Ruskin liked Prout and admired his work inordinately. In “Modern Painters” he calls him “a very great man”--which is absurd--and says that his rendering of the character of old buildings is “as perfect and as heartfelt as I can conceive possible.” Some people may prefer the buildings in Turner’s early drawings, in Cotman’s, Girtin’s, and Bonington’s works. But Prout’s work is uniformly successful within its own limitations; it is bold, workmanlike, and picturesque, and its subject-matter is full of inexhaustible interest and delight.
[Born at Stone, Staffordshire, Jan. 21, 1784; apprenticed to John Raphael Smith, 1802; student R. A. Schools, 1809; Associate, Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1810, member, 1811, and 1825; died at 40 Upper Gower Street, June 30, 1849.
EXHIBITED: Royal Academy, 1807, ’11, ’13-’15, ’19, ’20, ’28; British Institution, 1808, ’13-’17, ’21, ’24; Associated Artists, 1808, ’09; Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1810-’15, ’25-’49.
WORKS IN PUBLIC GALLERIES: V. and A. Museum (Oil and Water-Colours); British Museum; National Galleries of Scotland and Ireland; Manchester Whitworth Institute; Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Bury, Norwich, Nottingham Art Galleries, etc.
BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES: Sir Walter Armstrong’s “Peter De Wint,” 1888; Roget’s “History,” etc.; “D. N. B.”
REPRODUCTIONS: Armstrong’s “De Wint”; “Masters of English Landscape Painting” (THE STUDIO Special Summer Number, 1903).]
De Wint’s work may be described as a cross between that of Girtin and Cotman. Girtin was his first source of inspiration. From him he learned the value of breadth of effect and simplicity of design. From Cotman he learned to distil his colour harmonies from Nature. As a draughtsman he was less of a mannerist than Girtin, and he had not Cotman’s marvellous feeling for the beauties of abstract design.
De Wint had Dutch blood in his veins, and he had a good deal of the Dutchman’s solidity of character and stolid realism. His drawings always look like bits of real life. They are nearer to the common experience of Nature than either Turner’s, Cozens’, Girtin’s, or Cotman’s works. But his homely realism is always restrained by his respect for the medium he worked in and by his innate sense of style.