JOHN BRETT (1831-1902) - Receive artist alerts » - More items from this artist »

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Watercolour and graphite on paper

Signed and inscribed Loch Awe – Scotland and sketch from nature by J. Brett 1874 and numbered 6 in pencil

11.50inch wide    6.50inch high    (29.21 cm wide  16.51 cm high)

19.00inch framed width   14.25inch framed height   1.00inch framed depth (48.26 cm framed width  36.19 cm framed height  2.54 cm framed depth)

John Brett is the most important of the Pre-Raphaelite landscape painters influenced by Ruskin. His works embody an intense, minutely detailed vision of nature, painted in thin stains of brilliant colour.

John Brett was taught by Richard Redgrave and the landscape painter J D Harding before entering the Royal Academy schools in 1853. His attitude to landscape painting was probably always coloured by his interest in the scientific observation of nature; he was a keen astronomer and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1871.

In the fourth volume of Modern Painters published in 1856, John Ruskin lamented that no contemporary artist seemed interested in creating representations that would be of value to geologists. Then a great admirer of Ruskin who he described as, one of the greatest lights of the age, John Brett immediately seized the challenge and set out to paint highly detailed geographical scenes all over north Italy and Britain.

A disciple of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, John Brett infused his landscapes with all the freshness and spontaneity of their work. The founders of the Brotherhood, Sir






John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt had sought to convey a truth in art by painting directly from nature. These watercolours of Scotland and Wales true ‘plein air’ paintings, some pointedly inscribed on the reverse: sketch from nature by J.Brett.

John Brett attracted the attention of Ruskin several times with various exhibits at the Royal Academy. Ruskin in fact devoted several pages of his Academy Notes to his The Val d’Aosta (1859)