Peter de wint biography for kids
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Happy Days – the Landscapes of Peter de Wint
What do you think when you look at the image above? Most fans of Peter de Wint’s work see exquisite tranquillity and luminosity. That bred sky, the golden corn, the vast expanse of landscape beyond.
Here we have the story of a happy and contented man, living a happy and contented life. Not a typical tale from the artists’ archives, as we usually hear of poverty, penury and unrequited passion. But as we head into a dark, wet Autumn, why not celebrate a bit of harvest happiness?
Peter dem Wint had been intended for the medical yrke. His father was a doctor, and ran an apothecary in Stone, Staffordshire where dem Wint was born. But the budding artist managed to övertyga his father that medicin was not his path, and he was apprenticed to artist John Raphael Smith. Even before his training was complete, dem Wint was making a modest living from his art, painting landscapes, and this continued throughout his career.
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Peter de Wint was born in Stone in Staffordshire, the son of a doctor of Dutch extraction who had emigrated from New York to England to study medicine. Peter was intended to follow his father’s profession, but instead he became an artist: in 1802 he went to London as an apprentice to the engraver John Raphael Smith. In 1806 he broke his apprenticeship for the price of 18 oil paintings and set up in a studio with his fellow-student William Hilton. It was at this time that he was introduced to Dr Thomas Monro, at whose house he studied, and there he came under the spell of the watercolours of Turner and Girtin.
In 1810 De Wint was accepted as an associate member of the Old Water-Colour Society. He then drifted away from oil painting to watercolours, which was to become his medium.
De Wint was only to make one trip aboard (to Normandy in 1818) and declared that England offered all he needed in subjects to paint. Ever a searcher after truth, it is evident that his ‘Englishness’ gave
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watercolor
artists
De Wint was also capable of "finished" exhibition watercolors, and though these convey a somewhat stiff feeling during his early career, they evolved toward a looser, relaxed style in his maturity — and become sketches in a higher key. On the Dart (1848, 56x95cm), which shows a bend in the Dart River (Devonshire), is the last major picture De Wint exhibited. The biography of De Wint written by his widow mentions his love of rivers: "rapid streams delighted him much, and the Wharfe, the Lowther, the Dart and others were studied with the greatest intensity." A critic of the time singled out this work for praise, noting the delicious rendering of the water, the full range of dark and light, the simplicity and lack of romantic rhetoric. However, the original sketch for this painting still exists, and comparision of the two shows how De Wint approached an exhibition work. The farm animals, herdsman and farm cottage nestled in the trees at l