Tuesday, June 15, 2021

Samuel Prout

Samuel Prout (1783-1852) was a British artist best known for his watercolors and drawings of buildings. 

One of his students was John Ruskin, and you can see Prout's influence in a lot of Ruskin's work.


Prout published several volumes of lithographs based on his drawings, but he was not a lithographer himself and I think the published prints vary a lot in quality. So the first image of Prout's work you stumble across might not give you a good idea of what his better stuff looks like. I'm sticking to the best reproductions here.


Here are two sketches of Norham in northern England, from a sketchbook now in the British Museum.






And last, a work I find weirdly magnificent, a drawing that reduces two ships to an outline of ropes and spars.

1 comment:

  1. Oh these are so wonderful!! Thank you for sharing them.

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