JOHN BRETT, ARA (1831-1902)
John Brett was born in Bletchingley, near Reigate, Surrey, on 8 December 1831. The son of a veterinary surgeon attached to the 12th Lancers, he spent the first fifteen years of his life with his family following the regiment. Only when his father was permanently stationed at Maidstone, Kent, did he and his family settle in the nearby village of Detling. He had received some instruction in drawing in Dublin, where his father had been posted, and in 1851 he had lessons with James Duffield Harding. Harding introduced him to Richard Redgrave, who set him to draw casts in the British Museum.
In 1853 he entered the Royal Academy Schools, at the same time studying the works of John Ruskin and making contact with members of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, particularly William Holman Hunt.
In 1856, while working on his oil The Glacier of Rosenlaui, Brett met John William Inchbold, who was also working in the Alps that season, and was greatly inspired by his technique. As a result, he began his masterpiece, The Stonebreaker, on his return to England, and so attracted the praise of Ruskin when he exhibited the painting at the Royal Academy in 1858.
Encouraged by Ruskin, Brett visited Northern Italy, and painted The Val d'Aosta which he exhibited at the RA in 1859. Ruskin devoted several pages of his Academy Notes for that year to praising the picture although he did comment that it is Mirror's work, not Man's'. Under Ruskin's influence, Brett altered his style, away from his earlier Pre-Raphaelitism, towards subjects of geological, botanical and astronomical interest. Sailing up and down the South Coast and across to the Channel Islands in his schooner, 'Viking', he painted numerous coastal scenes usually in minute detail. He designed two London homes for his family, both in Putney: the cost of these houses, together with the purchase of the yacht, and a steady decline in picture sales brought financial worries in later years. His death, in London on 7 January 1902, passed almost unnoticed.
