rural life and maritime life and industries, Samuel Prout was a pioneer watercolour painter of picturesque, gothic and ruined buildings, a tradition that continued through artists like William Callow and David Roberts to notable 20th-century practitioners such as John Piper and Edward Bawden. Prout secured the position of Painter in Water-Colours in Ordinary to King George IV in 1829 and afterwards to Queen Victoria. John Ruskin, who was also one of his pupils, wrote in 1844, "Sometimes I tire of Turner, but never of Prout". Born in Plymouth, the fourth of fourteen children, Prout was encouraged by his school teacher to draw country cottages, bridges and mills in the Devon countryside. He travelled with John Britton to make sketches for the “Beauties of England” and throughout his career was a notable illustrator and producer of prints as teaching aids for aspiring watercolour painters. In 1803, he moved to London, and in 1818, his first continental visit and discovery of European architecture led him to establish his practice as a painter of the historic urban scene and monuments, particularly in France, Germany and Italy. Prout produced many versions of such subjects, and many of them were also extensively copied during the height of his fame in the Victorian period, including by his nephew. It has often been observed that such works could be stylised pot-boilers, and that his best work was more naturalistic, often monochrome, and of English subjects.