Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 13.djvu/149

 twenty-seven were by ‘Old Crome,’ and among them were two fine pictures from sketches taken during his one visit to the continent. The ‘Fishmarket on the Beach, Boulogne, 1814’ (painted 1820), and ‘Boulevard des Italiens, Paris, 1814’ (both now in the possession of the trustees of the late Hudson Gurney), showed that, English as Crome was to the core, his palette took a livelier tone, in sympathy with the climate and character of the French. Both these pictures were etched with great skill and feeling by the late Edwin Edwards. Fine examples of ‘Old Crome’ now fetch large prices. A ‘View of Cromer’ was sold at Christie's in 1867 for 1,020 guineas, and in 1875, at the sale of Mr. Mendel's pictures, an upright landscape, a road scene, brought nearly 1,600l.

Although all Crome's artistic triumphs are in oil colours, he drew skilfully but rarely in water colour. There are three or four poor examples of his water colours in the South Kensington Museum, and one or two sketches in monochrome. Of his oil paintings the National Gallery and the South Kensington Museum contain several good specimens besides those already mentioned, and the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge contains a fine ‘Clump of Trees, Hautbois Common.’ Many of his finest pictures are still owned by families in Norwich and its neighbourhood.

Crome must be regarded as one of the earliest painter-etchers of the English school. The art had, indeed, been practised for topographical views and as an adjunct to engraving and aquatint, but very few if any English artists before Crome used the needle for their own pleasure and to make studies from nature of a purely picturesque kind. His hard-ground etchings are large in arrangement of masses of light, and very minute in execution. No etcher has so faithfully recorded the detail of branch and leaf, but in doing this he sacrificed gradation of tone and with it atmospheric effect. His soft-ground etchings are slighter but more effective. They were essentially private plates these of Crome, and though he issued a prospectus in 1812 for their publication and got a respectable body of subscribers, he could not be persuaded to publish them. It was not till 1834, or thirteen years after his death, that thirty-one of them were published at Norwich in a volume called ‘Norfolk Picturesque Scenery,’ by his widow, his son J. B. Crome, Mr. B. Steel, and Mr. Freeman. A few copies, now very rare, were worked off on large folio before letters. Four years later (1838) there was a new issue of seventeen of these plates, called ‘Etchings in Norfolk,’ with a memoir of the artist by Dawson Turner, and a portrait engraved by Sevier after a picture by D. B. Murphy, which, with another by W. Sharpe, and a bust by F. Mazzotti, were exhibited at the Norwich Society in 1821. About 1850 the thirty-one plates were again published, by Mr. Charles Musket, and about twenty years afterwards another issue appeared with an additional soft-ground plate which had not been published before. This was called ‘Thirty-two original Etchings, Views of Norfolk, by Old Crome, with portrait.’ Some of the plates for the later issues were rebitten by Ninham, and others touched with the graver by W. C. Edwards. The later states of the plates are of little artistic value. There is a fine collection of Crome's etchings in the British Museum.



CROME, JOHN BERNAY (1794–1842) landscape-painter, the eldest son of John (Old) Crome [q. v.], was born at Norwich 14 Dec. 1794. He was christened John Barney, after his father's christian and mother's maiden name, but in the record of the baptisms of other members of his family the mother's name is sometimes spelt Berney and Bernay. He was educated at the grammar school at Norwich under Dr. Samuel Forster and the Rev. Edward Valpy. He was brought up as an artist, assisted his father in teaching, and succeeded him in his practice. He painted coast and country scenes, and attained considerable local reputation as a painter and a teacher. He was a member of the Norwich Society of Artists, and between 1806 and 1830 sent 277 of his works to their exhibitions. Between 1811 and 1843 he exhibited seven works at the Royal Academy, thirty-five at the British Institution, and fifty-five at the Society of British Artists. He made frequent visits to the continent, and the subjects of some of his pictures were taken from places in France, Holland, Belgium, and Italy. Towards the close of his