READ, Samuel

1815 - 1883

Samuel Read was born at Needham Market, Suffolk on 20 December 1815, son of Thomas Read, a shoemaker. Samuel was educated at Theobold’s endowed grammar school, Needham Market and displayed a strong taste for art when he entered the office of John Eddowes Sparrowe, the Ipswich town clerk, to train as a lawyer but about 1836 became an assistant to the Ipswich town surveyor, William Mason (1810-1897) in Tacket Street, Ipswich. A member of the Ipswich Society of Professional & Amateur Artists from 1832, where he was tutored by Henry Davy. In 1841 he abandoned a lawyer career and went to London to learn wood-engraving with the Whymper brothers (or Wimper), whose father was the Ipswich brewer Nathaniel Wimper and was a pupil of William Collingwood Smith (1815-1887). Read first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1843 and continued to exhibit there until 1857 his early exhibits were architectural drawings. In 1844 he joined the 'Illustrated London News' for whom he produced a great quantity of excellent work, but his drawings of architectural, marine and landscape subjects won notice and was the first special artist ever sent abroad to furnish sketches for any illustrated paper. He exhibited at the Suffolk Fine Arts Association at the New Lecture Hall of the Mechanics' Institution in Ipswich in August 1850, two watercolours, 'Chapel of the Holy Sacrament, St Jacques Church, Antwerp' and 'A Study in the Woods of Buckhurst, Sussex'. Read was elected an associate of the Watercolour Society in 1857, and a member in 1880, and contributed to every exhibition from 1857 onward, showing 210 paintings in all. Read married at Inverness, Scotland on 26 June 1860, Isabella Carruthers (1832-1887), daughter of Robert Carruthers (1799-1878), proprietor and editor of the 'Inverness Courier' and had a son, Herbert, and a daughter Alice. Read exhibited at the first exhibition of the Ipswich Fine Art Club in 1875 and in 1881 exhibited from the home of his son Herbert at Park Side, Bromley, Kent three watercolours, ‘North Entrance to Roslin Chapel’, 'Cape Wrath' and 'Interior of Bruges Cathedral', in 1882 'The Old Mill on the Marsh', 'Coro, Cathedral of Toledo' and 'Genoa' and in 1883 'The Old Man of Wick', 'Wolf's Ghoe, John O'Groat's' and 'Bruges Cathedral' and a monochrome 'Bits about Lowestoft', all from the same address. Samuel Read died at Fort Cottage, Sidmouth, Devon, on Sunday 6 May 1883 following a second stroke from that in the previous year. Read, his wife and two children were all buried in the same grave in Sidmouth churchyard. His studio sale was held at Christie's on 29 February 1884 and his watercolour 'Felixstowe Old Church' was exhibited in the 1974 centenary of the Ipswich Art Club.

Royal Academy Exhibits
from Mr Fountain's, London Street, Greenwich
1843 1179 Vestibule of Painted Hall, Greenwich
1844 1192 Edward the Confessor's Chapel, Westminster
(1192 is listed as 'J Read')
from 3 Vernon Place, Bloomsbury
1846 1242 West Doorway, Rochester Cathedral
from 48 Poland Street, London
1847 1229 Interior of the Church of St Jacques, Antwerp
1848 707 Dorothy's Doorway, Haddon - drawing
         1173 The Chapel at Haddon
1849 1018 Roslyn Chapel
1850 1238 Chapel of the Holy Sacrament at Jacques Church, Antwerp
1851 252 The Beauchamp Chapel, Warwick
from 198 Strand, London
1852 957 The Woodland Stream
from 15 New Cavendish Street, Portland Place, London
1853 1028 Walmer Castle, September 1852
1854 1195 Antwerp Cathedral
1855 1165 Marché aux Fleurs, Rouen
1856 1156 St Botolph's Church, Boston
1857 880 An Effect at Haddon
from 40 Somerset Street, Portman Square, London
1860 785 The Grave of Sir Walter Scott, Dryburgh Abbey
from 55 Argyll Road, Kensington
1861 811 The Vestry Door, Barking Church, Suffolk
1872 706 Chapel of St Margaret in St Jacques, Dieppe

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Works by This Artist