James Stark (painter)

James Stark
Born (1794-11-19)19 November 1794
Norwich
Died 24 March 1859(1859-03-24) (aged 64)
Camden Town, London
Nationality English
Education John Crome
Known for Landscape painting
Movement Norwich School of painters

James Stark (19 November 1794 – 24 March 1859) was an English landscape painter. A leading member of the Norwich School of painters, he was elected Vice-President of the Norwich Society of Artists in 1828 and their President in 1829. He had wealthy patrons and was consistently praised by the Norfolk press for his successful London career.

Stark was born in Norwich, the youngest son of a dye manufacturer, Michael Stark, who is credited with the invention of the dye known as 'Norwich red'. In 1811, on the completion of his education at Norwich School, he was apprenticed to John Crome, whose influence on his pupil was profound. Stark’s work was exhibited in London as early as 1811 and at the British Institution between 1814 and 1818. In 1814 he moved away from Norwich to London, where he befriended the artist William Collins. In 1819 ill health forced him to return to Norwich, where lived for twenty years. In 1840 he moved to Windsor, where he lived for a decade, continuing to produce landscapes. He returned to London in 1849, residing there until his death in 1859 at the age of 64. He is buried with his family in the Rosary Cemetery in Norwich.

Stark generally worked in oils. His early paintings were followed by woodland scenes, which were often pastiches of the seventeenth century Dutch masters. His work during the 1830s was more successful, with his works displaying a freshness that was previously lacking. Stark produced etchings, watercolours and pencil and chalk drawings, but these are nowadays less well known. In 1834 he published his admired Scenery of the Rivers of Norfolk, containing thirty-six etchings produced by specialist engravers after his own paintings, along with accompanying text for each scene. This ambitious work was well-received at the time, but like similar works it was financially unsuccessful.

Life

Early life and apprenticeship to Crome

St Michael Coslany, Norwich, where James Stark was baptised

James Stark was born in Norwich, the youngest son of Michael Stark (1748–1831), a Scottish-born dyer, and his wife Jane Ivory. James, the youngest son of eight siblings, was christened on 30 November 1794 at the Church of St Michael Coslany, Norwich, close to the family home.[1] His father Michael Stark, who had a literary and scientific background, ran his own dyeing business on Duke Street,[2] and is credited with a number of innovations in the dyeing industry, including the invention of the formula of 'Norwich red'.[3][4]

James Stark showed a talent for art from an early age. He was educated at Norwich School, where he became friends with John Berney Crome.[5] Two of his pencil drawings were exhibited in Norwich in 1809,[6] and he exhibited for the first time in London in 1811, at the age of seventeen, when his painting A view on King Street river, Norwich was shown at the Royal Academy.[7]

Portrait of Stark by Margaret Sarah Carpenter (undated), Norfolk Museums Collections

Because of his poor health, which dogged him throughout his life, his ambitions to become a farmer were never realised.[8] In 1811 he was apprenticed to John Berney Crome's father, the landscape artist John Crome, for three years. Two letters from John Crome to his pupil survive. One, dated 3 July 1814 and sent to Starks' house in London, contains a reminder to submit work to the Norwich Society of Artists' forthcoming exhibition. The second letter reveals how Crome was able to impart his knowledge to his pupils.[9][10] Crome was a strong influence on Stark, who was his favourite pupil, and Crome's preoccupation with depicting trees and woodland scenes led Stark to produce many such scenes himself.[11][12] He was elected as a member of the Norwich Society of Artists in 1812. He exhibited at the British Institution between 1814 and 1818, winning a prize of 50 pounds in 1818.

Career in Norwich

Sheep Washing at Postwick Grove, Norwich (circa 1822), Yale Center for British Art

In 1814, following the end of his Norwich apprenticeship, Stark moved to London. There he befriended and became influenced by the artist William Collins.[13] In 1817 he became a student at the Royal Academy. The Bathing Place, Morning was sold in 1817 to the Henry Hobart, the Dean of Windsor.[13] For a short period he shared lodgings with the portrait painter Joseph Clover. Both the Marquis of Stafford and the Countess de Grey were their patrons at this time.[14]

After only two years of study, debilitating ill health forced him to return to Norwich for the last time. He was to reside there for nearly twenty years.[13] There he devoted himself to painting the scenery around the city and executing a series of paintings of Norfolk rivers, which were eventually engraved and published in 1834.

On 7 July 1821 he married Elizabeth Younge Dinmore of King's Lynn.[15]

Regarded during his lifetime by his friends as one of the leaders of the Norwich School of painters, he was elected Vice-President of the Norwich Society of Artists in 1828 and President in the following year, at a time when the Society was struggling to survive.[13]

Life in Windsor and final move to London

The site of Stark's grave
Cromer (c.1837), Norfolk Museums Collections

In 1830, he moved to London, taking up residence in Beaumont Row, Chelsea. Elizabeth Stark died in 1834, three years after the birth of their son, Arthur James Stark.[13]

His work during this period in his artistic career became more successful, according to Hemingway. The numerous sketches of the Norfolk countryside he had previously produced gave his exhibited works a freshness that was previously lacking, and which was more appealing to the critics. Cromer, exhibited at the British Institution in 1837, is a good example of this new kind of work, and shows the influence of his friend William Collins and the Norwich artist John Thirtle.[16]

In 1840 Stark moved to Windsor, where he lived for ten years.[13] During this period in his life he painted many pictures of the scenery along the Thames and in Windsor Great Park, producing images of trees that revealed his improved understanding of their structure.[16]

He moved back to London in 1849 to further his son's artistic education, residing at Mornington Place, Camden Town. James Stark died in March 1859. His body was interred in the family burial plot in the Rosary Cemetery, Norwich.[13]

Work

Lambeth from the River looking towards Westminster Bridge (1818), Yale Center for British Art
Woody Landscape, Tate Britain

Development as an artist

Stark mainly worked in oils,[11] though he was also a watercolourist, and produced drawings in pencil and chalk. He initially followed his teacher John Crome in producing works with soft greys and pinks, in a style similar to that of Crome's Back of the New Mills (circa 1815).[17] His Lambeth, looking towards Westminster Bridge (1818), now in the Yale Center for British Art collection in New Haven, Connecticut, provides an indication of Stark's initial technique, which Andrew Hemingway describes as "a fairly broad style comparable with that of his fellow pupils".[18]

Stark's early paintings were followed by landscapes of a repetitive and stylized kind, generally depicting woodland glades, and for which he is generally best known today.[19] His woodland scenes fell into the trap of being "a mere pastiche of the seventeenth formula", containing ochre, red and green pigments to depict scenes containing poorly-drawn trees. Such works were exhibited under the title Landscape. By 1825, the London Magazine was reporting that Stark's subject matter lacked development, tending as he did to base his works on the paintings of seventeenth-century Dutch masters such as Meindert Hobbema and Jacob van Ruisdael.[13]

By the mid-1830s, when Stark had moved away from the influence of the Dutch masters and was producing paintings that showed nature less heavily and more freely, he was giving his works more descriptive titles.[20][21]

Like many of the Norwich School, Stark produced his own etchings, but these were not exhibited. As they generally lacked a title, they are nowadays difficult to identify and are little known. Geoffrey Searle, in his survey of the etchings produced by artists of the Norwich School, describes Stark's own etchings as "having a distinctive charm".[11]

Exhibitions and publications

James Stark was represented by his works at exhibitions throughout his working life. The Norwich Society of Artists, which was inaugurated in 1803 and held annual exhibitions almost continuously until 1833, exhibited 105 works by Stark from 1809-32, of which seventy-three were landscapes and four were of marine scenes.[22]

Harrison's Wharf, King Street Norwich (published 1934), Norfolk Museums Collections

In 1827 Stark undertook the production of his Scenery of the Rivers of Norfolk comprising the Yare, the Waveney and the Bure, a task which took him seven years to complete.[23] He was one of the few artists of the Norwich School to attempt to use other specialist engravers to assist to producing a potentially lucrative work, but although it was well-received, it was not a financial success.[24][25] The illustrations that Stark prepared for Scenery of the Rivers of Norfolk are nowadays regarded as of being of great topographical and artistic interest, as well as showing that at this time he was moving away from Hobbema-style grove scenes. He collaborated with the writer J.W. Robberds and with sixteen different engravers, including his Chelsea neighbours William Cooke, his younger brother George, whose work Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England set the pattern for Stark, Edward Goodall, William Forrest and William Radclyffe.[11] It was published by John Stacy of Old Haymarket, Norwich, and was dedicated to William IV.[26]

During his career James Stark had many wealthy patrons and was regarded in London as a successful provincial artist.[13] He was consistently praised by the Norfolk press throughout his career. In 1817, when only twenty-three, he and his friend John Berney Crome had been praised in the Norwich Mercury "for their great and rapid strides".[27] As well as exhibiting in London and Norwich, Stark had his paintings shown in exhibitions as far afield as Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dublin.[13]

Stark wrote an essay On the moral and political influence of the Fine Arts, published in the Norwich Mercury on 26 May 1827, criticising those who were apparently indifferent towards the financial plight of the Norwich Society of Artists.[28]

Subsequent exhibitions of works by Stark include an exhibition held in 1887.[29]

Pupils

Stark taught his own son Arthur, as well as Alfred Priest, Henry Jutsum and Samuel David Colkett.[30] Their artistic styles were heavily influenced by Stark, and they produced no notable works of art. Arthur James Stark specialised in depicting landscapes and animals, and drew the cattle on a few of his father's pictures.[31][32]

Notes

  1. ↑ "England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975" database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JW25-F97 : 11 February 2018, James Stark, 19 Nov 1794); index based upon data collected by the Genealogical Society of Utah, Salt Lake City; FHL microfilm 993,658.
  2. ↑ "Norwich, Duke's Palace Bridge - James Stark". Norfolk Heritage Explorer. Norfolk County Council. Retrieved 2 August 2018. Dye Works, Duke's Palace Bridge, a lithograph on paper by Stark depicting his father's dye works in Norwich.
  3. ↑ The Sessional Papers of the House of Lords, in the Session 1840, p. 304.
  4. ↑ Hemingway, The Norwich School of Painters, p. 52.
  5. ↑ H.M. Cundell, The Norwich School, p. 25.
  6. ↑ Rajnai, The Norwich Society of Artists, p. 87.
  7. ↑ Algernon Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts, p. 239–240.
  8. ↑ Walpole, Art and Artists of the Norwich School, pp. 34-35.
  9. ↑ Moore, The Norwich School of Artists, p. 21.
  10. ↑ Crome published nothing in his lifetime, and so his letter to James Stark is important because of the remarks it contains about being a skilful painter. The letter from Crome to Stark is now held in the British Library (Reference: Add MS 43830 T : Jan 1816)
  11. 1 2 3 4 Searle, Etchings of the Norwich School, pp. 55-58.
  12. ↑ Searle, Etchings of the Norwich School, p. 112.
  13. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Moore, The Norwich School of Artists, p. 32-33.
  14. ↑ Moore, The Norwich School of Artists, p. 49.
  15. ↑ Mottram, John Crome of Norwich, p. 184.
  16. 1 2 Hemingway, The Norwich School of Painters, p. 60.
  17. ↑ Moore, The Norwich School of Artists, p. 27.
  18. ↑ Hemingway, The Norwich School of Painters, p. 55.
  19. ↑ Hemingway, The Norwich School of Painters, p. 56.
  20. ↑ Moore, The Norwich School of Artists, p. 29.
  21. ↑ Hemingway, The Norwich School of Painters, pp. 57-58.
  22. ↑ Rajnai, The Norwich Society of Artists, pp. 3, 144.
  23. ↑ Library of the Fine Arts, p. 167.
  24. ↑ Searle, Etchings of the Norwich School, p. 8.
  25. ↑ The critic Russell observed that the thirty-six plates engraved from Stark's paintings "stand out amongst the best of the line-engraved work of the nineteenth century." (Searle, p. 56.)
  26. ↑ Stark, Scenery of the Rivers of Norfolk. (For a comprehensive list of the engravers who produced the plates for the book, see relevant page from the RA website.)
  27. ↑ Moore, The Norwich School of Artists, p. 19.
  28. ↑ Moore, The Norwich School of Artists, p. 14.
  29. ↑ "The Stark Exhibition". Norwich Mercury. Norwich. 29 June 1887. Retrieved 27 July 2018. (subscription required)
  30. ↑ Cust, Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 30.
  31. ↑ Moore, The Norwich School of Artists, pp. 121, 128, 130.
  32. ↑ Hemingway, The Norwich School of Painters, p. 60.

References

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Stark, James". Encyclopædia Britannica. 15 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 797.

  •  Lee, Sidney, ed. (1898). "Stark, James". Dictionary of National Biography. 54. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 106–7.
  •  Lee, Sidney, ed. (1892). "Jutsum, Henry". Dictionary of National Biography. 30. London: Smith, Elder & Co. p. 233.
  • Cundall, H. M. (1920). Holme, Geoffrey C., ed. The Norwich School. London, Paris, New York: The Studio Ltd. ND471.N6 H6.
  • Graves, Algernon (1906). "Stark, James". The Royal Academy of Arts. A Complete Dictionary of Contributors and their work from its foundation in 1769 to 1904. Vol. VII Sacco to Tofano. London: Henry Graves & Co and George Bell & Sons.
  • Hemingway, Andrew (1979). The Norwich School of Painters, 1803-33. Oxford: Phaidon. ISBN 9780714820019.
  • Moore, Andrew W. (1985). The Norwich School of Artists. HMSO/Norwich Museums Service.
  • Mottram, R.H. (1931). John Crome of Norwich. London: John Lane The Bodley Head Limited.
  • Rajnai, Miklos; Stevens, Mary (1976). The Norwich Society of Artists, 1805-1833: a dictionary of contributors and their work. Norfolk Museums Service for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.
  • Searle, Geoffrey R. (2015). Etchings of the Norwich School. Norwich: Lasse Press. ISBN 978-0-9568758-9-1.
  • Stark, James; Robberds, J.W. (1834). Scenery of the rivers of Norfolk: comprising the Yare, the Waveney, and the Bure, from pictures painted by James Stark, with historical and geological descriptions by J.W. Robberds, Jun. Norwich: John Stacy.
  • Walpole, Josephine (1997). Art and Artists of the Norwich School. Woodbridge: Antique Collectors' Club. ISBN 1-85149-261-5.
  • Library of the Fine Arts. 3. London: M. Arnold. 1832. Retrieved 27 July 2018.
  • The Sessional Papers Printed by Order of the House of Lords in the Session 1840 (volume 37). London. 1997.
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