Thomas Hartley Cromek (1809-1873) was an English artist.

Life

Cromek was born on 8 August 1809, the son of the engraver

Robert Hartley Cromek Robert Hartley Cromek (1770–1812) was an English engraver, editor, art dealer and entrepreneur who was most active in the early nineteenth century. He is best known for having allegedly cheated William Blake out of the potential profits of his e ...

. He was educated at Enoch Harrison's school in

Wakefield Wakefield is a cathedral city in West Yorkshire, England located on the River Calder. The city had a population of 99,251 in the 2011 census.https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/ks101ew Census 2011 table KS101EW Usual resident population, ...

; he then attended the Moravian School at

Fulneck Fulneck Moravian Settlement is a village in Pudsey in the City of Leeds metropolitan borough, West Yorkshire, England. The village (grid reference ) lies on a hillside overlooking a deep valley. Pudsey Beck flows along the bottom of the va ...

, and to the Grammar School at Wakefield, before he eventually returning to Harrison. He had his first lessons in art from James Hunter, a portrait painter at

, but in 1826 he went to Leeds where he studied landscape painting under Joseph Rhodes, an artist of considerable ability, and also taught himself anatomical drawing. In 1830 he decided to go to Italy to study the great masters. He passed through Belgium, the Rhineland, Switzerland, and Florence, and at length reached Rome, where he soon attracted attention by the excellence of his drawings and his careful colouring. From 1831 until 1849, with the exception of two short visits to England, Cromek passed his time in visiting and making drawings of the principal buildings and the picturesque scenery of Italy and Greece. In 1850 he was unanimously elected an Associate of the New Society of Painters in Water-Colours, when he retired to Wakefield, where he died, after a long and painful illness, in 1873. His drawings, which are chiefly to be found in the royal and private collections, are much esteemed for the beauty of their colouring and their truthfulness to nature.

References

Sources

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Cromek, Thomas Hartley 1809 births 1873 deaths English landscape painters 19th-century British painters British male painters Painters from London 19th-century British male artists