Artist Info
Samuel Prout
September 17, 1783 - February 10, 1852
artist specialising in drawing the quaint streets and market-places of continental cities.
He gained praise from John Ruskin. Until Prout, says Ruskin, excessive and clumsy artificiality characterized the picturesque: what ruins early artists drew "looked as if broken down on purpose; what weeds they put on seemed put on for ornament". To Prout, therefore, goes credit for the creation of the essential characteristics lacking in earlier art, in particular "that feeling which results from the influence, among the noble lines of architecture, of the rent and the rust, the fissure, the lichen, and the weed, and from the writings upon the pages of ancient walls of the confused hieroglyphics of human history".
Prout was appointed the coveted title of 'Painter in Water-Colours in Ordinary' to King George IV in 1829, and afterwards to Queen Victoria.
