Thomas Hartley Cromek was born 8th August 1809.
His father Robert Hartley Cromek was an engraver by profession, a man of considerable literary taste and judgement. He was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, on intimate terms with Stothard, Bewick, Allan Cunningham, Roscoe Campbell the poet, and other leading men of that day. He was the collector and editor of the‘remains of Nithsdale and ‘Galoway Song’ a publication bearing the same relation to Scottish poetry as Bishop Percy’s famous ‘Reliques’ did to English; and of the better known ‘Reliques of Burns’. At his insistence, also, Schiavonetti etched, from the imperishable designs of Blake, a series of masterly illustrations to a sumptuous edition of ‘Blair’s Grave’ and began an engraving from Stothard’s picture of the Canterbury Pilgrimage. By reason of the untimely death of Schiavonetti however, the plate was worked at more or less by Bromley and Cromek, then by Engleheart, and lastly finished by James heath. But Cromek as he was the first ever to conceive the project of representing Chaucer’s grand idea in an engraving, so was he also the life and soul of it from first to last and the guide of it to a successful issue though not himself spared to see it’s actual publication. If, then, his son were to inherit his father’s tastes, we might expect to find in him unfolding by degrees the characters of an artist, an antiquary and a scholar. We shall see, from what follows to what extent this was realised.
His first schooling was at Mr. Enoch Harrisons of Wakefield, who was at that time considered an able teacher, but afterwards he was sent to the Moravian School at Fulneck, and to the Grammar School at Wakefield, though he eventually returned to Mr. Harrisons, where his first taste for drawing showed itself. Mr Hunter, at that time a portrait painter in Wakefield, noticed little Cromek’s self taught attempts, and had him to his house – a fine one, now pulled down, built by John milnes Esq. In Westgate, near the Railway Station. There were there some fine some fine old paintings and carvings, which made a great impression on the boy, to whom Mr. Hunter also lent Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses on Painting and other works.. These inflamed little Cromek’s mind with the idea that he would like to be an artist, and soon afterwards his mother took him up to London, and introduced him to old Mr Hopwood the Engraver, a tall swarthy, old giant with a stentorian voice, who used to sit whilst at work in a blanket, fastened about the throat with a wooden skewer. This was too much for the boy, who persuaded his mother to let him come back to Wakefield again, where, without any instruction at all, he soon painted portraits in oil sufficiently well to enable him to go to Leeds, and live in lodgings; his rule being then, as ever after to take the greatest pains an do the very best in his power, with an unwearyingly diligence. The late Mr. Teale at this time employed him a good deal in making coloured drawings of pathological specimens ; and to the minute attention which these required might, doubtless, to a great extent, be attributed that careful and accurate drawing which ever after characterised him as an artist.
At Leeds, also, young Cromek won the heart of the talented landscape painter John Rhodes, as he had done that of Mr Hunter at Wakefield and under him made rapid progress. Here, too, he availed himself of the means of studying anatomy, so indispensable to an artist; and a series of drawings of the bones, made by him at this time, were pronounced by Sir Astley Cooper the best he had ever seen. In the summer of 1828 he visited Richmond, in Yorkshire and now awoke completely, as out of a trance, amidst the loveliness and grandeur which everyone surrounded him. His days were spent in intoxicating admiration and study of all he saw; and he wondered on to Rievaulx, Roheby, Barnard Castle, Durham and the Lakes, still further fascinated and enchanted. Nature must henceforth be the study of his life, he felt, and art his vocation.