John Louis Petit (also known as The Reverend John Louis Petit; 31 May 1801 – 1 December 1868) was an artist and architectural historian whose paintings of buildings and landscapes, almost exclusively in watercolour, complemented his activities as one of the mid-19th-century's leading writers and speakers on ecclesiastical architecture. He was a vocal opponent of the dominant architectural orthodoxies of the Gothic Revival.
During extensive travels both at home and in continental Europe (as well as the Middle East), Petit painted buildings of different periods and styles with a focus on medieval architecture. His subject matter included landscapes, modern urban views, utilitarian structures such as bridges and factories, and Classical ruins. His paintings were completed on the spot, and are frequently marked by a sketch-like immediacy that places his work outside the mainstream of 19th-century picturesque travel views, calling to mind some aspects of Pre-Impressionism. In numerous watercolours of ecclesiastical buildings, he conveyed the visual and emotional impact of churches and cathedrals individually and in their settings. Displays of his watercolours at his talks, sometimes a hundred at a time, contributed to his popularity as a speaker.
Born into a family of French Huguenot origins, he was ordained into the Church of England in his mid-twenties, but ceased parochial work a few years later. He never painted for money, and after his death his art disappeared from public view and was largely forgotten, although the impact of his architectural writings lingered into the following century.References to Petit became increasingly cursory and sometimes misleading. For instance, in a study of 19th-century writers on architecture, Sir Nikolaus Pevsner referred only to Petit's first book. Nikolaus Pevsner, Some Architectural Writers of the 19th Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972, p. 95 A huge cache of his work was held by descendants until the 1980s when it was sold, mainly in regional auctions, in large lots mixed with poorer work by his sisters.
Renewed interest in Petit since 2016 has led to the publication of a number of books and articles, the founding of the Rev. J.L. Petit Society to promote awareness of his artistic and architectural legacy, and the installation of information boards in Lichfield where Petit lived and is buried. The chapel he designed, St Philip's Church, Caerdeon, in northwest Wales, was upgraded to Grade I listing in 2018.
Family background and early life Petit, the eldest of 10 children of The Reverend John Hayes Petit and Harriet Astley, was born in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire into a well established and prosperous Huguenot family, originally from Caen in Normandy, where the family name had been Petit des Etans. Petit's great-great-grandfather, Louis Petit (died 1720), had fled to England after the 1685 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, attaining the rank of brigadier-general in the British Army.Joseph Jackson Howard (ed.), Miscellanea Genealogica Et Heraldica, vol 4. London: Hamilton, Adams & Co, 1884, pp. 13-15 Petit's grandfather was the physician and Fellow of the Royal Society, John Lewis Petit (1736–80), and his uncle was the barrister and politician, Louis Hayes Petit (1774-1849). Petit's mother was the daughter of the English portrait painter and amateur architect, John Astley (1724-1787).More on Petit's immediate forebears and family (albeit containing some factual errors) can be found in Petit's obituary in The Register and Magazine of Biography, vol. 1, 1869, pp. 220-222. An obituary of The Rev. John Hayes Petit was published in The Gentleman's Magazine, vol. 92, pt. 2, August 1822, pp. 186-187
Petit married Louisa Elizabeth Reid in Ashford, Kent, in 1828, but they never had children.The Register, op. cit., "Additions and Corrections", p. 525 His two brothers also died childless as did four of his seven sisters.Petit's obituary in The Register (op. cit.) correctly states that he left six sisters when he died. A seventh, Louisa, had predeceased him in 1842. An inscription on the Petit tomb in the churchyard of St Michael's, Lichfield, reads: "LOUISA PETIT sixth daughter of the Rev. HAYES PETIT deceased and HARRIET his wife. From a life of almost uninterrupted suffering which she bore with true Christian patience and cheerfulness she was released by a merciful providence on the 30th day of November in the Year of our Lord 1842 aged 30." His father had been the incumbent at Shareshill parish north of Wolverhampton, and they lived in Lichfield where Petit was brought up and where he would live himself for most of his life.
Petit was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a BA in 1823 and graduated MA in 1826.John Venn and J.A. Venn (Ed.), Alumni Cantabrigienses, vol. 2, part 5. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 101. He was ordained as deacon in 1825 and priest a year later. He worked as assistant curate and then stipendiary curate at St Michael's, Lichfield, until 1828, after which he was curate at the twin parish of Bradfield and Mistley in Essex until resigning in 1834."Petit, John Louis (1825 - 1828)" in Clergy of the Church of England Database. Retrieved 4 July 2022. Venn, Alumni (op. cit.) puts the dates of Petit's ordination as deacon and priest as 1824 and 1825, respectively
Artistic development and painting style Petit's artistic style divides into two main periods, though with considerable variety and experimentation in both. Most of Petit's early work is set in Britain, and especially in or around Staffordshire, his home county, or Essex and Kent. Petit worked as a curate from 1828 to 1834 at Bradfield, Essex, before quitting full-time work to focus on his art and architectural interests. In the 1830s he also made three or four trips to Europe in preparation for his first book.
From the mid-1820s, to which the earliest of his work can be dated, until the early 1840s his watercolours tended to be more carefully completed, and smaller in size, than was the case later. This period includes landscapes and shipping, as well as more unusual subjects such as factories and mines in Wolverhampton.For an analysis of Petit's early watercolour style, see: Philip Modiano, J.L. Petit - Britain's Lost Pre-Impressionist. RPS Publications, 2022, pp. 39-49 (publication date September 2022) Petit visited the Isle of Man several times, especially in the early 1840s, and is known to have painted over 30 Island pictures.Philip Modiano, Clarke, Petit and St Mark's - A 19th Century journey on the Isle of Man. RPS Publications: 2022, pp. 35-36 In later years, especially the 1850s and 1860s, most of Petit's work was undertaken abroad. He travelled often, especially in France (where he sketched most years), Germany, Italy, and Ireland, but also completing tours to Corfu, Greece and Constantinople (1857), Spain and North Africa (1858) and Egypt and Syria (1865). In this latter period, Petit produced architectural sketches to support his speaking and writing, and little of his work was executed with a high degree of finish.
The underlying tone of this later work is reddish, sometimes almost monochromatically so. As well as being the colour of brickwork, it may have been deliberately intended to make his watercolours visually distinctive for exhibiting in quantity at his lectures. The best of these examples were not mere transcriptions of architecture, but conveyed the effect of buildings in their surroundings: the dignity of the rural church or the awe-inspiring cathedral in its setting.
More and more, Petit eschewed precise or delicate work, conveying visual impact, emotion and effect impressionistically and dramatically.See "Section II, Later Art" in: Modiano, Lost Pre-Impressionist, op. cit., pp. 72-110 About one-third of Petit's later works were landscapes - sometimes showing a distant church dwarfed by the vastness of nature, frequently focusing on individual trees, and at other times depicting valleys, mountains, hillsides and even individual rocks.Modiano, Lost Pre-Impressionist, op. cit., pp. 88-97
The topographical tradition
Petit holds a particular place in the British topographical tradition. In both the 18th and 19th centuries artists were regularly commissioned to provide drawings of particular places (for owners of country seats, Grand Tourists, collectors, or publishers of "picturesque" views or reports of antiquarian expeditions).See Bruce MacEvoy, The Topographical Tradition. Retrieved 4 July 2022
Whereas these started out as predominantly documentary records of specific buildings or places, subsequently professional artists began to add the ingredients of poetic idealisation, contrived rusticity and Romantic sentiment to the mix, and by the 19th century an increasingly conventionalised style of topographical drawing was prevalent.
Petit unites these two traditions. That he systematically inscribed the name of locations (initially on album pages, then on the versos of his paintings - and from 1854 onwards the date too) emphasises the "topographical" focus of his art. Self-effacingly, he never signed his work - as if to play down his own role as an artistic interpreter of a given scene rather than its impartial transcriber.
Completing approximately 12,000-15,000 watercolours, he was a faithful recorder of architecture, urban environments and natural scenery, but at the same time he succeeded in conveying the emotional impact of the buildings and scenes he portrayed. "As we can understand from the long poem he wrote at the end of his life, The Lesser and the Greater Light, Petit painted to convey the spiritual beauty of nature and the precious beauty of medieval churches at risk from thoughtless restoration. Working neither for the commercial market nor for patrons, he painted to express his beliefs, his love of nature and to help explain his opposition to the dogmas of the Gothic Revival."Modiano, Lost Pre-Impressionist, op. cit., p. 10
Artistic legacy After Petit's death, the Architectural Exhibition Society gave over part of its annual show to an exhibition of around 300 of his watercolours,The Art Journal, vol. 8, p. 194, 1 June 1869 after which they disappeared. Petit left 1,000 of his drawings to different family members,Modiano, Lost-Pre-Impressionist, op. cit., p.33 and the rest (the vast bulk) passed down one family line until 1957 when they were abandoned to new owners after a death. The collection, already depleted by damage, was then disposed of mainly through auctioneers Sotheby's Billingshurst in the 1980s and 1990s with little or no attempt at a systematic understanding of Petit's worth as an artist.Philip Modiano, Petit's Tours of Old Staffordshire. RPS Publications: 2019, pp. 170-172
Only since 2016 have research and conservation in relation to Petit's artistic legacy been undertaken and a number of books and articles published. So far remnants of two-thirds of his albums and folios have been identified. Up to one-third, mostly later works, including many from his more distant travels, may have been lost.
A complicating factor is that Petit's sister Emma, and often other family members, travelled and painted with him. Their watercolours, similar in subject matter to Petit's but weaker artistically, were mixed with his in the disposal of his work. Because, like Petit himself, they rarely signed their pictures, this has led to confusion and further undermined Petit's reputation.For a comparison between Petit's and Emma's work, see Modiano, Petit's Tours, op. cit., pp. 171-172
The art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon considers Petit "an artist whose work, particularly in the medium of watercolour, reaches the highest peaks of innovation and virtuosity, worthy of comparison with that even of Turner".
Petit's circle