31 Facts About James Sillett

James Sillett was an English still life and landscape artist.

James Sillett showed himself to be one of the most versatile of the Norwich School of painters: although the great majority of his works were still lifes and landscapes, he was a drawing master and a miniaturist.

James Sillett exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1796 and 1837.

James Sillett claimed to have studied at the Royal Academy from 1787 to 1790, but evidence for this is lacking.

In 1804 they returned from London to Norfolk to live in King's Lynn, where James Sillett produced illustrations for Richards' History of Lynn.

James Sillett died in 1840 and was buried in the city's Rosary Cemetery.

The Norwich School of painters, which included James Sillett, was a group connected by geographical location, the depiction of Norwich and rural Norfolk, and by close personal and professional relationships.

James was the son of James Sillett, who was born in 1733 in a village near the small Suffolk town of Eye, and his wife Mary Dobson, who was possibly from the south Norfolk village of Pulham St Mary.

James Sillett was employed as a copyist by the Polygraphic Society, which had been established in 1784 by Joseph Booth and which held annual exhibitions of the paintings it reproduced.

James Sillett was forced to find employment elsewhere after a fire at the premises in 1793.

James Sillett claimed in the Norwich Mercury to have studied in the schools of the Royal Academy from 1787 to 1790, but there is no evidence this is true, as his name was not included in any of the Academy's published lists of entrants.

James Sillett depicted landscapes, but tended towards a more academic style of landscape painting, which set him apart from his contemporaries.

James Sillett became a good miniaturist, although G C Williamson in The History of Portrait Miniatures barely mentioned him, but noted that "his really notable work scene painting, which he did for both Drury Lane and Covent Garden theatres".

James Sillett painted game, fruit and flowers with considerable skill, often illustrating plants with a suggestion of the existence of a shadow, to give them a more three-dimensional appearance.

James Sillett exhibited at the Royal Academy for over forty years, between 1796 and 1837.

For most of his working life James Sillett taught drawing, advertising in the local press as an artist and drawing master.

James Sillett taught drawing from his house on Norfolk Street but still maintained an artistic output, exhibiting some two hundred works at Mr Lockett's Coffee House in King's Lynn Market Place in January 1808.

James Sillett produced illustrations for the second volume of William Richards' History of Lynn, published in 1812.

James Sillett made watercolour drawings of church monuments such as the font in St Peter Mancroft in Norwich.

In 1811 James Sillett moved with his family back to Norwich, which he made his permanent home.

James Sillett was one of the artists who along with Ladbrooke and Thirtle seceded from the Society in 1816, forming a new group known as the Norfolk and Norwich Society of Artists.

James Sillett then returned to the original group and exhibited there until 1833.

In 1818 James Sillett is recorded as living in the centre of Norwich on the "west side of City Ditches".

James Sillett was quoted when an old man as saying "Existence would no longer be desirable when deprived of the use of my pencil".

James Sillett is said to have been at work six hours before he died at his home in Norwich on 6 May 1840.

James Sillett was buried in the Rosary Cemetery, a short distance from the city: an artist's palette can be seen at the top of his headstone.

James Sillett's brother James Banyard Sillett was born on in 1809 and did not follow his father's profession but became a languages teacher.

Emma and James Sillett Banyard lived together in Norfolk: Emma died unmarried on 27 January 1880 at the age of seventy-seven, and her brother died unmarried aged ninety.

James Sillett has generally received praise from art critics and historians.

James Sillett described Sillett's early landscapes as characteristically primitive and displaying "a delightful ability to handle paint", noting his mastery of tone and the beautifully depicted skies in his moonlit scenes.

Clifford, who considered James Sillett as being multi-talented, has described them as having a "pleasantly sensitive simplicity".