Sir Alfred Edward East (15 December 1844 – 28 September 1913) was an English painter.

Life

East was born in

Kettering Kettering is a market and industrial town in North Northamptonshire, England. It is located north of London and north-east of Northampton, west of the River Ise, a tributary of the River Nene. The name means "the place (or territory) of Ket ...

Northamptonshire Northamptonshire (; abbreviated Northants.) is a county in the East Midlands of England. In 2015, it had a population of 723,000. The county is administered by two unitary authorities: North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire. It is ...

and studied at the

Glasgow School of Art The Glasgow School of Art (GSA; gd, Sgoil-ealain Ghlaschu) is a higher education art school based in Glasgow, Scotland, offering undergraduate degrees, post-graduate awards (both taught and research-led), and PhDs in architecture, fine art, and ...

. His romantic

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...

s show the influence of the

Barbizon school The Barbizon school of painters were part of an art movement towards Realism in art, which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. The Barbizon school was active roughly from 1830 through 1870. It takes its name f ...

. His ''The Art of Landscape Painting in Oil Colour'' was published in 1906. In April 1888 he had shared an exhibition at the galleries of the

Fine Art Society The Fine Art Society is a gallery based in both London and in Edinburgh's New Town (originally Bourne Fine Art, established 1978). The New Bond Street, London gallery closed its doors in August 2018 after being occupied by The Fine Art Society si ...

with T.C. Gotch and W. Ayerst Ingram, and was commissioned the following year by Marcus Huish, managing director of the Society, to spend six months in Japan to paint the landscape and the people of the country. When the exhibition of 104 paintings from this tour was held at the Fine Art Society in 1890 it was a spectacular success. East visited Spain after 1892 when he visited

Algeciras Algeciras ( , ) is a municipality of Spain belonging to the province of Cádiz, Andalusia. Located in the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula, near the Strait of Gibraltar, it is the largest city on the Bay of Gibraltar ( es, Bahía de Algeci ...

at the southern end of Iberia.A Spanish Carnival
V & A, accessed March 2013 In 1906 he was elected president of the

Royal Society of British Artists The Royal Society of British Artists (RBA) is a British art body established in 1823 as the Society of British Artists, as an alternative to the Royal Academy. History The RBA commenced with twenty-seven members, and took until 1876 to reach fif ...

, a position he held until his death. In that year, he published his 107-page illustrated "The Art of Landscape Painting in Oil Colour"; in its preface, he made the observation: "The greatest errors in landscape painting are to be found – contradictory as it may appear – not so much in the matter of technique as in the painter's attitude toward Nature". In this book he described his techniques using colours, half-tones and pencil sketches. He was awarded a

Knighthood A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the Gr ...

in 1910 by

King Edward VII Edward VII (Albert Edward; 9 November 1841 – 6 May 1910) was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Emperor of India, from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910. The second child and eldest son of Queen Victoria a ...

. His portrait was painted by

Philip de Laszlo Philip, also Phillip, is a male given name, derived from the Greek (''Philippos'', lit. "horse-loving" or "fond of horses"), from a compound of (''philos'', "dear", "loved", "loving") and (''hippos'', "horse"). Prominent Philips who popularize ...

. The Alfred East Art Gallery in Kettering, designed by

John Alfred Gotch John Alfred Gotch (28 September 1852, Kettering, Northamptonshire – 17 January 1942, Kettering, Northamptonshire) was a noted English architect and architectural historian. His brother was the Pre-Raphaelite painter and illustrator Thomas Coo ...

opened on 31 July 1913. The Alfred East Gallery is Northamptonshire's oldest purpose-built art gallery. East was elected an Associate of the

Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its pur ...

in 1899, having been a regular exhibitor since 1883 and elected to full membership in 1913. On 28 September 1913, Alfred East died at his London residence in

Belsize Park Belsize Park is an affluent residential area of Hampstead in the London Borough of Camden (the inner north-west of London), England. The residential streets are lined with mews houses and Georgian and Victorian villas. Some nearby localities ar ...

. His body was taken back to Kettering and lay in state in the Art Gallery, where it was surrounded by the pictures he had presented to the town, and attracted crowds of several thousands.

Gallery

Image:Alfred East Lake in autumn.jpg, Lake in Autumn Image:East - Fiesta.jpg, The Fiesta File:East - Lake Maggiore from Stresa.jpg,

Lake Maggiore Lake Maggiore (, ; it, Lago Maggiore ; lmo, label=Western Lombard, Lagh Maggior; pms, Lagh Magior; literally 'Greater Lake') or Verbano (; la, Lacus Verbanus) is a large lake located on the south side of the Alps. It is the second largest la ...

from

Stresa Stresa is a town and ''comune'' of about 4,600 residents on the shores of Lake Maggiore in the province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola in the Piedmont region of northern Italy, about northwest of Milan. It is situated on road and rail routes to the Simpl ...

File:East - Chateau de Nemours.jpg, Château de Nemours Image:View_at_Kettering.jpg, View at

File:Sir Alfred East (1844 - 1913) - Landscape with a Child - ABDAG003421 - Aberdeen City Council (Archives, Gallery and Museums Collection).jpg, Landscape with a Child

Bibliography

* Peyton Skipwith, 'An Enlightened Artist in Japan', '' Country Life'' 5 January 1984 * Sir

Hugh Cortazzi Sir Arthur Henry Hugh Cortazzi, (2 May 1924 – 14 August 2018) was a British diplomat. He was also a distinguished international businessman, academic, author and prominent Japanologist. He was Ambassador from the United Kingdom to Japan ...

, ''A British Artist in Meiji Japan'', Print Pub, 1991 * 1991—East, Sir Alfred
''A British Artist in Meiji Japan''
(ed., Hugh Cortazzi) - reprinted by Weatherhill, Boston, 1997. (cloth) * Peyton Skipwith, 'The Monet of the Cotswolds', Country Life, 2 October 2013. * John Ramm, 'From Barbizon With Love', ''Antique Dealer & Collectors Guide'', August 1994, Vol 48, No.1 * Paul Johnson and Kenneth McConkey, ''Alfred East: lyrical landscape painter'', Bristol: Sansom & Company, 2009. . * Alfred East, 'The Art of Landscape Painting in Oil Colour', Cassell & Company, 1906. Also se
online 1907 reprint
and modern reprint .

References

External links

* *The world's largest commercial collection of artworks by Sir Alfred East is available to view and purchase a
Oakham Fine Art

* {{DEFAULTSORT:East, Alfred English romantic painters Landscape artists People from Kettering 1844 births 1913 deaths 19th-century English painters English male painters 20th-century English painters Royal Academicians 19th-century English male artists Members of the Royal Society of British Artists 20th-century English male artists