Crome

Crome, JOHN (known as 'Old Crome'), landscape-painter, the chief member of the 'Norwich School' of artists, was born in that city, the son of a poor weaver, 22d December 1768. After serving as an errand-boy to a physician, he was apprenticed to a house-painter; but, showing a strong predilection for art, he was befriended by Mr T. Harvey, of Catton, who procured him employment as a drawing-master, and permitted him to study works by Gainsborough and the Dutch masters in his collection. He also received some instruction from Beechey and Opie. He was mainly influential in founding, in 1803, the Norwich Society of Artists, which held exhibitions from 1805, and of which he was president in 1808. He occasionally visited London, where he exhibited in the Academy and the British Institution; and a tour through Belgium and France in 1814 resulted in 'The Fishmarket on the Beach, Boulogne,' and 'The Boulevard des Italiens, Paris.' But his subjects were nearly always derived from the scenery of his native county, which, though founding his practice upon that of the Dutch landscapeists, he treated in a singularly direct and individual fashion, painting trees, and especially the oak, with exceptional fidelity and beauty. His works realised only most moderate prices during the artist's life; but he is now recognised as one of the great names among English landscapeists, and fine examples of his art fetch very large sums. Several of his oil-paintings, including the great 'Mousehold Heath,' are in the National Gallery; and among his other masterpieces may be mentioned 'Carrow Abbey,' 'View of Chapel Fields, Norwich,' 'Oak at Poringland,' 'The Willow,' and in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, the 'Clump of Trees, Hautbois Common.' He also practised as a water-colour painter, but his works in this medium are rare; and a series of his etchings of 'Norfolk Picturesque Scenery' was published in 1834, and has been repeatedly re-issued. The earlier impressions are fine and valuable. He died, 22d April 1821, at Norwich, where, in the following year, a collected exhibition of his works was brought together, and he was fully represented in the Royal Academy Old Masters Exhibition, 1878. His eldest son, John Bernay Crome (1794-1842), painted landscapes in a style similar to those of his father, as whose productions they are frequently sold.