Ernest Albert Chadwick, RBSA RCamA RI NSA (1876-1956)
The landscape watercolours of E A Chadwick are detailed, realistic and carefully composed, but also gentle in both handling and mood. His best known works depict rural life in his native Warwickshire and surrounding counties, but he travelled widely by bicycle across England and Wales in order to discover suitable subjects.
Ernest Albert Chadwick was born in the village of Marston Green, Warwickshire, on 29 February 1876, the second of three children of the draughtsman and wood engraver, John William Chadwick, and his wife, Emily (née Woolley). Probably at that time, and certainly by 1881, the family was living at 2 Culey Place. A decade later, it had moved a few miles south to Back Lane, Hampton in Arden, and the 15-year-old Ernest was describing himself as a ‘draughtsman’. He almost certainly studied under his father before he attended Birmingham Municipal School of Art.
Initially, he worked as an engraver, and in the Census of 1901, described himself as such, while his sisters were identified as a teacher and a photographer.
Chadwick began to exhibit at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists in 1896, and, as he began to specialise in landscape watercolours, it would become the main showcase for his art, displaying more than 400 of his works across his career. He was elected an associate member of the society in 1907 and a full member in 1912.
By the turn of the century, Chadwick was also exhibiting further afield. In 1900, he contributed for the first time to the exhibitions of the Royal Academy of Arts, in London, and did so almost annually until 1919. During the same period, his work began to be reproduced in periodicals, including special numbers of The Studio. As an example, The Studio Yearbook for Decorative Art for 1908 contains his images of two gardens – in Lichfield and near Lancaster – designed by Thomas H Mawson.
In 1911, Chadwick married Ethel Maud Barrows, the daughter of a wine merchant and Justice of the Peace, and they settled at ‘Waterside’, Alderbrook Road, Solihull (a few miles west of Hampton in Arden). Around 1918, they moved along the road to ‘Caerleon’. Chadwick produced portraits of both his wife and his father-in-law, rare exceptions to his work as a landscape painter.
On the eve of the First World War, in 1914, Chadwick had a solo show of watercolours at the Graves Gallery in Birmingham, and during the war continued to exhibit occasionally. However, it is not known whether he undertook active service.
During the 1920s, Chadwick widened the geographical range of his subjects. He had adapted a bicycle to carry his painting equipment, and would travel hundreds of miles in search of suitable motifs. He made sketching tours of North Wales and Cornwall, and late in the decade visited Brittany. He is also known to have painted in Capri.
This increased variety was reflected in his activities as an exhibitor. In 1924, he was elected a member of the New Society of Artists (only three years after the society was founded to give artists living outside of London the opportunity to exhibit in the capital). In 1925, he was invited to become a member of the Lake Artists Society. And, having shown regularly at the Royal Cambrian Academy, in Conway, through the decade, he was, in 1929, elected an Academician. A decade later, in 1939, he was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours. Nevertheless, he also remained loyal to his locality, and became the Secretary of the Birmingham Art Circle.
In addition to exhibiting with societies, Chadwick held a number of solo shows, including those in London at the Greatorex Galleries (1924) and Walker’s Galleries (1927, 1928, 1937 and 1938), and also as a special feature of an autumn exhibition of the RBSA (1931).
By the early 1930s, Chadwick was living in Henley-in-Arden (which lies between Solihull and Stratford-upon-Avon). Residing latterly at ‘The Studio’ in the High Street, he continued to work and exhibit almost until his death on 2 March 1956.
His work is represented in the collections of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.
