GEORGE VICAT COLE, RA RBA (1833-1893)
George Vicat Cole was born in Portsmouth on 17 April 1833-The eldest son of the landscape painter George Cole, he trained in his father's studio, and was set to copy engravings after Constable, Cox and Turner. In the early eighteen-fifties, he visited the Moselle Valley, in Germany, with his father, who looked to Continental models for his own work and encouraged a Romantic approach to landscape. Though George Vicat Cole remained devoted to the work of Turner, it was as a reader of John Ruskin, so that he also developed an interest in the detailed handling of Ruskin's other heroes, the Pre-Raphaelites. This enthusiasm for contemporary aesthetics led to a temporary estrangement from his father so that, in 1855, he left the family's London home, and moved to Camden Town. In the same period, he began to style himself Vicat Cole, preferring his mother's maiden name to a link with his father.
In the early eighteen-fifties, Vicat Cole had set himself up as a drawing master, and worked at such London institutions as Queen's College for Ladies.
At the same time he began to exhibit views of Surrey and the Wye Valley at the Royal British Institution and the Society of British Artists (both from 1852) and at the Royal Academy (from 1853). Following his marriage, in spring 1857, he spent increasing periods in the area of the North Downs around Dorking, Surrey. Two years after his election to the Society of British Artists in 1858, he exhibited the canvas Harvest Time (Bristol City Art Gallery) for which he was awarded a medal by the Society for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts. In 1863, he resigned from the SBA in order to become eligible for election to the Royal Academy.
The years from 1863 to 1867 marked Vicat Cole's most intense engagement with the Surrey landscape. During that period, he lived in a cottage on Holmbury Hill, and painted many watercolours, as well as oils, of rural activity. One canvas of harvesting, Summer's Golden Crown, was greatly admired in 1867 when exhibited at the Paris International Exhibition. Despite the overwhelming demand for such scenes of cornfields, he ensured that he varied his subject matter, most notably by visiting the coasts of Cornwall and Pembrokeshire.
As financial success increased, Vicat Cole returned to London and settled in Kensington. However, he continued to paint rural subjects in the Home Counties, whether alongside E G Warren in Surrey, or branching out on his own in views of the River Arun, Sussex. In 1879, he received a commission from William Agnew to paint the Thames Series, twenty-five views of the River Thames from source to sea. Though this never completed project may have been suggested by the artist's paintings of the Arun, it encouraged him to enter a new phase, producing ambitious river views of the capital, including The Pool of London, which was purchased in 1888 by the Chantrey Bequest for what is now the Tate Gallery.
The great popularity and high reputation of Vicat Cole was officially recognised in 1870 by his election as an associate member of the Royal Academy. A decade later he became a full academician. The first landscape painter for thirty years to be so honoured, his election was approved by his predecessor, Thomas Creswick. Following the death of Vicat Cole on 7 April 1893, he became the subject of an Academy Dinner tribute by Lord Leighton. He was survived by his son, the landscape painter Rex Vicat Cole.
Further reading:
Robert Chignell, The Life and Paintings of Vicat Cole RA, London: Cassell & Co, 1898
T J Barringer, The Cole Family: Painters of the English Landscape 1838-1915, Portsmouth City Art Gallery, 1988
