William Edward Stott (24 April 1855 – 19 March 1918) was an English painter of the late Victorian to early twentieth century period. He trained in Paris under Carolus Duran and was strongly influenced by the Rustic Naturalism of Bastien-Lepage and the work of the Impressionists, which he married with the English landscape tradition of John Linnell and Samuel Palmer. In the mid-1880s he settled in rural Sussex where he was the central figure in an artistic colony. His forte was painting scenes of domestic and working rural life and the surrounding landscapes often depicted in fading light. Stott's work achieved critical and commercial success at home and in Europe in his lifetime but his style of painting became unfashionable in the aftermath of the Great War and much of his work is now neglected and unconsidered.Szabolcsi, (1970) The Decline of Romanticism: End of the Century, Turn of the Century-Introductory Sketch of an Essay, Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae.Stott used his middle name for commercial purposes to avoid confusion with an Oldham artist called William Stott (1857–1900). As both were from mill-owning families and contemporaries who studied in Paris the confusion was perhaps inevitable. It may explain why each Stott chose different French artistic colonies within which to work.There is yet another William Stott working in this period. William Robertson Smith Stott (1870–1939) was a painter and illustrator of portraits, figures and landscape in oil who lived in Aberdeen and later moved to Chelsea. He exhibited twenty-two works at the Royal Academy between 1905–1934.
Early life
Stott was born in Wardleworth, now a contiguous part of Rochdale in Lancashire to Samuel and Jane Stott (née Pilling). His father was a prosperous businessman and owner of a cotton mill in Rochdale who served the town as Mayor from 1863 to 1864 and again during 1865–1866 under a Liberal banner. These were painful years for the cotton industry in Lancashire as the effects of overproduction in the late fifties were exacerbated in 1861 by a major interruption in the cotton supply caused by the start of the American Civil War. The result was unemployment and famine in the mill towns of Lancashire and a period of deprivation known as the Lancashire Cotton Famine.D. A. Little (1979), The English Cotton Industry and the World Market 1815–1896, Clarendon Press.
Whilst Stott Snr must have been impacted financially and it is known he diversified into the owning of coal mines, he was nevertheless able to provide a young Edward Stott with a private education, first at Rochdale Grammar School and latterly at King's Ely where he boarded. He appears to have been studious and artistic but also diffident, sensitive and melancholic judging from an early self-portrait.Valerie Webb (2018), Edward Stott (1855 – 1918): A Master of Colour and Atmosphere, Sansom & Company, Bristol, England. It became apparent that he would be unsuited to taking over the family business, despite the obvious wish of his strong-minded father and after five years working at various jobs in his father's Manchester office whilst simultaneously attending art classes part-time at the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts, Stott opted on a change of career.
In 1880 Stott determined to become a full-time artist and with the support of an unknown benefactor he moved to Paris and to the atelier of Charles August Carolus- Duran.Collectif, (2003), Carolus Duran 1837–1917, RMN Arts Du 19E Expositions, (in French) This was a well-trodden path used by some British and Irish art students of the period. It was often seen as a staging post into the prestigious École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts at which Stott studied under Alexandre Cabanel. Although Cabanel generally painted classical and religious subjects in an academic style, which were dismissed derisively as L'art pompier (literally 'Fireman art') by some critics,James Harding, 1979. Artistes pompiers: French academic art in the 19th century, New York: Rizzoli, he was a portrait painter of skill with a deep knowledge of French art of the nineteenth century.Andreas Bluhm, (2011) Alexandre Cabanel: The Tradition of Beauty, Hirmer Verlag, Munich, Germany. Stott was thus exposed to influences such as Realism as typified by Jules Bastien Lepage, the impressionists, and the earlier influences of the Barbizon School and in particular Corot and Millet, from whom Stott incorporates some of the prominent features in the use of colour, softness of form and in tonal qualities.Hugh Honour and J.A. Fleming,(2009) A World History of Art. 7th edn. London: Laurence King Publishing. During his period of training in Paris, Stott exhibited four paintings at Paris Salon: The Helping Hand of a Small Friend, (1882) and Solitude (1883) exhibited in 1883 whilst The High Grasses (1883) and The Return to the Poultry House (1884) were shown the following year.The paintings were exhibited with French titles: On a servent besoin d’un plus petit du soin (The Helping Hand of a Small Friend); Les Hautes Herbes (The High Grasses); Retour du Poulailler (The Return to the Poultry House). What became evident at an early stage in Stott's development was his preference for rural themes and a penchant for the domestic depiction of rural life and of children. The use of green in differing tonal shades is predominant in The Helping Hand of a Small Friend and reminiscent of the atelier of Carolus Duran whilst The High Grasses possesses a softer, more tonal application. In terms of subject matter there is a strong influence of the naturalism of Bastien-Lepage. A necessary component of an art student in Paris' experience was to spend time in une colonie artistique (an artists' colony) away from the city in a setting where ideas were discussed and alliances were made. Edward Stott opted for Auvers-sur-Oise, northeast of Paris, a rural habitué visited in the past by many artists from Corot to Van Gogh who is buried in the Auvers-sur-Oise municipal cemetery.
Return to England
On Stott's return to England he became something of a peripatetic traveller as he searched for an appropriate rural environment from where he could sketch and paint. Stott was enthralled by a notion that many late Victorians felt, that the true values of Merrie England were to be found in bucolic rural idylls. The reality was that the rural economy was in a parlous state in the latter part of the nineteenth century and was irrevocably changing with many thousands of poorly paid agricultural workers leaving the land for the towns and cities. As their exodus gathered pace many rural trades and skills were also disappearing for good. The viewer of Stott's paintings gets little notion of the reality of life in the English countryside that for many rural Britons remained hard and toilsome.Alun Howkins (1991). Reshaping Rural England. A Social History 1850–1925. Harper Collins Academic
Initially Stott visited a Paris contemporary, Philip Wilson Steer in Walberswick, Suffolk. Steer and Stott were advocates of En plein air painting, essentially a method of painting outdoors, generally credited to Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750–1819),Joshua Taylor (1989), Nineteenth Century Theories of Art, pages 246-7, University of California Press, USA. that he expounded in a treatise entitled Reflections and Advice to a Student on Painting, Particularly on Landscape (1800) developing the concept of 'landscape portraiture' by which the artist paints directly onto canvas in situ within the landscape, a method that enabled a skilled artist to capture the changing details and light. It was an influential theory whose baton was taken up by later generations of French artists including the Barbizon School where its application by artists that included: Charles-François Daubigny, Théodore Rousseau and Jean-François Millet allowed for a more accurate depiction of outdoor settings in various light and weather conditions. Stott was always drawn to painting the countryside at differing times of the day where he could respond to the changing light and the tonal changes of colour.
Whilst at Walberswick, Stott made a lasting relationship with an Irish painter Walter Osborne (1859–1903)http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/irish-artists/walter-osborne.htm Walter Frederick Osborne visual-arts-cork.com. Retrieved 20 May 2017 with whom he shared his passion for the rural landscape. Stott's work at this time included a number of pastel sketches including Sheep in a Suffolk Landscape (1884) an early example of a subject matter that Stott would often revisit. Stott also sent three pictures to the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, a newly founded association. In 1884 he sent Amateurs(1884) (whereabouts is unknown), Complete Angler (1885) and The Harvest Moon (1886) (whereabouts also unknown). Amateurs for which sketches survive wrought the ire of one critic who described it as "French," a work as "failing to put in any values, and entirely refusing to recognise the existence of any interest save the interest of paint." It was a harsh criticism that upset the sensitive Stott but it confirms that the impressionistic representation of art remained controversial and radical to many art critics of the period.Véronique Bouruet Aubertot (2017), Impressionism: The Movement that Transformed Western Art, AVA Publishing SA, In general there was a lack of a positive response to the young French-trained artists, judging by a selection of critical notices that they garnered amongst the art establishment of the time. The same antagonism that had been pointed at Bastien-Lepage, Clausen and, La Thangue in the early 1880s was still prevalent for their acolytes.Coleen Denney (2000). At the Temple of Art: the Grosvenor Gallery, 1877–1890. Page 188. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
New English Art Club
The response to the criticism was the formation of New English Art Club (NEAC) in 1885 by an impressive array of around fifty young British artists that included Edward Stott. Its founding premise was to allow the founding artists to exhibit their own works and to exclude those that were deemed not to their taste. The association held an Annual Exhibition in 1886, a riposte to the annual exhibitions of the Royal Academy of Arts that was passively rejecting works by younger artists. Amongst the founding members who exhibited were future stalwarts of the establishment including: Stanhope Forbes, Elisabeth Forbes, Henry Tuke, George Clausen, Steer and Osborne and in 1888 they were joined by Walter Sickert. Stott exhibited two rural scenes at the 1887 New English Art Club exhibition including The Ferry Boat (1887) a painting set in Winchelsea, East Sussex and described by Stott's biographer Valerie Webb as an "early consummate work."Valerie Webb (2018), Edward Stott (1855 – 1918): A Master of Colour and Atmosphere, page 47, Sansom & Company, Bristol, England. Stott showed at least twenty works at the New English Art Club between 1888 and 1895, the majority of which are missing. A major work by Stott, On a Summer’s Evening (1892), represents his continuing fascination with the tonal differences of light and shade. The NEAC still exists but within a few years of its founding its Avant-garde mission had given way to more conservative tendencies akin to that of the Royal Academy. https://www.artbiogs.co.uk/2/societies/new-english-art-club New English Art Club.