eorge John Pinwell R.W.S. (1842-1875)
was born on 26 December 1842 at 12 Great Mays Buildings, St Martin's Lane, in central London, the son of John Pinwell, a builder, and his wife Mary Anne Baker, a laundress. His father died young which forced George to leave school at an early age to support himself and his mother. His first important job was as a designer for a firm of embroiderers. When his mother remarried he was able to leave this work and to devote himself to his artistic training. He first trained at St. Martin's Lane Academy and then in 1862 he entered Heatherley's Academy. Pinwell made designs for Elkington & Co., the prominent firm of Birmingham silversmiths. He did casual part-time employment with the wood engraver Josiah Wood Whymper, although not in a regular apprenticeship arrangement. It was through Whymper that Pinwell met Fred Walker and J. W. North, who together would form the so-called Idyllic School, and produce the finest rural illustrations of the period.
In 1862 Pinwell's first wood engraved illustrations were published. He was eventually to contribute to such magazines and periodicals as Once a Week, Good Words, Churchman's Family Magazine, The Cornhill Magazine, and London Society. Alexander Strahan, the publisher of Good Words, introduced Pinwell to the Dalziel Brothers in 1864, thus beginning one of the most successful draughtsman-wood engraver collaborations of the 1860s period. Pinwell's most important contribution to the Dalziel's was the hundred drawings on wood he made for The Illustrated Goldsmith published in 1864.
From a photograph by Hubbard.
Source: Williamson, facing p. 27.
It was through the Dalziel Brothers that Pinwell met Fred Walker and J. W. North, who together would form the so-called "Idyllic School," and produce the finest rural illustrations of the period. On April 25, 1865, Pinwell married Isabella Mercy Stevens at St Marylebone parish church. The couple had met several years previously while working at the firm of embroiderers. The couple first lived at 70 Newman Street but soon moved to nearby Charlotte Street. In 1874 they moved to Warwick House at 86 Adelaide Road in Hampstead. Pinwell in his later years concentrated more on his highly finished watercolours and occasional oil paintings. He exhibited at the Dudley Gallery from 1865-69, and at the Society of Painters in Water Colours (Royal Watercolour Society) from 1869-75, where he was elected an Associate in 1869 and a full member in 1870. In the 1870s he suffered from poor health and ultimately died of pulmonary tuberculosis in London on September 8, 1875. He was buried at Highgate Cemetery. An important memorial exhibition of his work was held at Deschamps' Gallery in London in February 1876.
Although many contemporary critics considered Pinwell merely as a follower of Fred Walker, a critic for The Spectator clearly disagreed after viewing the memorial exhibitions of both artists held consecutively at Deschamps' Gallery, London, in 1876:
There was, no doubt, between these artists a close similarity in their method of work and tone of colour; so noticeable, indeed, is this, that many have not scrupled to assert that Pinwell was but an imitation of Walker, and like most imitators, exaggerated the manner of his master. This is not the case, however, for besides the fact that the artists were of the same age, we notice that from the earliest stages of their art they did but develop the same plan. We should rather imagine that these painters, both almost entirely self-taught, while recognizing the weakness and want of thought so conspicuous in most modern painting, and yet not being disposed to go the same lengths as the leaders of the pre-Raphaelite movement, chose this middle ground, and endeavoured to combine all the tender feeling and harmonious colour of the pre-Raphaelites with the ease of posture and grace and freedom of line, in which pre-Raphaelites are, as a rule, notably wanting; and thus Walker and Pinwell, working, as it were, on parallel lines, arrived at a similar result. On any close comparison of their works, we find that the similarity which is so striking at first does not extend very far, and resolves itself mainly into a preference for warmth of colour and freedom of outline and composition. Beyond this they are not only dissimilar, but even sometimes totally opposed. The subjects in which Walker delighted most, and beyond which he seldom travelled with full success, were simple incidents of country life or domestic story, and the scrupulous exactness with which he rendered these, was the great charm of his work. In Pinwell, just the contrary is the case; over the majority of his drawings there hangs the glamour of a fairytale, and often the figures in his compositions are as confused and unsubstantial as those of a dream. With a spirit full of the most tender, poetic feeling, the light through which he viewed everything was, —
The light that never was on sea or land,
The consecration of a poet's dream;
The Spectator critic goes on explain, "while Walker, according to the opinion of many, was often open to the reproach bestowed upon the pre-Raphaelites, that 'they exalted minutiae at the expense of beauty,' Pinwell, on the other hand, may fairly have been said to have exalted beauty at the expense of minutiae," and that it was this "to which we may attribute most of the unreality which is so offensive to many of his critics…" The same critic acknowledged that many of the works on display in the gallery were apt to be seen as "awkward, affected, and unnatural," adding, "there will be but a very few who will take the trouble to discern their beauty or comprehend their meaning." These remarks are made rather apologetically, however, and with the particular purpose of distinguishing Pinwell from Walker, "who, with all his true feelings and consummate skill, did not in the whole of his artistic life produce any important picture, which could be rightly called a work of imagination. Here is the great difference between them, and it is one which it was necessarily clearly to define, before criticizing the pictures separately" (274). While this may be unfair to Walker, it does suggest the particular genius of Pinwell.
Bibliography
"Art. The Pinwell Gallery." The Spectator XLIX (26 February 1876): 274-75.
Crumper, A. H. G. J. Pinwell, Artist/Illustrator. Sutton, Surrey: Libra Publishing Ltd., 1987.
Esposito, Donato. Frederick Walker and the Idyllists. London: Lund Humphries, 2017, Chapter 3, 61-89.
Williamson, George C. George J. Pinwell and His Works. London: George Bell & Sons. 1900.
Created 13 May 2023