Robert Taylor Pritchett (24 February 1828 – 16 June 1907) was a gun manufacturer, artist and illustrator. As artist he painted royal ceremonies for Queen Victoria, and he illustrated Darwin'sThe Voyage of the Beagle.
He was the son of Richard Ellis Pritchet and his wife Ann Dumbleton; his father was head of the firm of gunmakers at Enfield which supplied arms to theEast India Company and to theBoard of Ordnance. After leavingKing's College School, Robert entered his father's firm. By 1852 he knew the rifle designerWilliam Ellis Metford; the "Pritchett bullet", with a hollow, unplugged base, which he and Metford invented in 1853, brought him fame and an award of £1000 from the government on its adoption by the small-arms committee. As early as 1854 Pritchett was using histhree-grooved rifle of his own invention.[1]
The abolition of the East India Company in 1858 deprived Pritchett's firm of its principal customer, and he sought other interests; but for some years he kept in touch with military rifle matters (partly through the Victoria Rifles, which corps he joined at its foundation in 1853), and he lectured on gunlocks and rifles at theWorking Men's College and elsewhere. He interested himself in 1854 in the foundation of that college, of whichFrederick Denison Maurice andCharles Kingsley were among the pioneers. He remained a liveryman of theGunmakers' Company until his death.[1]
Art was an important occupation. He exhibited views of Belgium and Brittany at theRoyal Academy of Art in 1851 and 1852. He formed friendships withJohn Leech,Charles Keene, andBirket Foster. ThroughJohn Tenniel he joined the staff ofPunch, for which he executed some 26 drawings between 1863 and 1869. In 1865 he sketched in Skye and the Hebrides, and next year he executed 100 illustrations forCassell, Petter and Galpin.[1]
In 1868, after a visit to the Netherlands, he received a commission for work fromThomas Agnew & Sons, who showed a collection of his pictures in their galleries in 1869. One picture was purchased by Queen Victoria, and he was soon employed on many water-colour drawings of royal functions, from "Thanksgiving Day" in 1872 to Queen Victoria's funeral in 1901. He returned to the Netherlands, where he dined atHet Loo Palace withKing Leopold II of Belgium and met the painterJozef Israëls. In 1869 and 1871 he exhibited scenes of Scheveningen at the Royal Academy, and in the latter year he publishedBrush Notes in Holland and made numerous sketches in Paris after theCommune. After a visit to Norway in 1874–75 he publishedGamle Norge (1878).[1]
In 1880 he cruised round the world with Mr and Mrs Joseph Lambert in their yachtThe Wanderer, and illustrated their bookThe Voyage of the Wanderer (1883). In 1883 and 1885 he joined as artist the tours ofThomas (afterwards Earl) andLady Brassey in the yachtSunbeam, and many of his drawings appeared in Lady Brassey'sIn the Trades, the Tropics and the Roaring Forties (1885) andThe Last Voyage of the Sunbeam (1889).[1]
Pritchett drew illustrations forGood Words in 1881 and 1882, and made drawings for H. R. Mills'sGeneral Geography (1888) and the 1890 edition ofCharles Darwin'sThe Voyage of the Beagle. Exhibitions of his work were repeated in London between 1884 and 1890, and he lectured on his travels. He was an enthusiastic yachtsman, and an expert on yachts and craft of all kinds. He illustrated theBadminton Library volumes onYachting (1894) andSea Fishing (1895), and wrote much of the text of the former. HisPen and Pencil Sketches of Shipping and Craft all round the World first appeared in 1899. A collector of curios, he was an authority on ancient armour, and issued in 1890 an illustrated account of his collection of pipes inSmokiana (Pipes of All Nations). He was more successful in black-and-white than in water-colour; his drawings of shipping are noteworthy for technical accuracy.[1]
Pritchett resided for many years at The Sands,Swindon, and subsequently atBurghfield, Berkshire, where he died on 16 June 1907; he was buried in the parish churchyard. His wife, Louisa Kezia McRae (died 1899), whom he married in 1857, his son Ellis (died 1905), and his daughter Marian predeceased him.[1]
With the exception of somenetsuke, which he bequeathed to the Victoria and Albert Museum, and some silver badges of the Ligue des Gueux, which he left to the British Museum, most of his curios, together with some of his drawings, were sold by auction by Haslam & Son at Reading in October 1907; some of his pipes were subsequently dispersed by sale in London.[1]
Attribution
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Long, Basil Somerset (1912). "Pritchett, Robert Taylor". InLee, Sidney (ed.).Dictionary of National Biography (2nd supplement). Vol. 3. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 138–139.| International | |
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