An artist’s tour journal of his exploration of Belgium and Holland in 1850. Robert Taylor Pritchett (1828-1907) would later become a favourite artist of Queen Victoria and illustrate Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle but in these images we accompany the young traveller from Dover (seen looking up from the port) via Calais and into the Low Countries which formed the source of paintings that he would exhibit the following year at the Royal Academy. Much later in his career Pritchett would also go on to publish a collection of Brush Notes in Holland - in this early manuscript collection he explores the visual terrain, that he would come to love, of this neglected area of northern Europe, in finely worked images of towns and scenes around Mechelen, Lier, Antwerp, Dinant and Liege as well as life on the rivers Scheldt and the Meuse.
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: Custom-bound black leather binding (27x22cm) with ‘R T Pritchett, 1850’ to the upper cover in gilt; rounded spine; rubbing to extremities. Marbled endpapers and edges of the text block. Calligraphic half-title: ‘1850 Rob.t Pritchett. Londinum No 38’ - Pritchett was a young man of 22 at the time although he mentions having visited Belgium once before. A beautiful trompe l’oeil title page depicts the artist’s palette with the title: ‘Pen and Pencil Scraps from Belgium by Robert Taylor Pritchett. 1850.’ Pritchett has arranged the book with his watercolours laid down on page versos and his diary text framed in a red ink oblong panel opposite; some soiling to the card leaves and a short closed tears at the tail of the leaves caused by the weight of the watercolours during page-turning. Pritchett explains that the pretext of this trip was ‘a pressing invitation from an old friend of my Father’s to spend a week with him near Mechlin, as he had recently married and would offer me every attention’ - the friend seems to have been working as an assistant to the Bourgmestre - Mayor - of Mechelin
In Calais Pritchett reported on (and sketched) ‘the room where Sterne began his Sentimental Journey’, depicts with delight ‘Les Calaisiennes’ and offers a splendidly characterful ‘Fisherman’ on the foreshore. Pritchett includes a watercolour of ‘The French cross road railway Guard’ - a young woman in traditional costume and clogs. Pritchett then took the train from Calais to Mechlin, stopping in Lille and illustrates the journey page with a fine image of ‘La maison des Bateliers a Gand - 1531’ with the annotation ‘David Roberts admired his sketch very much 1851’. From Mechelin Pritchett made a series of short journeys with his friend, to depict lace-making and the district of Lierre (Lier) which included a visit to St Gomar church (noting that David Roberts had painted it a year earlier). In his diary Pritchett laments the local cuisine while keeping up the high quality of his sketches as he moved on to Brussels where he battled the ‘rain, rain, nothing but rain.... nice weather for sketching never mind. Out with your moist colors, up your umbrella and spirits’. As the artist continued his trip there are sketches of Dinant and Liege ‘the Birmingham of the Country; guns at any price’ and a fine image of boats on the Scheldt, finishing at Antwerp where celebrations of the Assumption of Mary are painted as ‘a Procession of the Virgin, gorgeous in the extreme; masses of jewels, cloth gold, born on mens shoulders.’ Pritchett’s illustrations to the Voyage of the Beagle are held at the University of South California; one other similar album by Pritchett of views of Norway was sold at Bonhams a decade ago.
CONTEXT: Robert Taylor Pritchett (1828-1907) had a dual career as a gun manufacturer turned artist who would win the patronage of Queen Victoria and, in 1890, illustrated an edition of Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle. Pritchett is known to have exhibited his views of Belgium and Brittany at the Royal Academy in 1851 and 1852, no doubt images derived from these carefully mounted sketches and the diary that accompanies them. Through John Tenniel, Pritchett would find work with Punch in the 1860s and after Queen Victorian bought a painting by Pritchett of the Netherlands he was repeatedly commissioned to depict royal scenes.
