British artists' suppliers, 1650-1950 - R (2024)

[RE] [RH] [RI] [RO]

*John Rand, 37 Howland St, Fitzroy Square, London 1840-1846, 16 Berners St 1847-1848, artist and inventor of metallic collapsible paint tube, John Rand & Co 1848-1859, patent collapsible tube manufacturers for artists’ colours, Rand, Thorne & Co 1860-1863, Rand & Co 1864-1868, 24a Cardington St 1848-1868.

John Goffe Rand (1801-73), American artist and inventor of the metallic collapsible paint tube, took out patents in London on 6 March 1841 and 29 September 1842, and in America on 11 September 1841, relating to metallic collapsible tubes (see www.aaa.si.edu/exhibits/pastexhibits/treasures/0044.htm). His tubes were initially available only from Thomas Brown (qv), who advertised them in June 1841. By August 1842 they were also being marketed by Winsor & Newton and soon after by other colourmen. Winsor & Newton advertised that, ‘J. Rand, the Inventor, Patentee, and sole Manufacturer of the above, during the time they were known to the profession solely under the name of "Brown's Patent," has made arrangements with Messrs. Winsor & Newton... by which that firm are supplied by him with Tubes of the same description as those so long supplied by J. Rand to Mr. Brown. -- August 1st, 1842’ (The Art-Union August 1842 p.196).

Most of Rand’s business was with the big manufacturing artists’ colourmen, for example with Roberson which made purchases until 1865 (Hamilton Kerr Institute, MS 180-1993). Intriguingly, the artist John Linnell decided to experiment in 1848 with filling his own paint tubes. He purchased colours directly from manufacturers such as Field (qv) and Druke (qv) and acquired five gross of ‘tin tubes for color’ from Rand & Co for £3.16s.9d (Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 22-2000).

The business had an account with Roberson, May 1842-1863, under the names of J. Rand, Rand & Co, Rand's Tubes Exported, Rand Thorne & Co Tubes Exported, from various London addresses, and a separate New York account as Rand & Co in 1850 (Woodco*ck 1997). Francis William Ellington was listed as manager 1858-60. The partnership between James Thorne and John James Kerr, collapsible tube manufacturers at Cardington St, was dissolved 1860, with James Thorne carrying on the business (London Gazette 24 July 1860).

Sources: Harley 1971 pp.4-10; Katlan 1987 pp.10-11; Katlan 1992 pp.450-3. For Rand’s personal papers, see Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington (copy of Rand's will, family correspondence, biographical sketches, including an unpublished biography by Mary Elizabeth Franklin, list of portraits painted by Rand; 2 U.S. patents for changes to the collapsible paint tube, one of the first collapsible tubes for oil paint produced by a factory, etc). For abbreviations, see Resources and bibliography.

*Robert Rawcliffe, 26 Charlotte St, Fitzroy Square, London 1844-1852, 35 Chenies Mews 1853-1854. Tailor until 1851, tailor and artists’ colourman 1851-1854.

Robert Rawcliffe (b. c.1821) was recorded in the 1851 census at 26 Charlotte St as a tailor, draper and artists' colourman, age 30, born in Lancashire, with wife Maria Louise, age 28. He appeared before a court for insolvent debtors in 1852, described as an artists’ colourman and tailor (London Gazette 2 November 1852). Rawcliffe’s canvas stamp, from 26 Charlotte St, as a ‘Manufacturing Artists Colourman’, appears on Joseph Wolf’s A Woodco*ck with its young and a robin (Sir David and Lady Scott coll., Sotheby’s 19 November 2008 lot 82).

*James Rawlinson, Derby and Matlock.Portrait painter and inventor.

The portrait painter, James Rawlinson (1769-1848), a pupil of George Romney, lived in Derby and subsequently in Matlock. He devised an improved mill for grinding painter’s colours, recommended by the Royal Society of Arts and commended by John Middleton (qv), 1804 (Transactions of the Royal Society of Arts, vol.22, 1804, see Harley 1982 pp.38-9, Fairbairne 1982 p.38). He also produced a bladder with a wooden stopper, 1804 (Ayres 1985 p.110). Earlier when in London, he had been asked by Joseph Wright of Derby to obtain various brushes from the specialist brushmaker, Derveaux (qv), probably in 1789 (Barker 2009 pp.130).

*Arthur Rayner, 35-36 Chenies Mews, Bedford Square, London WC 1873-1875, 32 Francis St, Tottenham Court Road 1874-1877, 26 Francis St 1878-1892, 121 Lewisham High Road. Artists’ colourman, subsequently picture dealer and restorer.

Arthur Rayner (c.1847-1920) traded as an artists’ colourman from 1873 and then as a picture dealer until his bankruptcy in 1892 (London Gazette 17 May 1892, 13 February 1894). Thereafter, he was in business as a picture dealer and restorer.

According to census records, Arthur Rayner was born c.1847 in Purleigh, Essex. He was the son of a coach builder, Samuel Felton Rayner (information from Lisa Turner, née Rayner, great-great-granddaughter of Arthur Rayner, 1 December 2009). In the 1871 census he was recorded as a general commission agent, age 24, lodging with his wife Emma, and young son, at 188 Goswell Road. He then turned to trading as a colourman.

Rayner’s premises in Chenies Mews were previously occupied by John Locker (1871-2) and before that by Robert Davis (qv) and Robert Rawcliffe (qv). Rayner advertised as ‘Wholesale Artists’ Colourman and Canvas Manufacturer. Genuine Ultramarine & Fine Colour Maker’ (The Artists’ Directory 1874 p.38). In the 1891 census he was recorded as an artist colourman, age 44, born in Sussex, with wife Emma, and son Frederick G. Rayner, also an artist colourman, age 18. Rayner’s canvas mark has been recorded on A.F. De Prades’s Mail Coach in the Snow, 1883 (Walker Art Gallery, see Morris 1996).

In later censuses, he was recorded as a fine art dealer, trading on his own account, living in Lewisham in 1901, and as a picture cleaner, trading on his own account from his home in Blackheath in 1911. His trade card, ornamented with a classical framework surmounted by a pair of cherubs holding festoons, describes him as a picture restorer, with a deleted address, 31 Ebury St, Belgravia, and added in pen, 121 Lewisham High Road (coll. Christopher Lennox-Boyd). He is presumably the individual who died age 74 in Lewisham district in 1920.

Mrs Ready (active 1808-1818), 4 Bennet St, St James’s St, London 1818. Brush supplier.

Supplied ‘hair pencils’, i.e. brushes, to the ‘Princess at Weymouth’, as reported to Joseph Farington, 1808 (Farington vol.9, p.3187, vol.15, p.5293).

Redston Brothers, Landseer House, Woodlands Park Road, West Green, Tottenham, London 1894. Sable brush manufacturers.

Advertised as wholesale, retail and export sable brush manufacturers, with testimonials received from Sir John Gilbert, Mrs Madeline Marrable and others (The Year's Art 1894).

Updated March 2020
John Reeves, John St, Fitzroy Sq, London 1841, 98 John St 1848-1855, also 2 John St 1851-1856, Mrs Ann Reeves, 2 John St 1856-1868, street renamed and numbered 1868, 6 Whitfield St 1868-1869, John Reeves, 6 Whitfield St 1870-1880. Artists’ colourman.

John Reeves (c.1814/16-1856), not to be confused with the much larger business of Reeves & Sons, was listed initially in directories as artists’ canvas maker from 1848, trading as an artists’ colourman from 1851 when he took on additional premises at 2 John St. He was recorded in the 1841 census in John St as an artists' colourman, age 27, with wife Ann, age 26, and similarly in the 1851 census but as age 35 and his wife age 40, with three sons, the eldest, John, age 7. He died in 1856, appointing his wife Anne as his executor. She continued the business until it was taken on in 1870 by her son, John Reeves. He was listed in the 1871 census at 6 Whitfield St as artists’ colourman, age 27, with wife Annie, age 25, and a young daughter. He was followed in business by Alexander Spicker (qv) in 1881.

Numerous marks on canvases have been recorded (two repr. Leach 1973), c.1846-1870s. Both addresses, 98 John St and 2 John St, appear on some marks. For illustrations, see British canvas, stretcher and panel suppliers’ marks. Part 6, O to Y. John Reeves’s mark is found on Stephen Pearce’s Sir Robert McClure, 1855 (National Portrait Gallery) and indistinctly on Henry Dawson’s Wooded Road Scene, 1855 (Lady Lever Art Gallery, see Morris 1994), while Ann Reeves’s is found on Emma King’s The Christening (or another in this set of six), 1863 (Foundling Hospital, London). John Reeves’s mark from 6 Whitfield St is found on Richard Whitford’s Prize sheep at rest in a landscape, 1871 (Bonham’s New Bond St 21 November 2007 lot 6).

John Reeves’s mark is also found on Ford Madox Brown’s Lear and Cordelia, 1848-9, in the form: J REEVES of 98 JOHN STREET, Fitzroy Square (Tate, see Townsend 2004 p.88). Madox Brown recorded getting millboards and canvas for studies from Reeves in October 1847 (Surtees 1981 p.10), probably John Reeves, rather than Reeves & Sons. In 1856 he recorded that Reeves prepared a canvas, apparently for Stages of Cruelty, begun 1856 (Manchester City Art Gallery), which had been recycled from one of the intended wings for Geoffrey Chaucer Reading to Edward III and his Court (see Surtees 1981 p.183).

This business should not to be confused with the various oil and colourmen called Reeves or Reeve, notably John Reeves, Brown St, Bryanston Square, 1817, William Reeves, colourman, King St, Hammersmith c.1839-40, and the Reeve family at 118 Fetter Lane and other addresses, 1817-51.

Sources: Leach 1973; Ayres 1985 p.214 (from notes by Ambrose Heal); Katlan 1992 p.461. For abbreviations, see Resources and bibliography.

Updated September 2017, September 2018, May 2023
Thomas Reeves, Fetter Lane, London by 1762, 133 Fetter Lane 1764-1776, scale maker. William & Thomas Reeves 1780-1783, Thomas Reeves & Son 1784-1799, W.J. Reeves 1799-1800, Reeves & Woodyer 1800-1816, Reeves, Woodyer & Reeves 1817-1818, W.J. Reeves & Son 1818-1829, Reeves & Sons 1830-1890, Reeves & Sons Ltd 1890-1976, Reeves from 1976. At the Blue Coat Boy, 2 Well Yard, Little Britain, West Smithfield by 1780-1782, The Blue Coat Boy & Kings Arms, 80 Holborn Bridge 1782-1783, The Kings Arms & Blue Coat Boy, 80 Holborn Bridge 1784-1829, 150 Cheapside 1829-1845, also 20 Throgmorton St 1831-1857, 113 Cheapside 1845-1940, works and, later, head office, 18 Ashwin St, Dalston E8 1868-1954, Lincoln Road, Enfield, Middlesex 1921-1981, Whitefriars Avenue, Wealdstone, Middlesex HA3 5QN from 1981. Manufacturing artists’ colourmen and lead pencil makers.

Thomas Reeves (1736-99), like his older brother, William Reeves (qv), was educated at the Blue Coat School, Christ’s Hospital, and the brothers later used the blue coat boy as their trade sign as artists’ colourmen. They were in partnership between 1780 and 1783.

Thomas was made a Freeman of the Blacksmiths’ Company in 1762 and traded as a scale maker at 133 Fetter Lane, 1764-76 (Gloria Clifton, Directory of British Scientific Instrument Makers 1550-1851, 1995, p.229). A damaged set of jewellers’ scales with a brass compartment, engraved 'T.Reeves/ Fetter Lane', is in a private collection (information from Peter Noyce, May 2016). Reeves was variously described as a scale maker of Fetter Lane and as a blacksmith when he took an apprentice, Leybourne Arrowsmith, in 1765 for £7.7s (Gazeteer and New Daily Advertiser 6 May 1765; Boyd); he took a second apprentice, Richard Pass in 1770. Later, Edward Kebby (qv) claimed to have been his apprentice. He appears to have continued trading in Fetter Lane until 1775 or later (ECCO). He was in Fetter Lane by the time his first child was christened at St Dunstan-in-the-West in 1762. He and his wife, Elizabeth, had four children between 1762 and 1768, of whom the eldest surviving son, William John, succeeded to the business.

Thomas Reeves was described by his brother, William, as a scale maker previous to the year 1780. William claimed that he had hired his brother as a journeyman and servant in 1780, before taking him into partnership (Morning Post 3 March 1785, The Times 3 September 1785). Their short-lived partnership as colour makers from about 1780 until 1783 was marked by the award of the Society of Arts’ silver palette in April 1781 for the invention of the watercolour cake. For further details of the partnership’s activities, see the entry for William Reeves, below.

From 1783 until at least 1811 and possibly as late as 1816, there were two rival businesses trading by the name of Reeves. But it was that of the elder brother, Thomas Reeves, which became the celebrated 19th-century business which continued until the late 1970s and whose name has recently been revived.

1. Thomas Reeves & Son, 1784-1799. Thomas Reeves set up in business independently, remaining at 80 Holborn Bridge, following the partnership breakup in December 1783. From 1784 he was trading as Thomas Reeves & Son. In 1790 the business was listed both as T. Reeves & Son, colour manufacturers (Andrews’ directory) and as Thomas Reeves & Son, superfine colourmen (Wakefield’s directory). The business held an appointment from 1790 as Colourman to Her Majesty, Queen Charlotte (The World 15 January 1790) and to the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV (Goodwin 1960 p.28).

Several trade cards and trade sheets are known: as ‘T. Reeves and Son, Superfine COLOUR Manufacturers,… At No. 80 Holborn-Bridge, London’ (Banks coll. 89.33, with added date 1786), as ‘T. Reeves & Son Superfine Colour Manufacturer’ (label in watercolour box, 1795 or later, Winsor & Newton archive, repr. Ayres 1985, p.110); as Reeves & Son at 80 Holborn Bridge, with a long list of materials, including ‘Compleat Boxes of Colours which Contains every Article for Drawing’, ranging from 12 to 40 colours, ‘Compleat Setts of Body Colours/ Fine Swiss Crayons/ English Crayons/ Crayon Pencils/ Best Black Lead Pencils’, various brushes, ‘Compl.t Chests of Oil Colours’, but no mention of canvas (Heal coll. 89.124, repr. Krill 2002 p.111); as Messrs Reeves at the same address with a similar but less extensive list of materials, now including ‘Primed Canvas of all Sizes, for Oil Painting’ (Heal coll. 89.125).

The export of materials to India formed an important part of Reeves’s trade as early as 1786 (Goodwin 1966 pp.26-7). Reeves’s colours in boxes were advertised for sale in Calcutta in 1787 and, by auction, in 1790 (Calcutta Chronicle 25 October 1787, India Gazette 10 May 1790). For later connections to India, see below. Reeves’s superfine watercolours, supplied by one branch of the family or another, were widely advertised for sale in the Americas, e.g., in Quebec by 1791 and in 1794, 1818 and subsequently, Baltimore by 1792, Jamaica by 1794, Boston by 1799, Philadelphia by 1804, New York by 1813 and in 1815, 1819 and 1820. The miniaturist, Archibald Robertson, writing from New York in September 1800, stated that the colours he used were all Reeves’s except for white which he prepared himself (Emily Robertson (ed.), Letters and Papers of Andrew Robertson..., 2nd ed., 1897, p.21, see also p.37). Reeves’s colours were also available in Rotterdam in 1814 (Rotterdamsche Courant 12 March 1814) and in Florence at Giuseppe Molini & Co in 1817 (Guida per osservare con metodo le raritá e bellezze delle cittá di Firenze, 1817, p.263, accessed through Google Books).

An early example of a watercolour block from T. Reeves & Son has been subject to technical analysis (Townsend 2003 p.141, fig.118, see also Ormsby 2005 where a range of early Reeves colours is discussed).

2. Reeves & Woodyer, etc, 1799-1818. Thomas Reeves died in August 1799 (The Times 8 August 1799). His will had been witnessed by William Woodyer in April 1797. His son, William John Reeves (1764-1827), succeeded to the business and briefly traded in his own right, advertising under his own name (The Times 26 December 1799) before going into partnership with Woodyer, advertising as Reeves & Woodyer in April 1800 (The Times 1 April 1800) and as W.J. Reeves & Woodyer (late T. Reeves & Son) in 1801: ‘W.J. Reeves & Co. have now ready …a large Assortment of plain and complete Boxes, with Colours etc, fitted up, of all dimensions. Likewise Swiss and English Crayons, sable and camel-hair pencils, brushes, lead pencils, copal varnish, for ladies’ work, Bristol and every other sort of drawing paper, paletts, chalks, India and British ink, portfolios,…, body colours, drawing instruments, sketch books,…, ivories for miniatures, etc…’ (The Times 22 January 1801, information from Helen Smailes). The business used the same designation, ‘W.J. Reeves and Woodyer (late T. Reeves & Son)’, on its trade label (Heal coll. 89.131). William John Reeves and William Woodyer took out insurance as water colourmen at 80 Holborn Bridge on 11 July 1807 (Sun Fire Office policy registers, 441/804572).

Reeves & Woodyer was one of three businesses singled out in 1811 by the drawing master and Royal Academy exhibitor, John Cart Burgess, as having brought watercolours to the greatest perfection, the other two being James Newman and Smith, Warner & Co (qv) (John Cart Burgess, A Practical Essay on the Art of Flower Painting, 1811, p.32): ‘Mr Reeves has long had, and still continues to have, a deservedly celebrated name’, Burgess stated, singling out certain colours made by Reeves & Co as peculiarly excelling those of other manufacturers: Light Red, Carmine (‘far superior to any other’), Indigo Blue, Prussian Blue, Blue Black, Burnt Terra Sienna and Burnt Umber. In the same year, 1811, another commentator, Paul Sandby’s biographer, while attributing improvements in watercolours to John Middleton (qv), described them as ‘now brought to so great perfection by Reeves, Newman, and others’ (Monthly Magazine 1 June 1811, see Burlington Magazine, vol.88, 1946, p.146).

In 1817 and 1818 directory listings for the business take various forms including Reeves, Woodyer & Reeves (Post Office), Reeves & Woodyer (Underhill’s) and Woodyer & Reeves (Kent’s, Johnstone’s). In June 1818 the partnership between William John Reeves and William Woodyer was dissolved (London Gazette 11 July). The firm in future traded as W.J. Reeves & Son. What happened to William Woodyer is not known but it is worth noting that a man of this name, resident at Grosvenor Place, Camberwell, was recorded in the 1851 census, age 75, and died in 1852 (PCC wills).

3. W.J. Reeves & Son, then Reeves & Sons, 1819-1890. By 1819 William John Reeves was 65 and the business became W.J. Reeves & Son, when his son, James Reeves (1794-1868), was taken into partnership. Subsequently in 1827 another son, Henry Reeves (1804-77), joined the business. His daughter, Maria (1799-1855), married Henry William Wild (1796-1875) in 1821. Following William John's death in 1827, the business became Reeves & Sons. In his will William John Reeves was described as of Woburn Place, presumably his residence; he was variously listed as artist in watercolours at no.5 Woburn Place (Ayres 1985 p.214) and no.4 (Robson’s directory, 1828).

A rough sketchplan of Reeves’s premises at 80 Holborn Bridge can be found on the reverse of a design by the architect, J.B. Papworth (George McHardy, Catalogue of the Drawings Collection of the RIBA. Office of J.B. Papworth, 1977, p.25). In 1829 the two brothers, James and Henry, relocated the business from Holborn Bridge to 150 Cheapside, a move which has been described as misguided in view of the general tendency of artists to move further west in London (Reeves typescript history, see Sources below). Premises were also opened in Throgmorton St in 1831 which continued in use until 1857 (Staples 1984 p.47).

As Reeves & Woodyer, the business had advertised as ‘colour-makers to the Honourable East India Company’ (Goodwin 1966 p.28). This trade grew in significance in the 1820s and 1830s (Goodwin 1966 p.29) and subsequently Reeves’s annual income from the East India Company amounted to as much as £6000, or some 25 to 30% of the firm’s overall turnover (Goodwin 1966 p.38).

James Reeves retired in 1847 and in the following year two of his nephews, the brothers Henry Bowles Wild (1825-82) and Charles Kemp Wild (1832-1912), were taken into the business (Goodwin 1966 p.36); they were both listed as artists’ colourmen in the 1851 census, ages 26 and 18, residing with their father, Henry Wild, a wine merchant at 98 St Martin’s Lane. On the retirement of Henry Reeves in 1866 (London Gazette 29 January 1867), control moved to the Wild family who made the decision to remove manufacturing from Cheapside to a much larger site in Dalston, where they built a four-storey factory in 1867 (Goodwin 1966 p.36). In census records Charles K. Wild was listed in 1871 at 26 Thurlow Road, Hampstead, as an artists’ colour manufacturer, employing 38 men and 8 boys, with his wife, two daughters and three sons and four servants, and in 1881 at Thornlea, Fitzjohns Avenue, as artists’ colourman, employing 56 men and 22 boys. Over the previous few decades the Wilds had added as customers the Science and Art Department at South Kensington, the War Office, the Ordnance Survey Office and, in 1875, the new London School Board, subsequently the London County Council (Goodwin 1966 pp.38-9, 41).

The business had accounts with Roberson as W.J. Reeves & Son, May 1821 to February 1822, and as Reeves & Sons, 1828-1908, for both purchases and sales (Woodco*ck 1997). It supplied some pigment samples to George Field for testing (Harley 1979 pp.79-81) and later subscribed to his Chromatography, 1835 (Carlyle 2001 p.18 n.25).

3.1 Reeves’s products, 1819-90: Reeves’s watercolours were more widely stocked than other makes in the early 19th century, including in London by William Jones (qv) in 1819, in Edinburgh by Robert Hamilton in 1824 (The Scotsman 29 December 1824) and by Alexander Hill (qv) in 1841, in Keswick by Banks, Foster & Co (qv) in 1846, in Paris by Susse frères in 1838 (S. Bottin, Almanach du Commerce de Paris, 1838), in the United States by Bourne’s Depository of Arts, New York (trade catalogue, 1830, see Katlan 1992 p.314) and in Hobart, Australia at Mr Kerr’s in 1825, the Courier Office in 1831 and by J.W. Davis in 1836 (Hobart Town Gazette 18 February 1825; Hobart Town Courier 3 September 1831, information from Michael Rosenthal; Colonial Times 26 July 1836, see Burgess 2003 p.243). Reeves altered their watercolour tablet stamp to a new shield design, which they reproduced in their catalogue of c.1829, with details of their new address, 150 Cheapside, on the reverse, in the face of what they described as ‘spurious imitations and base forgeries’.

Catalogues and price lists before 1845 are rare. An example is their catalogue of c.1829, Catalogue of Improved Superfine Water Colours &c. manufactured and sold by Reeves & Sons, 150 Cheapside, watermark 1828 (Durham University Library, Samuel B. Howlett papers, Add.MS 872 enclosure 1, 4ff., see Catalogue of Additional Manuscripts 871-884: Howlett Papers; for another example, reproducing the catalogue page-by-page, see The Whimsie Studio. Another is a trade sheet from the 1830s, referring to W.I. Reeves & Son as being removed from 80 Holborn Bridge, and advertising boxes of watercolours, Reeves & Sons’ prepared lead pencils for artists, and marking ink for writing on linen, together with Brookman & Langdon’s pencils and Turnbull’s Bristol and London boards, also including a ‘List of Colours with the most useful tints produced by their combinations’. (Superfine Colour Manufacturers, Lead Pencil Makers, and General Fancy Stationers, 150, Cheapside, London. [Every Description of Material for Drawing and Painting]). Catalogues and price lists from 1846, quoted in this history, are held in an excellent sequence in the Reeves collection at the Museum of London. A good sequence from 1852 is housed at Winsor & Newton (see Carlyle 2001 p.278). Reeves’s tube and powder colours, as listed in their catalogues, have been tabulated, together with their dates of first and last appearance (Carlyle 2001 pp.537-40).

Reeves advertised in The Art Union, for example, as the sole agent for Spillsbury's watercolour preservative (February 1842 p.22), advertising new fresco panels and vitrified fresco colours, patented in 1842, and warning against black lead pencils fraudulently marketed as being made by them (January 1843 p.26). Also their Cartoon Pencils, registered 1843, requiring no pointing (April 1843 p.98) and wax watercolours in cakes (December 1844 p.363). Reeves submitted samples of its new wax colours to the Royal Society of Arts in 1849 and received an award for its moist colours at the Great Exhibition in 1851 (Goodwin 1966 p.34). In 1846 it specified its watercolours as wax colours, with the description, ‘Pure Virgin Wax, chemically prepared, being the medium used in the manufacture of these Colours. The old method of Gum is entirely superseded.’ (Export List, 1846, copy in Museum of London).

Reeves’s 1856 catalogue includes testimonials from Henry Bright, William Etty, T.H. Fielding, C.R. Leslie, John Martin, Sir William Newton, Samuel Prout and Clarkson Stanfield; among items stocked were watercolours, moist watercolours, boxes of watercolours, oil colours in collapsible tubes, powder colours, oils and varnishes, brushes, drawing papers, Turnbull’s Bristol Boards and Mounting Boards, drawing and sketch books, pencils including a section of ‘Remarks on the lead pencil’, chalks and crayons, mathematical drawing instruments and accessories (Artists’ Colour Manufacturers, Lead Pencil and Mathematical Drawing Instrument Makers, 47pp, appended to Henry Warren, Painting in Water Colours, Part 1, 1856). Reeves’s 1862 trade price list sets out their full range of solid sketchbooks and blocks in eight sizes and three Whatman paper weights in three or four finishes, as well as in crayon paper.

Reeves published some instruction manuals for artists from about 1852 (Goodwin 1966 p.37), but many fewer than Rowney or Winsor & Newton; examples include Henry Warren, Painting in Water Colours, 1856, E. Campbell Hanco*ck, China Colours and How to Use Them, 1880, and Charles G. Harper, Some English Sketching Grounds, 1897.

Few early marked canvases are known, suggesting that the supply of canvas was not a significant part of the business at this stage; examples are Alvan Fisher’s Autumnal Landscape with Indians, 1848 (Corcoran Gallery of Art, see Katlan 1987 p.277), John Frederick Herring, Horses and Pigs, c.1864 (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne), Frank Paton's Jewel, 1886 (Walker Art Gallery, see Morris 1996), Tom Roberts’s The Artists' Camp, 1886 (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne) and Wyke Bayliss's The White Lady of Nuremberg, exh.1887 (Walker Art Gallery, see Morris 1996). Labelled panels include Alfred Stannard’s Seascape (Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery) and Eugène von Guérard’s Mount William and part of the Grampians in West Victoria, 1865 (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne). For illustrations of Reeves canvas stamps and panel labels, see the guide, on this website.

John Wood used both Reeves colours etc, itemised at £25.10s, and Winsor & Newton colours, for his large altarpiece, The Ascension, 1844-5 (St James, Bermondsey, see Martin Myrone, Making the Modern Artist, 2020, pp.166, 209, fig.190). John Linnell used ‘Reeves’ during the 1850s, paying for canvas in 1851 and 1855, a gross of brushes in 1853, among other materials, as the artist’s account book shows (Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 23-2000). The watercolour artist, Alfred William Hunt, used five Reeves sketchbooks between about 1886 and 1895 (Ashmolean Museum, see Newall 2004 pp.173-8).

4. Reeves & Sons Ltd, 1890-1950. Following the death of Henry Bowles Wild in 1882, his brother, Charles Kemp Wild, became head of the business, and was followed in 1896 by his son, Charles James Wild (1865-1923), who was Managing Director until 1923. Reeves became a private company in about 1883 and seven years later a public limited company.

A snapshot of the business in 1897 can be gained from a prospectus for the issue of preference shares in the company (British Review and National Observer 5 June 1897). The five directors were all descendants of the founder: Charles Kempe Wild as chairman, his nephews, Henry Edgar Wild (1855-1922) and Bertram William Wild (1859-1912) and his sons Charles James Wild and Harry Reginald Wild (1868-1931), with another son, Gilbert Louis Wild (1864-1914), as company secretary. Reeves’s shop and warehouse on five floors and basem*nt at 113 Cheapside, occupied for the past 50 years, was held on a lease expiring in 1909. There were branches at 13 Charing Cross Road, 8 Exhibition Road, 161 Kensington High St and 140 High St, St John’s Wood, all on 21 year leases and opened within the past year or two. The freehold factory at Dalston, erected in 1867, was added to from time to time as needed. Customers included many leading artists, architects and engineers, likewise the War Office, Admiralty, Board of Agriculture, Stationery Office, also the Indian and Colonial governments, the School Boards of London and Manchester and the principal art schools, technical schools and polytechnics. The chairman was described as actively engaged in the business for half a century and much the largest shareholder. Average net profit for the previous seven years was £4387 (£6958 in 1896).

In 1912 the allotted capital employed by the business amounted to almost £115,000, of which £20,000 in ordinary shares was almost entirely held by the directors, four of whom were great-great-grandsons of the original Thomas Reeves (Price List of Artists’ Materials manufactured by Reeves & Sons, Ltd, September 1912, 288pp). From 1923 the joint managing directors were the brothers, Louis Charles Simmons (1885-1970) and Archibald Guy Simmons (1886-1974), nephews of Charles J. Wild and great-great-great-grandsons of the founder (Reeves’ Professional Price List, c.1935, pp.17-18). Louis Charles Simmons was listed as director and manager artists’ colour manufacturer in the 1921 census and as managing director in the 1939 England and Wales Register. He died in 1970 leaving an estate worth £27,741. Archibald Guy Simmons has proved less easy to trace. He died in 1974 leaving an estate worth £29,280.

By about 1934 the registered capital stood at £300,000. Reeves is reported to have acquired Lechertier Barbe (qv) (Goodwin 1966 p.39), perhaps in 1898 when this business was incorporated as Lechertier Barbe Ltd and took on a branch at Brighton, but the nature of this arrangement needs to be clarified. Reeves acquired James Newman Ltd in 1936 (Goodwin 1966 p.43).

By then the freehold factory at Dalston was devoted solely to the manufacturer of artists’ and students’ colours, pastels, artists’ brushes, prepared canvases and other painting grounds. A leasehold factory at Belsham St, Hackney, was occupied as a woodworking shop for the manufacture of colour boxes, drawing boards, T squares, easels, palettes, etc, and another leasehold factory at Wayland Avenue, Hackney was used to produce sketchbooks, portfolios and other bookbinding work. By about 1934 a new factory had been erected at Bush Hill Park.

Reeves’s historic premises at 113 Cheapside, occupied since 1845, were destroyed by bombing in 1940 and their works at Dalston were badly damaged (Staples 1984 pp.46-7). The Greyhound Colour Works at Enfield were constructed on land acquired in 1921 and the manufacturing plant expanded by 1927; a new factory was built and the company’s main offices moved there from Dalston in 1948 (Goodwin 1966 p.42, Staples 1984 p.46).

From the late 19th century, Reeves maintained a network of showrooms and retail outlets across London, advertised from 1894. The City: 53 Moorgate St EC 1898-1916; trade showroom 4 Farringdon Avenue 1899-1919; 29 Ludgate Hill EC, 1900-17. Kensington: 8 Exhibition Road, South Kensington 1894-1909; 19 Lower Phillimore Place 1894-6; 161 High St Kensington 1896-1927; 187 High St Kensington 1928-34, 178 High St Kensington 1934-60, 1975-84 (operated as Clifford Milburn 1960-76, as ‘Reeves’ 1980-87, as ‘Reeves Dryad’ by 1990). St John’s Wood: 140 St John's Wood High St 1896-1900; 14 Circus Road, 1901-11 (taken over by Leonard William Sanders who ceased trading in 1915, owing Reeves £997). West End: 13 Charing Cross Road 1897-1962, 1975 (operated by Clifford Milburn from 1960, operating as Cass Arts Ltd by 1979); 101 High Holborn 1903-11 (opening advertised The Studio 15 June 1903). Most of these outlets traded as Reeves’ Artists Depots Ltd from 1902 to 1919, although this company was not wound up until 1976 (London Gazette 6 July 1976). By 1960 until 1976 Reeves’s shops were managed by their retail subsidiary, Clifford Milburn Ltd (qv).

4.1 Reeves products and markets, 1890-1950: In 1892 Reeves devoted four pages of their trade catalogue to a statement and tabulation of the permanence of their colours at a time when there was much concern on the subject. In 1896 Reeves moved away from advertising both a trade and a retail price to just a list price but with trade and export discounts (Price List of Artists’ Materials, 1896, annotations by C.J. Wild, managing director, Museum of London, 74.343 9/246).

Reeves advertised in The Year's Art 1884-1904, for example in 1893, ‘Lawrence Phillips’ Sketching Palette, Made only by us, is the most practical invention of the present day’. Later, they advertised regularly in The Artist: the quality of their canvas (March 1934), pastels in 250 tones, giving the Dalston address and that of their associated company in Canada (March 1937); artists' requisites for outdoor sketching (June 1934); also Goya artists’ oil colours (Art Review 1935).

Following the demise of the OW Paper and Arts Co Ltd (qv) in 1914, Reeves & Son was one of five businesses, including Winsor & Newton, George Rowney, C. Roberson and James Newman, acting together as Associated Colour Merchants, which signed an agreement in 1916 with J. Barcham Green & Son to produce a range of papers for them, watermarked ‘A.C.M.’ and the words ‘Watercolour Paper England’ (Barcham Green 1994, p.35).

Reeves’s export markets in the mid-19th century grew to include Peru, Brazil, Russia and the United States (Goodwin 1966 p.35). Their trade catalogue in 1898 (Price List of Artists’ Materials), listed wholesale agents in Paris, Bombay, Melbourne, Buenos Aires and Santiago, while their c.1954 catalogue listed principal agents in Melbourne, Sydney, Colombo, Karachi, Lahore, Auckland, Cape Town and Johannesburg (Reeves’ Catalogue no.100, 82pp). Their products can be traced in trade catalogues published in various countries, as in the following examples. In Australia by H.J. Corder Pty Ltd, Melbourne (Everything for the Artist. The H.J. Corder Revised Price List, c.1910, 20pp). In Canada by Reeves’s own subsidiary, established in 1927, Reeves & Sons (Canada) Ltd, Toronto (Reeves Artists’ Materials Catalogue no. 15a, 1960, 111pp). In France by G. Sennelier, Paris (Catalogue General Illustré, 1904, cat. no.26, 160pp). In Italy by Ditta Luigi Calcaterra, Milan (Catalogo Generale Illustrato Anno 1901-02, 1902, 312pp). Reeves colours were advertised in Shanghai in the 1930s (Damian Lizun et al., ‘Technical examination of Liu Kang’s Paris and Shanghai painting supports (1929–1937)’, Heritage Science, 9: 37, 2021, p.4, doi.org/10.1186/s40494-021-00492-6).

4.2 Artists using Reeves’s materials, 1890-1950: Examples of Reeves’s marked supports from the 1890s, 1900s and later include Samuel Melton Fisher's Flower Makers, c.1896? (Walker Art Gallery, see Morris 1996), Aby Altson’s Meditation, 1896 (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne), Arthur Streeton’s The River, 1896, and Arkwright’s Valley, Derbyshire, 1911 (both National Gallery of Victoria), Herbert Draper’s The Lament for Icarus, panel, c.1898, A Water Baby, exh.1900, marked: REEVES AND SONS/ PREPARED CANVAS/ LONDON (Manchester Art Gallery), and The Kelpie, exh.1913 (Lady Lever Art Gallery, see Morris 1994), Charles Kerr’s Myself, exh.1899 (Tate), Edward Poynter’s The Vision of Endymion, 1902 (Manchester Art Gallery) and Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale’s Time the Physician, panel, exh. 1900 (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, information from Jevon Thistlewood). Charles Henry Sims used Reeves sketch pads, c.1898-1905 (Colbourne 2011 p.976). For illustrations of Reeves canvas stamps and panel labels, see the guide, on this website.

John Gilbert used a waxed water megilp prepared by Reeves as a watercolour medium (The Portfolio 1876 p.13; see also Reeves’s advert, The Studio, 15 November 1897, information from Sally Woodco*ck). A testimonial from him admiring Reeves’s colours, especially the Raw Sienna, was later quoted in Reeves’s trade catalogue (Price List of Artists’ Materials, Oil Colours, Water Colours, 1892, 164pp); the same publication quoted testimonials from other artists including Oswald Brierly (‘I have used your colours for years’) and H. Stacy Marks. From the 1890s, those providing testimonials included Frank Brangwyn (‘I am taking your colours with me to Italy’), Walter Crane and W.E. Lockhart (‘Concerning Reeves’ Colours’, in Charles G. Harper, Some English Sketching Grounds, Reeves & Sons Ltd, 1897).

Marked materials from the 1910s, 1920s and subsequently include Sir John Lavery’s The Beach, Tangier, 1911 (Sotheby’s Orientalist sale, 30 March 2021 lot 33) and Sir Lionel Cust, 1912 (National Portrait Gallery), Richard Jack’s Rehearsal with Nikisch, 1912 (Tate), C.R. Nevinson’s Motor Transport, 1916 (Private coll.), three paintings by James Pryde, The Red Ruin, 1916, The Blue Ruin, c.1918, and The Husk, early 1920s (private coll., see Powell 2006 pp.46-8), Mark Gertler's Still Life with Self-Portrait, c.1918 (Leeds Art Gallery), Philip de László's Jerome K. Jerome, 1921 (National Portrait Gallery), Reginald Grenville Eves's Julia Neilson, c.1920, Sir Frank Benson, 1927, and Lucille Lisle, 1931 (all Theatre Museum, London, see Ashton 1992 pp.122, 129, 132) and Stanley Baldwin, c.1933 (National Portrait Gallery) and George Bell’s Flower piece, 1926 (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne). Gertrude Hermes used Reeves’s sketchbooks, 1918, 1949-52 (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, see Jane Hill, ‎The Sculpture of Gertrude Hermes, 2011, p.138).

Marked materials from the 1930s and 1940s include Edgar Hunt’s Ponies with co*cks and hens, 1930 (Bonham’s 23 June 2015 lot 84), Charles Ginner’s Hampstead Heath: Spring, 1932 (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, information from Jevon Thistlewood) and Flask Walk on Coronation Day, 1937 (Tate, see ‘The Camden Town Group in Context’, research project, on the Tate website), Oskar Kokoschka’s Loreley, 1941-2 (Tate, see Tate database, ‘Technique and condition’, report by Peter Booth), E.S. Swinson's Beatrice Webb, 1934, James Gunn's Earl of Crawford, 1939, and his Leopold Amery, 1942 (all National Portrait Gallery). The business was in correspondence with Gluck concerning the appearance of her paintings from the late 1930s (Sitwell 1990). Edward Burra described Reeves as ‘a shop I loathe’ in correspondence in 1943 but was glad enough to get paper there when a new consignment arrived (Jane Stevenson, Edward Burra: Twentieth-Century Eye, 2007, p.288). Arthur Boyd recalled using Winsor & Newton, Talens, Frater and Reeves colours until 1940 (see Vanessa Kowalski and Nicole Tse, 'Arthur Boyd's painting materials in the 1940s: A case study of works from the Heide Museum of Modern Art collection', AICCM Bulletin, vol.34, 2014, p.26).

5. Reeves & Sons Ltd from 1950. In their 1952 catalogue, Reeves stated that all six directors of the business were great-great-great-grandsons of the original Thomas Reeves, adding that during the last 30 years the business had additionally specialized in making colour in bulk for the manufacture of a variety of merchandise, including linoleum, printers’ inks, wallpaper, etc, to which list plastics were added in their 1959 catalogue.

An account of Reeves’s manufacturing processes at their Enfield works, including the laboratory, the mill room, the quality inspection laboratory and the wider process of producing varnishes, canvas, stretcher pieces, easels, palettes, brushes and every kind of artists’ materials, engaging a workforce of 300 to 400 people, was published in 1962 (Robert Wraight, ‘Artists’ Colourmen: 1 Reeves’, The Studio, October 1962, vol.164, pp.146-9).

Reeves introduced acrylic colours into their range in 1964 (Goodwin 1966 p.50), describing them as polymer colours ‘formulated on an acrylic vinyl polymer emulsion medium. They are fast drying yet tough and flexible, and can be applied to all non-oily surfaces, above all, they are non-yellowing and permanent, and for instant colour selection the clear P.V.C. tubes (an innovation for artists’ colours) provide an immediate advantage.’ (Reeves Pocket Catalogue, 1965). By the 1960s, if not rather before, their artists’ canvas was American made (Reeves General Catalogue, 1966). There is limited published evidence of leading artists using Reeves products post-war, exceptions being William Gear’s Summer Landscape, 1960 (Woolley & Wallis, Salisbury, 31 May 2022 lot 239) and Craigie Aitchison’s Garden, c.1970, on canvas, marked REEVES’ “A” CANVAS (Christie’s 21 October 2021 lot 278).

Reeves acquired Clifford Milburn (qv) by 1958. Reeves itself was the subject of a failed take-over bid by Heenan Beddow in 1971 (The Times 5 October 1971). This bid led Christopher Simmons (1922-98), Archibald Guy Simmons’s son, to approach Wilfed Cass for help. As told by Cass, Christopher Simmons and his immediate family effectively owned 25% of Reeves’ listed stock (Wilfred Cass, Here Comes Mr Cass, 2013, pp.125-39). Simmons, as acting managing director, wanted Cass to rescue Reeves from Heenan Beddow’s hostile bid by taking a stake in the Reeves business at a discount and turning it round. Cass refinanced the company, taking over as managing director. He saw Reeves as ‘really just a school paint supplier’, at least initially, and determined to broaden its range into the educational, leisure art and craft supplies market, in the first place offering products in association with an old-established Swedish company, Esselte Studium, and then by acquiring Dryad Ltd of Leicester, a firm dealing in art and craft materials, by means of an agreed share offer in 1972 (The Times 22 December 1972). He brought in Tim May and other contacts from Wolff Olins to refresh the Reeves product range, in the process winning a Design Council special award.

Reeves also supplied professional artists’ product of all kinds, as Cass acknowledges, and he goes on to tell how Henry Moore’s assistant, David Mitchison, contacted him one day about whether certain paints could be thinned and adapted to achieve particular effects in painting. This led to several meetings with Moore and encouraged Cass to develop his interest in sculpture (he eventually set up the Cass Sculpture Park in West Sussex, which continued until 2019).

Less than three years after Cass became managing director, the Reeves Dryad business was sold to Reckitt & Colman Ltd following an agreed bid in 1974 (The Times 8 June 1974). It was this change in ownership which may have led to the gift of part of Reeves’ archive to the Museum of London in 1974. Cass remained as managing director and chairman. Cass encouraged Reckitt & Colman Ltd to acquire Winsor & Newton Ltd in 1976, following a failed takeover bid by Lettraset (The Times 18 August 1976).

The Reeves name continued to be used for the retail premises at 178 Kensington High Street until 1989. Like Conté à Paris, Lefranc & Bourgeois, Liquitex and Winsor & Newton, Reeves is now owned by ColArt, a Swedish business, see company website. Along with the other fine art brands of Reckitt and Colman Ltd, the business was acquired in 1991 by AB Wilhelm Becker, who already owned ColArt. Reeves was revived as an actively used brand name in 2005, see Reeves’s website.

Sources: Reeves typescript history, untitled, c.1958 (National Portrait Gallery subject files). Michael Goodwin, Artist and Colourman, 1966, 51pp, published by Goodwin for Reeves on the occasion of their 200th anniversary; Hardie 1967; Leach 1973 (for the firm’s addresses); Clarke 1981 p.14, repr. William Reeves’s trade card; Ayres 1985 p.214; Katlan 1992 pp.462-3; Mireille Galinou and John Hayes, London in Paint, 1996, pp.137-140; Carlyle 2001 pp.278, 537-40; Krill 2002 pp.111, 118, 147. Portraits of various members of the Reeves family are reproduced in Staples 1984 pp.5, 8.

For Quebec, see Levenson 1983 pp.9, 39-40; see also Pierre-Olivier Ouellet, ‘The market of art materials in Quebec at the end of the 18th century: a study of Canadian artist François Baillairgé’s Journal (1784-1800)’, in A.H. Christensen and A. Jager (eds), Trading Paintings and Painters’ Materials 1550-1800, 2019, pp.99-110). For USA, see advertisem*nts in American newspapers, available at ‘American Historical Newspapers 1690-1876’, http:/infoweb.newsbank.com, including the Baltimore Evening Post 14 July 1792, Colombian Centinel (Boston) 16 March 1799, Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser (Philadelphia) 12 October 1804, The Statesman (New York) 27 January 1813, New York Courier 23 May 1815, New York Commercial Advertiser 20 June 1820, and Royal Gazette 12 July 1794 (Jamaica, from 18th-century Journals online). The Reeves company records are limited in extent and are divided between the Museum of London, consulted for this history, and Winsor & Newton, not consulted but see Carlyle 2001 p.278. For abbreviations, see Resources and bibliography.

Restructured September 2015, updated September 2018, May 2023
William Reeves to 1780, William & Thomas Reeves by 1780-1783, at the Blue Coat Boy, 2 Well Yard, Little Britain, West Smithfield, London by 1780-1782, The Blue Coat Boy & Kings Arms, 80 Holborn Bridge 1782-1783 (Thomas Reeves, see above, continued at this address). William Reeves 1784-1795, Reeves & Inwood 1796-c.1811 or later, John Inwood 1811-1815, 299 Strand (‘near the New Church’) 1784-1790, 300 Strand 1790-1813, warehouse under the Royal Exchange, 92 Cornhill 1785-1797. Artists’ colourmen.

William Reeves (?1739-1803), described as the son of Thomas Reeves, deceased, was apprenticed to John Gifford in August 1758 as a gold and silver wire-drawer (Webb 1998 p.20). Reeves married twice; the death of his first wife, Ann, was reported in 1783 (Whitehall Evening Post 26 July 1783), while that of his second, Hannah Maria, was mentioned by him in his will, made 1802, in which he made bequests to her nieces, Judith and Harriett Warner. For a profile portrait of William Reeves, see Staples 1984 p.8.

William’s older brother, Thomas (1736-99), traded as a scale maker in Fetter Lane before joining him in partnership in 1780. After their break-up, William claimed that he had initially hired his brother as a journeyman and servant (Morning Post 3 March 1785, The Times 3 September 1785).

William & Thomas Reeves 1780-83: There is apparently no early evidence to support the unverified statement that William Reeves was an employee of ‘Middleton', seemingly John Middleton (d.1818) (qv), a claim dating to c.1966 (Ayres 1985 p.108, from Brian Wild, The Romance of a Family Business, n.d., c.1966, not located). It has also been said that the Reeves brothers set up in business as colourmen as early as 1766 (Michael Goodwin, Artist and Colourman, 1966, p.17), or in 1777, according to Reeves’s late 19th century advertisem*nts (e.g., Royal Society of British Artists, exh.cat., 1889, p.ix). However, from William Reeves’s own claim in 1784, the partnership was not formed before 1780 (see below). While in 1784 he claimed to have been studying cake colours for upwards of 18 years, there is no evidence that he had been trading as a colourman previous to 1780; indeed, little is known of his early years. The brothers were awarded the Silver Palette of the Society of Arts in April 1781 for the invention of the watercolour cake, on the recommendation of Mary Black, Hendrik de Meyerand and Thomas Hearne (Goodwin 1966 pp.18-19). A writer in the Repository of Arts in 1813 (vol.9) credited the invention to William Reeves, who ‘about thirty years ago, turned his attention to the preparation of water colours, and, by his successful experiments, produced the elegant invention of forming them into cakes. Until this period, every artist was obliged to prepare his own colours’.

From their address at 2 Well Yard, Little Britain, and therefore c.1780-2, William and Thomas Reeves advertised as ‘Superfine Colour Makers’, with the claim that the business prepared 'all sorts of fine Colours to the greatest Perfection’, advertising ‘Double & Single Setts of Crayons, in all the Different Shades equal to the Italian. Colours for Miniature Painting. Compleat Setts of Colours in Potts, Warranted to Work at a touch in any Climate… LIKEWISE Their new Invented Cakes of all Colours, which will Work equal to the finest India-Ink. Fine Camp Paper, Black, Blue, and Red, for taking of drawings. Transparent paper for Tracing: Fine India Ink, and all Articles for Drawing’ (trade card, Heal coll. 89.122, repr. Goodwin 1966 opp. p.36).

The Reeves brothers were in business at 2 Well Yard at the time they took out a Sun Fire Office insurance policy on 9 July 1781 as superfine colour manufacturers, covering their utensils and stock for £500. The following year they advertised ‘upwards of forty neat colours for Miniatures, Landscape, Portrait, Mapping etc’, also advertising superfine crayons, pencils in cedars of all colours, all sorts of crayons in setts, equal to the Italian, and every article useful in drawing, giving their address as 80 Holborn Bridge, removed from Little Britain (Morning Herald 24 October 1782, see also Goodwin 1966 p.16). The actual move took place in July 1782 (Morning Herald 20 July 1782).

Messrs Reeves’s watercolours were stocked in Dublin by William Allen in 1781 (Dublin Evening Post 15 December 1781) and by J. Magee in 1782 (Louise O’Connor, ‘Hamilton’s pastel portraits: materials and techniques’, in Hugh Douglas Hamilton: A Life in Pictures, exh.cat., National Gallery of Ireland, 2008, p.53, n.18). In London, Reeves’s colours, were stocked by Mr Smith, presumably Lawrence Smith (qv), and Archibald Robertson (qv) in 1781, and by James Newman according to his trade card of c.1785. William Gilpin experimented with Reeves’ water colours in 1782 and recommended them to William Mason, writing, ‘I have tryed these colours and find them of such excellent temper, that they almost paint of themselves’, and compared them favourably against those supplied by other colourmen (Carl Paul Barbier, William Gilpin: His Drawings, Teaching and Theory of the Picturesque, 1963, pp.87-9). Alexander Dalrymple, hydrographer to the East India Company, recommended Reeves’s ‘coloured pencils’ in 1783 for colouring coastal views (General Collection of Nautical Publications by Dalrymple, 1783, p.13).

William Reeves 1784-95: The partnership broke up in 1783 (Staples 1984 p.10, inaccurately attributing this to a dispute on the supply of their paint cakes to Rowney). It was dissolved on 16 December 1783, according to William Reeves’s advertisem*nts, although the brothers continued to advertise as a partnership until February 1784 (Morning Herald 28 February 1784, 4 March 1784). Thomas Reeves then set up in business independently (see above, under Thomas Reeves), while William Reeves is said to have taken his son-in-law, George Blackman (qv) into the business, probably as an assistant (for 14 years, Blackman claimed), rather than as a partner as is sometimes said (Staples 1984 p.7).

William Reeves moved to 299 Strand where he took out a Sun Fire Office insurance policy on 5 January 1784, covering his utensils and stock for £500. In 1784 he advertised from this address that as superfine colour manufacturer he had ‘made it his chief study for upwards of eighteen years to invent his superfine Cake Colours’ (Whitley papers vol.3, p.288, quoting the Morning Herald 20 April 1784; see also later advertisem*nts such as that in The Times 2 May 1785). William Reeves issued various trade cards from this address (Heal coll. 89.13, Banks coll. 89.32, 89.34, 89.36 (added date 1785); an example repr. Clarke 1981 p.15). Other addresses are found for William Reeves in London directories: the warehouse ‘under the Royal Exchange’, 92 Cornhill, from 1785, seems to have been run as an agency by E. Hedges from 1789, while the 229 Strand address, 1787-94, appears to be a misprint.

Reeves is said to have admired certain colours produced by John Pine Coffin who had a short-lived manufactory for locally sourced Ochre and Umber at East Downe near Barnstable in about 1785 (letter from M.A. Pine-Coffin to Daniel Lysons, 22 January 1822, British Library, Add MSS 9426, item 385, information from Susan Sloman).

Both William Reeves, Holborn Bridge, and John Reeves, Strand, were listed as colourman and as members of the Blacksmiths’ company (information from Gordon Cox, 5 September 2008, derived from the Livery of London lists in the Universal British Directory, 1791-3).

William Reeves’s colours were sold wholesale by Henry Brookes (qv) in 1788 (V&A National Art Library, ‘Press Cuttings from English newspapers’, PP.17.G, p.779). Outside London, his colours were stocked in Bristol in 1783 by J. Norton, book and printseller, and in 1787 by John Hare (Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal 1 March 1783, 21 April 1787), in Norwich by William Stevenson (Norwich Chronicle 5 April 1788), in Bath by R. Cruttwell, S. Hazard & R. Ricards (Bath Chronicle 18 December 1793, 1 May 1794) and in Newcastle in 1795 by John Bell (John Bell, A Catalogue of a Valuable Collection of Books, 1795, p.1, ‘Reeve’s’, either William or Thomas).

Reeves & Inwood from 1796: William Reeves took John Inwood, son of the late John Inwood, as apprentice in September 1787 (Webb 1998 p.14) and then into partnership by 1796 when they advertised their products (The Times 12 March 1796). Reeves also took three other apprentices, presumably relatives of his second wife from their Warner surname: Richard in 1792, William in 1793 and Joseph in 1802, the latter being turned over to another master in November 1803 following Reeves’ death (Webb 1998 p.26). Inwood took out insurance as a water colourman on the dwelling house only at 300 Strand and on the adjoining house at 301 for a total of £600 in 1800.

William Reeves, colour manufacturer of Islington, died in 1803 without mentioning his business in his will, made 19 July 1802 and proved 18 June 1803, suggesting that he had already given up his interest. Reeves & Inwood advertised as Superfine Colour Preparers (label in watercolour box, Museum of London, repr. Ayres 1985 p.107). Another such paintbox contains cakes of paint bearing the Reeves & Inwood coat of arms (Winterthur Museum, repr. Krill 2002 p.120). Some Reeves & Inwood colours have been subject to recent technical analysis (Ormsby 2005). Inwood’s colours were stocked by William Jones, c.1818 (qv).

The business was described as Inwood, late Reeves & Inwood, in 1805 (Morning Chronicle 1 February 1805). However, John Inwood continued to take advantage of the Reeves name, trading as Reeves & Inwood, although by 1811 he was also listed under his own name in the Post Office directory. Holden’s 1811 directory listed at 300 Strand both Reeves & Inwood, colour manufacturers to the Royal Family, and John Inwood, superfine watercolour preparer to the Royal Family.

Directory listings for Reeves & Inwood are problematic. The last listing in the Post Office directory is in 1809 but Underhill’s directory (not necessarily accurate), successor to Holden’s, continued to list both Reeves & Inwood and John Inwood until 1822 while Kent’s directory listed the business as William Reeves from 1805 to 1818, first listing it as Reeves & Inwood in 1823, conflating both the Holborn Bridge and Strand addresses. The last known listing for Reeves & Inwood is in 1825 (Ayres 1985 p.214) at Holborn Bridge. The Reeves name was an attractive one to use for a business of this kind but it is clear that William Reeves gave up his interest in the business in or before 1803 while John Inwood sold out to the Driver family. By 1816 C.B. Driver (qv) had taken over Reeves & Inwood’s premises at 300 Strand, and subsequently Driver & Shaw advertised as successors to Reeves & Inwood.

Sources: London Metropolitan Archives, Sun Fire Office policy registers, 293/445509, 419/709599-600. For abbreviations, see Resources and bibliography.

Updated March 2022
James Regnier (active 1710, died 1752), Nicole Celeste Regnier (active 1753-1769), M. Regnier 1770. At Long Acre, London 1710, The Golden Ball, Newport St, Long Acre by 1712-1772 or later. Printsellers.

James (or Jacques) Regnier (?1692-1752), a Huguenot seal engraver and printseller, can perhaps be identified with the Jacques Regnier born in 1692, the son of Alexandre Regnier and Marie Lapere, and christened at the Church of Le Carré and Berwick St (Minet 1921 p.2). He was in business by 1710. He advertised his Picture Shop in Newport St in 1720, together with the drawing school at the same house, where watercolours were sold (Post Man and the Historical Account 9 April 1720). He also advertised as a seal engraver (e.g., Daily Courant 13 March 1712) but he may have given up this business by 1729 when he offered for sale a set of punches, fit for a seal engraver (Daily Courant 3 February 1729). In the same advertisem*nt, he advertised ‘all Sorts of the finest Water-Colours, Dry Crayons, or Pastels, Hair and Black Lead Pencils, Red, Black and White Chaulk… and Paper for Drawings’. He also advertised as a printseller (e.g., Daily Courant 22 April 1730, see Heal coll. 100.60). He was buried on 15 August 1752 (Murdoch 2021 p.301, n.56, see Sources below).

On a trade card, probably from the 1750s, ‘Regnier’ advertised among other goods, ‘All sorts of the finest Water Colours in Shells, ye Best crayons & Straining Frames for Painting, the best Lead pencils, Black White & red Chalk, French & Dutch Drawing paper, Portcrayons’ (Heal coll. 100.60, repr. Krill 2002 p.119; Guildhall Library).

Regnier was succeeded in business by his niece, Celeste Regnier or Reignier, who can be found in Westminster rate books in Great Newport St, 1753-64 and then as Celeste Roubiliac until 1771. She advertised artists’ equipment, varnish for japanning and colour prints in 1754 (Public Advertiser 25 July 1754, see Clayton 1997 p.111); she announced that she had removed five doors higher in Newport St in 1754 (Public Advertiser 1 August 1754). Celeste Regnier’s portrait was drawn in pastel by F.X. Vispré (sold Christie’s 20 March 1953 lot 120). She married a fellow Huguenot, the sculptor Louis François Roubiliac (1702-62), apparently his fourth wife, in November 1756 (Gazeteer and London Daily Advertiser 24 November 1756), and remained in Great Newport St until 1772 (Survey of London, vol.34, The Parish of St Anne Soho, 1966, p.345, available online at www.british-history.ac.uk). An artist, Elizabeth Carmichael, used her premises as an accommodation address in 1768 and 1769 when exhibiting at the Society of Artists and another artist, Robert Carver, used “Mr Regnier’s” as an accommodation address in 1770. The same year, it was “M. Regnier” who was named in advertisem*nts for the Regnier print business. Celeste took as her second husband Benjamin Taylor whom she married in 1767 (Murdoch 2021 p.301, n.57). As a printseller, late of Great Newport St, he was made bankrupt in 1772 (London Gazette 21 April 1772).

Sources: Tessa Murdoch, ‘Louis François Roubiliac and his Huguenot Connections’, Proceedings of the Huguenot Society, vol.24, 1983, pp.40-2, naming Nicole Celeste Regnier; Clayton 1997 pp.5, 109-11; Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, at www.pastellists.com/Suppliers.html#R , accessed 20 December 2021; Tessa Murdoch, ‘The business practice of Louis François Roubiliac, 1752-62’, Sculpture Journal, vol.30, 2021, p.295, with further biographical details. For abbreviations, see Resources and bibliography.

Updated March 2015, December 2020
William Waddell Rhind 1865-1909, William Yates Rhind 1910-1947, W.Y. Rhind Ltd 1948-1971. At 2 Waterloo Terrace, Regents Park, London 1865-1867, 69 Gloucester Road 1868-1939, renamed 1939, 69 Gloucester Avenue 1939-1951, 79 Gloucester Avenue 1952-1971, also 28 Albany St 1871. Chemists until 1911, artists’ colourman from 1912-1952 (also manufacturer of etching and engraving materials), engravers’ suppliers from 1953.

William Waddell Rhind (c.1833-1909), the son of Thomas Rhind, initially worked for Waugh & Co, Chemists to the Queen, according to his label as a pharmaceutical chemist. He set up independently in 1865 at 2 Waterloo Terrace, Regents Park, where he followed Frederick Loveband, chemist. He married Ellen Yates in 1864 in the Pancras district and died there in 1909, age 76. By the 1880s if not before, etching materials were one of his specialities. His portrait was etched in about 1886 by William Strang, a prominent customer (example, British Museum). In censuses, Rhind can be found in 1881 at 69 Gloucester Rd as a widower, age 42, born Berwick-on-Tweed, a chemist employing one man and a boy, with four children including William, age 11, and in 1901 as a chemist and shop keeper, age 68, with his son, William Y. Rhind, age 30. Rhind sold etching grounds and etching materials to Roberson, 1896-1902 (Hamilton Kerr Institute, MS 232-1993, p.592). He also had a purchase account with Roberson, 1903-8 (Woodco*ck 1997) and Rhind died in April 1909, leaving an estate worth £1281.

Rhind’s son, William Yates Rhind (1870-1946), sometimes William Yeates Rhind, was born in 1870 in the Pancras district and apparently married twice in 1908, firstly in the Pancras district and secondly in the Barnet district. He died in 1946, age 76, in the Hampstead district. In 1910, when described as a wholesale artists’ colourman, he set up Rhinds Cash Chemists Ltd jointly with Ernest Wing Carver but the enterprise was wound up voluntarily in 1915 (National Archives, BT 31/13439/112649, London Gazette 2 November 1915). In 1912 and subsequently he advertised as ‘Manufacturers of Etching Materials & Tools... Rhind’s Liquid Etching Grounds, used by most eminent etchers. Copper and Zinc plates of the best quality, coated or uncoated’ (The Year’s Art 1912 p.14; similar adverts until 1939). In London directories, the business’s primary listing was as chemists until 1911, artists’ colourmen from 1912-1952 and engravers’ suppliers from 1953.

In 1948, the business’s notepaper as W.Y. Rhind Ltd, artists’ colourmen, 69 Gloucester Avenue, gave R. Lechertier, probably René Lechertier (qv), and W. Wall as directors, suggesting that the business had passed outside family control following Rhind’s death in 1946. It advertised as ‘Manufacturers of Copper Plate Inks. Etching Grounds &c. Makers and Suppliers of Etching Materials. Sole Proprietor and Manufacturers of Eliza Turck’s Mediums &c’ (Tate Archive, TGA 8717/1/2/4184, letter to Ben Nicholson). Following the demise of Lechertier Barbe (qv), C. Roberson & Co. Ltd acquired the Rhind business and advertised as sole manufacturers and distributors of Rhind’s etching grounds and varnishes (The Artist vol.82, November 1971, p.68). Such products under the Rhind name continue to be available today from various retailers, including L. Cornelissen & Son (qv), Green & Stone Ltd (qv) and T.N. Lawrence & Son Ltd (qv).

Etching materials: In the Whistler papers in Glasgow University there is a 4-page pamphlet, dating to 1889 or later, advertising ‘Rhind's Liquid Etching Grounds (Dark and Transparent)’, as ‘Prepared only by W.W. Rhind, Pharmaceutical Chemist, (from Waugh & Co., Chemists to the Queen)’ (Glasgow University Library, MS Whistler R81). The pamphlet features letters of recommendation from artists including R.W. Macbeth, T.C. Farrer, Edward Slocombe, W.L. Wyllie and Charles Robertson, and lists etchings done on Rhind's plates. It also lists wholesale and retail agents as Winsor & Newton, G. Rowney & Co and, as agents for America, John Sellers & Sons (qv) of 17 Dey St, New York, and 151 Arundel St, Sheffield. The business advertised ‘Rhind’s liquid etching grounds used by most eminent etchers’ (The Studio vol.75, 14 December 1918, p.vi), and ‘Etching Materials as used by Ian Strang, R.E. And many other eminent Etchers’ (The Artist, vol.2, September 1931).

Rhind provided the sculptor Alfred Gilbert with modelling wax in 1897 (Cecil Gilbert, The Studio Diaries of Alfred Gilbert between 1890 and 1897, vol.2, 1992, p.34). Several of the ‘eminent etchers’ who provided personal notes on their methods to E.S. Lumsden for his book, The Art of Etching, 1924, refer to using Rhind’s etching ground, including Augustus John, Percy Smith, Laura Knight and John Everett. Augustus John also used Rhind’s ‘English Mordant’ and Everett his stopping out varnish.

For abbreviations, see Resources and bibliography.

Added September 2018
Richard & Wilson by 1829-1844, Wilson, Richard & Co 1844-1851, John Edmund Richard 1852-1867, John Edmund and George William Richard 1868-1870, J.E. Richard & Co 1871-1894, Fuller & Richard 1894-1915, Fuller & Mead Ltd 1916-1923 or later. At 26 & 27 St Martin’s Court, Leicester Square, London by 1829-1855, 10 St Martin’s Court 1854-1894, 80 (also 81) St Martin’s Lane 1854-1894, 44 & 46 Charing Cross Road 1895-1903, 41 Great Windmill St 1904-1917 or later. Wholesale stationers and account book manufacturers, suppliers of mill board.

The Richard business is included here for its supply of mill-board to Charles Roberson & Co. It was listed in Pigot & Co’s 1839 London directory as a wholesale stationers and account book manufacturers and in the Post Office 1846 directory also as mill board manufacturers.

The business supplied Roberson & Co with very large quantities of mill boards and some paper, 1842-53, and subsequently until 1907 or later (Hamilton Kerr Institute, MS 944-1993, 183-1993, 204-1993,232-1993). It informed Roberson of a price reduction in their best mill boards in 1848, referring to ‘the acknowledged superior quality of Angell’s manufacturer’ (Hamilton Kerr Institute, MS 961-1993 in MS 944-1993, p.448). It moved premises in St Martin’s Court from nos 26 & 27 to no.10, its leases for £378 p.a. on its old premises, a double fronted shop, warehouse and dwelling house, being advertised for sale at auction in 1853 (Daily News 5 May 1853). Samuel Palmer recommended the business to Julia Richmond for mounting board in 1857, adding that his friend Charles Porcher got his mounting boards there (Lister 1974 pp.526-7). Palmer also noted that they [Richard’s] had built a handsome new brick house, presumably at 10 St Martin’s Court.

The business was managed by John Edmund Richard (1819-79) for many years. He was christened at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster, in 1819, the son of John and Maria Richard. He was apprenticed to his father, a stationer, in 1833. He married Frances McCallam in 1843, his residential address being given as 13 Craven St, Strand, where he remained until at least 1856. His wife died in 1844 and he remarried, to Eliza Stephenson in 1849. In census records he can be found in Warwick Road, Paddington, in 1851, as a wholesale stationer, age 32, with his wife Eliza and four daughters, and in 1871 in Kensington, age 52. Richard had an interest in science and was elected a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1859 (Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol.40, 1880, pp.204-5). He died in October 1879 at the age of 61 after a severe illness of four months (The Standard 28 October 1879). At his death probate on his estate, worth under £4000, was granted to his widow Eliza.

In 1894 J.E. Richard & Co of 80 St Martin’s Lane and B. Fuller & Co of 44 & 46 Charing Cross Road announced their amalgamation as Fuller & Richard under the proprietorship of the partners of Fuller & Co, with Mr. G.W. Richard, sole proprietor of J.E. Richard & Co, retiring from business (notice sent to Roberson & Co, Hamilton Kerr Institute, MS 204-1993, p.315).

Fuller & Richard opened new purpose-built premises in Great Windmill St, Soho in 1904 (the year and the business’s name are carved in stone on the striking façade, as can be seen in an image on Flickr at www.flickr.com/photos/maggiejones/15919344101). In 1914 the partners were George Henry Turner and George Calder Turner and the business’s specialities were described as writing, drawing, printing and wrapping papers; millboards and strawboards (Who's Who in Business, 1914, accessed through ‘Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History’).

Added September 2018
Richards & Co 1834-1898, Richards Ltd from 1898. At Broadford Works, Aberdeen from 1834. London office: 45 Bread St, EC by 1839-1884, 22 Lawrence Lane, EC 1885-1900, 4A Lawrence Lane from 1901. Spinners and linen bleachers, linen and canvas manufacturers.

Richards & Co acquired the Broadford Works in Aberdeen in 1834. The business produced canvas tarpaulins and particularly fire hose among many other products, using power looms. At its peak it had 3000 workers and was the largest employer in Aberdeen. The above account is based on an online history of the business, ‘Broadford Works and Jute Mills’. The business was incorporated as a limited company in 1898 (Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives, DD1744/1/1/1). The factory closed in 2004.

As Richards & Co of 45 Bread St, London, flax spinners, bleachers and linen manufacturers, the business was a major supplier of twill and plain canvas, brown cloth and floor cloth to Charles Roberson & Co, 1843-1907 or later (Hamilton Kerr Institute, MS 944-1993, 183-1993, 232-1993, information from Sally Woodco*ck). Their manuscript price list, 19 January 1869, addressed to C. Roberson & Co, lists plain canvas from 27 to 100 ins wide, ticken in the same widths, Roman canvas with double warp and weft from 27 to 74 ins and with double weft from 27 to 86 ins (Hamilton Kerr Institute, MS 801O-1993).

Added March 2019
Joseph Richardson, 5 Old Post Office Place, Liverpool 1846, 79 Lord St, Liverpool 1847. Artists’ colourman, picture and print dealer, possibly an artist.

Joseph Richardson may be the painter who appears in census records in Manchester in 1841, age 30 (ages were rounded down to the nearest five in this census) with his wife Rebecca and again in 1851 (this census record is damaged). He was listed at 5 Old Post Office Place, Liverpool, in 1846 as a picture restorer (Slater’s National Commercial Directory of Ireland, 1846, under print sellers and picture dealers). He subscribed to the Art Union in 1847. His short-lived foray into the commercial art world at 79 Lord St in Liverpool ended with a forced sale of his stock-in-trade of paintings, engravings and artists’ materials in 1847 when he was described as ‘declining business’ (Liverpool Mail 28 August 1847, Manchester Courier 28 August 1847). For an illustration of his canvas stamp, British canvas, stretcher and panel suppliers’ marks. Part 12, England outside London.

Updated March 2022
George Riley, Queen St, Berkeley Square, London 1770, Stone's Head, Curzon St, Mayfair 1771-1781, St Paul’s Churchyard 1781, 41 Newgate St 1783, Kings Arms, 33 Ludgate St 1783-1795, 3 Creed Lane 1794-1798, 65 or 66 Old Bailey 1797-1801, 27 Fleet Street 1800, 1 Ship Court, Old Bailey 1801, London Road, Southwark 1801, 17 Warwick Square, Newgate St 1802, 2 Charles St, Hatton Garden 1807, manufactory at Lambeth 1787. Bookseller and stationer, pencil maker and crayon pencil supplier, newspaper proprietor, publisher and printseller.

Successor to W. Cooke and initially a bookseller and stationer, George Riley (1740/43-1829) turned to making pencils and crayons, advertising very heavily, with mixed results for he was twice made bankrupt, in 1778 and again in 1801 (London Gazette 17 March 1778, 5 May 1801). He obtained a ‘Royal Letters Patent’ for his sliding pencil in 1783, which he marked with his name, ‘G. RILEY’ (Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser 30 December 1783). A more detailed report described them as ‘Dovetail Spring Patent Pencils’, marked, ‘G. RILEY, by Letters Patent’ (Morning Herald 22 April 1784). John Middleton (qv) riposted that such pencils were already made by all pencil makers (Bath Chronicle 13 May 1784). Riley added a minute six-inch figured rule to the side of each pencil and a concealed stop (St James's Chronicle 5 June 1784).

Riley advertised watercolours, brushes, paper and pencils from the Sliding Patent Pencil Shop, 33 Ludgate St in 1787 and subsequently (Whitley papers, quoting the Chelmsford Chronicle 12 October 1787; The Times 30 May 1788). His superfine India cake colours, imprinted ‘Riley's Patent Colour shop’, were on sale in Bath and elsewhere in 1787 (Bath Chronicle 25 January 1787). In 1787 he had a sealing wax and superfine colour manufactory in Lambeth (Sheffield Register 18 August 1787).

Riley advertised his coloured crayon pencils as early as 1785 (Oxford Journal 5 November 1785). These hardened crayons were made to the patent of Thomas Beckwith (1731-86), painter and antiquary (obituary, see Gentleman’s Magazine, vol.59, March 1786, p.265). In advertisem*nts in 1787 and 1788, Riley featured his ‘New Invented Coloured Crayon Pencils… of elegant shades, put in fine Cedar, to use as a Black Lead pencil, price only £1.7s. the complete set, or 9d. single… Prepared and sold by G. Riley, sole Patentee’ (Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser 27 December 1787, The World 5 April 1788). These pencils were endorsed by the Edinburgh landscape painter, George Walker (Stamford Mercury 26 September 1788).

Riley issued a sheet with colour samples of his patent coloured crayon pencils, with 32 shades, at £1.1s for a complete set in a mahogany box (example in private coll., Dorset, information from Gwen Yarker, April 2011); his text is similarly worded to one of his newspaper advertisem*nts in 1798 (Sun 11 January 1798), suggesting a date in the late 1790s although his address on the sheet, 82 Pall Mall, is not otherwise recorded. By 1801 these premises in Pall Mall were occupied by Guest & Rowney (qv).

Riley advertised his coloured crayon pencils, water cake colours and papers in his book, A Concise Treatise on the Elementary Principles of Flower-Painting and Drawing in Water-Colours..., 1807, and in La Belle assemblée, vol.2, advertising supplement, July 1807, p.42 (accessed though Google Books).

Riley died in Greenwich in 1829, age given as 86 or 89 (Bell’s Weekly Messenger 18 January 1829; St Alphege, burial record).

Sources: Maxted 1977 (for addresses); Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, at

www.pastellists.com/Suppliers.html#R , accessed 20 December 2021. For abbreviations, see Resources and bibliography.

Added May 2017
Thomas Courtney Riordan, 1 Bingley Place, Pentonville, London 1851-1854, 23 Wardour St 1855, 28 Upper King St, Russell Square 1857-1859, 501 Oxford St 1860-1864, 5 Pleasant Row, New Road, Pentonville 1855-1857, 6 Pleasant Row 1857, row renamed 1857, 228 & 230 Pentonville Road 1858-1861, 228 Pentonville Road 1862-1867. Brush manufacturer, later wholesale artists’ colourman and carver and gilder. Other addresses: 214 Pentonville Road 1859, 14 North St, Kings Cross 1858-1859, 1 Field Terrace, Bagnigge Wells Road 1862.

Thomas Courtney Riordan (c.1823-1867) was born in the St Giles district. He may be the Thomas Riordan, commercial clerk, son of Eugene Riordan,who married Elizabeth Butcher at St George Bloomsbury in 1848. In census records he was listed in 1851 in Bingley Place, Clerkenwell, as a brush manufacturer, age 28, with his wife, Elizabeth, age 22, and in 1861 at 228 Pentonville Road as a carver and gilder employing four men, together with his wife and two shop women.

Riordan traded at 228 and 230 Pentonville Road, at one stage as a wholesale artists’ colourman and carver and gilder, and continued to trade at 228 as a carver and gilder from 1862 until his death a few years later. He died, age 44, at 228 Pentonville Road on 19 May 1867, leaving effects worth under £5000. The premises at 230 Pentonville Road were taken over by Joseph Hill (qv).

Riordan supplied canvas as well as making brushes, as is evident from a marked portrait canvas: PREPARED BY/ T. C. RIORDAN./ 28 UPPER KING ST./ BLOOMSBURY SQUARE/ & 5 PLEASANT ROW/ PENTONVILLE (information from Mary Keane, February 2011).

Updated March 2013, September 2014, March 2021
Ripolin Ltd, 110 Fenchurch St, London EC 1900-1908, 35 Minories E 1909-1915, 22-23 Little Portland St W 1916-1921, 9 Drury Lane WC2 1922-1956, Balfour Road, Southall, Middlesex 1956- 1968. Paint manufacturers.

This French household paint was invented in Holland. It came to prominence when a joint company was set up in France in 1897 by Briegleb, a German merchant in the Netherlands, and Lefranc (qv), the French manufacturing artists’ suppliers business (Picasso Express, see Sources below, pp.123-4). A London office opened in or shortly before 1900 and Ripolin paints were soon afterwards advertised in England as an enamel paint for interior and external use. A factory was established at Southall in 1932 (National Archives, BT 56/47). Ripolin Ltd’s notepaper in 1939 described the company as ‘Manufacturers of Ripolin and Festinol Paints and Rieps Ship Compositions’, London, Paris, Amsterdam and 67 Bridge St, Manchester 3 (V&A National Art Library, TLC.1.80).

Ripolin paints featured in a Paris artists’ supply catalogue as early as 1903 (Dupré et cie, Fournitures Générales pour Artistes, Dessin… Catalogue Géneral, 7th ed., p.47) but not, it would seem, in those of Lefranc. Ripolin was used by Picasso as early as 1912 (Picasso Express, p.130).

The use of Ripolin and house paint by artists has been the subject of much recent study, including two special issues of Journal of the American Institute for Conservation, vol.52, nos 3 and 4, 2013. Among other material, it contains Harriet A.L. Standeven’s article, ‘Oil-Based House Paints from 1900 to 1960: An Examination of Their History and Development, with Particular Reference to Ripolin Enamels’, which examines these paints in the context of the Ripolin enamels used by, among others, Pablo Picasso, Francis Picabia and Sidney Nolan.

British artists using Ripolin paint: Ripolin was used by Ben Nicholson for the final coat of paint on 1935 (white relief), 1935 (Tate), and for the frame of 1941 (Painted Relief - Version I), 1941 (Christie’s New York 9 November 1999 lot 537); he was perhaps influenced by Picasso in his choice of this paint (Hackney 1999 p.161). Barbara Hepworth, in response to a request for information concerning the materials used for her painting, Prelude I, 1948 (Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery), stated that the paint that she used for her grounds during the years in question, 1948-51, was Ripolin flat white, which later became unobtainable (Cobbe 1976a p.27). Ripolin was used for her sculpture, The Wave, 1943, interior surface repainted c.1955 (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art).

Ripolin paint was used in John Piper’s Tall Forms on Dark Blue, 1937 (with Fine Art Society, see John Piper 1903-1992, exh.cat., 2012, no.2) and Sea Buildings, 1938 (Bonham’s 8 November 2007 lot 59), Lucian Freud’s Landscape with Birds, 1940, and other works, John Craxton’s Cart Track, 1942-3, and Aldershot Mill, 1943-4 (‘We mixed tube colours with the Ripolin and they have retained their luminosity where other paintings of the period have not’, see Ian Collins, John Craxton, 2011, p.54), Patrick Heron’s Vertical: January 1956, 1956 (Tate, see Tate online database, ‘Technique and condition’, report by Roy Perry), Gilian Ayres’s Distillation, 1957 (Tate, repr. Crook & Lerner 2000 p.20) and her mural for South Hampstead School (letter from artist, Financial Times Weekend Magazine, 22/23 December 2012, p.13), Cecil Collins’s The Golden Wheel, 1958 (Tate, see database), Bernard Cohen’s Early Mutation Green No.11, 1960 (Tate, see Mary Chamot et al., Tate Gallery Catalogues. The modern British paintings drawings and sculpture, 1964, p.113) and Bridget Riley’s works in the early 1960s (Crook & Lerner 2000 p.143).

For a good analysis of the use of Ripolin by Sidney Nolan, working in Australia and Britain, see Paula Dredge, Sidney Nolan: The Artists’ Materials, 2020. The formulation of Ripolin paints changed after the Second World War so that the Ripolin Lucian Freud used as a primer in the 1970s and 1980s was different to the paint he used in the 1940s.

Sources: Michael Raeburn on ‘Brand Ripolin’, in Picasso Express, Antibes, Musée Picasso, 2011, pp.123-7. For Barbara Hepworth’s sculpture, see Alun Graves, ‘Casts and continuing histories: material evidence and the sculpture of Barbara Hepworth’, in David Thistlewood, Barbara Hepworth Reconsidered, 1996, p.176.

Updated March 2015, March 2018, August 2019, November 2022
Charles Roberson 1819-1828, Roberson & Miller 1828-1839, Charles Roberson 1840, Charles Roberson & Co 1840-1908, C. Roberson & Co Ltd 1908-1987. At 54 Long Acre, London 1819-1827, 51 Long Acre 1828-1855, 99 Long Acre 1853-1937, 101-104 Park St, Camden Town 1937-1939, street renamed and numbered 1939, 71 Parkway 1939-1987, 1a Hercules St, N7 6AT by 1990-1993 or later. Also at 154 Piccadilly 1889-1906, 155-6 Piccadilly 1907-1940. Registered at 1a Hercules St, N7 6AT from November 1993. Artists’ colourmen and picture restorers.

One of the major artists’ suppliers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Roberson ledgers, part of a larger archive at the Hamilton Kerr Institute, University of Cambridge, are a rich and unique source of information into the trade in artists’ materials. A wide-ranging list of account holders to whom Roberson supplied materials has been published by Sally Woodco*ck for the period 1820-1939 (Woodco*ck 1997). See also Woodco*ck’s other publications detailed below.

Charles Roberson, 1819-1828: In 1819 Charles Roberson set up in business as an artists’ colourman at 54 Long Acre at the age of just twenty (see notebook entry in Roberson Archive, after 1870, ‘Charles Roberson succeeded to Mr Matley in 1819 at 53½ Long Acre’ (Hamilton Kerr Institute, HKI MS 785-1993, fol. 54v, information from Sally Woodco*ck).These premises had been used for the sale of brushes and colours since 1803, firstly by John Culbert (qv), then from 1814 by his apprentice, Henry Matley (qv), who died in March 1820. Roberson was listed initially as ‘Colourman to Artists and hair pencil maker’, a description previously used by Matley.

Charles Roberson (1799-1876) was christened at St Martin-in-the-Fields. He was the son of Christopher Roberson (d.1825), who had a leasehold interest in New Slaughters Coffee House in St Martin’s Lane, which he bequeathed to his wife, Mary. It is worth noting that John Middleton (qv) traded at the adjoining premises in St Martin’s Lane. It was later claimed by Charles Roberson & Co that the business had been founded in 1810 and there is an earlier general merchant’s book in the Roberson archive (HKI MS 87-1993, lecture by Sally Woodco*ck, Courtauld Institute of Art, 20 January 1998), suggesting that the Roberson family may have been trading in some other capacity before 1819 (see Woodco*ck 1995). Sir Thomas Lawrence was an early customer (see Lawrence's materials and processes).

Roberson & Miller, 1828-1839: From January 1828 Charles Roberson was in partnership with Thomas Miller (qv), trading as Roberson & Miller at 51 Long Acre. Miller is said to have been his assistant (Woodco*ck 1997 p.viii) on the evidence of a mention in a Roberson ledger for 1820-1 (HKI MS 139-1993), but it remains to be seen whether he is one and the same individual as the Thomas Miller who set up independently as a colourman by 1822.

During the Roberson & Miller partnership, payments were listed to Roberson, February 1828 to October 1839, and to Miller from 15 April 1828 until 30 December 1839 (Woodco*ck 1997 p.184); a final settlement on the partnership being reached on 31 December 1839 (Woodco*ck 1997 p.viii), when the partnership was dissolved (London Gazette 31 December 1839). For Miller’s later activities, see the entry on Thomas Miller in this resource.

Roberson & Miller’s trade sheet listed watercolours in cakes and in boxes, Roberson & Miller’s prepared lead pencils, drawing papers etc., bladder colours for oil painting, ‘prepared cloths and tickens’, prepared panels and millboards, ‘hatchment cloths’, chalks, ‘brushes and pencils’, varnishes, oils and sundries (Materials for Drawing and Painting, n.d.). Roberson & Miller subscribed to George Field’s Chromatography, 1835 (Carlyle 2001 p.18 n.25). They advertised N. Partridge’s Venetian Composition for preparing oil colours in 1836, stating that it had been tried by William Beechey (The Times 13 June 1836) and promoted their permanent moist water colours in 1838 (The Spectator, vol. 11, 5 May 1838, p.436).

Artists using Roberson & Miller’s colours include Andrew Plimer (George Williamson, Andrew & Nathaniel Plimer, 1903, p.67), Sir Thomas Lawrence, whose estate made payment of £76.7s on 21 August 1830 for ultramarine supplied the previous year (V&A National Art Library, MSL/1938/1923; Hamilton Kerr Institute, MS 943-1993), Gorge Richmond, who purchased colours, brushes and paper in 1830, and a wider range of supplies, including syringes of pink madder, to be sent to him in Florence in 1838 (MS 317-1993, p.246, HKI MS 321-1993, p.268), Samuel Palmer, who wrote from Rome in 1838 and 1839 to request John Linnell to obtain cakes of their pink madder (Lister 1974 pp.119, 274, 280) and Thomas Baker of Leamington who used their ultramarine in 1841 (see www.thomasbakerofleamington.com, accessed 11 July 2022). J.M.W. Turner purchased paper from Roberson’s to the value of 4s.6d in May 1839 (MS 943-1993, p.87). One of Turner’s sketchbooks, used in 1839 but with watermark 1834, bears Roberson & Miller’s label (A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, 1909, p.1016).

Roberson & Miller’s canvas stamps and panel labels are illustrated in the guide .

Artists using marked Roberson & Miller supports include George Chambers (A View of Greenwich, panel, 1832, Royal coll.), George Richmond (1st Viscount Sidmouth, 1833, label on reverse of card, set within an artist’s palette, ‘ROBERSON & MILLER,/ 51, Long Acre, London./ Manufacturers of/ Prepared Cloths Panels/ and/ MILL BOARDS,/ FOR ARTISTS/ with Improved, Oil or Absorbent Grounds/ and every requisite for the Fine Arts’, National Portrait Gallery) and A Woman with Two Children in a Hilly Landscape, 1834, stencilled canvas (The Fine Art Society sale, Sotheby’s 5 February 2019 lot 38); Horatio McCulloch (Summer Day: Arran, c.1833, board, printed label: ‘A New Sketch Book… & Miller’, coll. Martyn Gregory, see Smith 1988 p.48), Robert William Buss (George Almar, 1834, stamped: PREPARED BY/ ROBERSON & MILLER/ 51 LONG ACRE LONDON, Garrick Club, London), Edward Matthew Ward (Thomas Sowdon and Agnes Sowdon, 1834, private collections, photos on National Portrait Gallery files), Asher Brown Durand (Wrath of Peter Stuyvesant, 1835, New York Historical Society, see Katlan 1987 p.303), Henry William Pickersgill (Syrian Maid, exh.1837, Tate 417, information from Sally Woodco*ck), William Fisher (Walter Savage Landor, 1839, marked: ‘PREPARED BY/ ROBERSON & MILLER/ 51 LONG ACRE. LONDON’ and ‘R & M 1081’ in frame, National Portrait Gallery), Robert Ronald McIan’s A Girl attacked by Eagles, 1830s, marked as previous item (Tatton Park, information from Alastair Laing), and James Henry Nixon (Richard's Dream, private coll., information from Sally Woodco*ck). Roberson & Miller canvases were also used by J.M.W. Turner (Dawn of Christianity: Flight into Egypt, exh.1841, and Heidelberg Castle, c.1844-5, both Tate, see Butlin 1981, Townsend 1993, Townsend 1994 p.146).

Thomas Sidney Cooper made Roberson & Miller, and then Charles Roberson & Co, his preferred suppliers over many years, 1833-1901 (Westwood 2011 p.135, repr. three different panel labels). Roberson & Miller marked supports used by Cooper include A Boy driving Cows near Canterbury, 1833, labelled panel (Phillips 20 November 2001 lot 24, see Westwood 2011 p.174), Farm Yard, Milking Time, exh.1834, marked canvas (Tate, information from Sally Woodco*ck), The Resting Place, 1837, labelled panel (Sotheby's 27 June 2006 lot 55) and Cattle in a Kent Meadow, 1839, labelled panel (Sotheby's 15 November 2011 lot 32), as well as various others, the latest dated 1841 (see Westwood 2011 pp.186, 195, 200, 206, 209, 213, 220; see also p.182 for a marked canvas). Charles Roberson & Co supplied the supports for Cooper’s Cattle Reposing, 1846, marked canvas (Fitzwilliam Museum) and An Evening Scene, labelled panel, 1852 (Wallace Collection, see Ingamells 1985). For other supports identified as supplied by Roberson from 1840 onwards, see Westwood 2011.

William Shiels used Roberson & Miller’s canvas for several of his animal portraits in the National Museums of Scotland including Old Norfolk Ram and Longhorn Cow, 1833-8, marked: R & M 1242, Wild Welsh Forest Cow, 1839-41, marked: Prepared by Roberson & Miller, Long Acre, London, R & M 1328, Ryeland Ram, Ewe and Lamb, Exmoor Ram and Ewe, Suffolk Punch Horse, Hereford Cow and Calf, Brecon and Glamorgan Goats (with additional stamp, L. Mundell, EDINBURGH)' and Old Lincoln Ewe and Lamb (information from Fiona V. Salvesen Murrell, February and September 2012). In 1834, the business supplied Shiels with seven Bishops Half Length canvases as well as canvas on a roll.

An artist in Australia using their materials was John Glover (Natives on the Ouse River, Van Diemen’s Land, 1838, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, see Burgess 2003 p.242). Roberson & Miller have been described as the colourmen of choice for Australian professional artists wishing to order a large stock of painting materials from England (Erica Burgess and Paula Dredge, ‘Supplying Artists’ Materials to Australia 1788-1850’, in Ashok Roy and Perry Smith (eds), Painting Techniques History, Materials and Studio Practice: Contributions to the Dublin Congress, International Institute for Conservation, 1998, pp.199-204).

Charles Roberson & Co, 1840-1908: When Charles Roberson split with Miller in 1839, he continued at 51 Long Acre, trading as Charles Roberson & Co from 1840. The freehold of these premises, consisting of a residence, shop and warehouse, belonging to the late Nathaniel Hadley, was sold in 1849 subject to Roberson’s lease for a further 42 years at an annual rental of £114 (Morning Chronicle 14 September 1849). Roberson remained a force in the business for many years, relocating to 99 Long Acre in 1853, and establishing his company as one of the major firms of artists’ suppliers. He was recorded in the 1851 census, with two nephews in the business, Charles Park, clerk, age 31, and Charles Roberson, age 20, described as ‘assistant’; he was listed at 99 Long Acre in both the 1861 and 1871 censuses. He died there in 1876, age 76, leaving a substantial estate of nearly £120,000 (National Probate Calendar; see also Woodco*ck 1997 p.viii, 166 for individual bequests to members of the Park family).

Roberson was succeeded by his nephew, Charles Park (1820-98), who was his sister Charlotte’s son by Charles Park senior. In the 1881 census Charles Park, artist, and his nephew and clerk, Charles Percival Park (1858-1920), were recorded as living at 38 Russell Square. In due course, the business passed to this nephew and to Charles Park’s son Charles Roberson Park (1867-1930) (Roberson trade catalogues, e.g. Catalogue 1949, 36pp). The former was living in Primrose Hill Road, and the latter in Belsize Grove, Hampstead at the time of the 1901 census, each with wife and three children. In the 1921 census Charles Roberson Park was listed as managing director, living in Hendon with his wife Eveline, son Charles Allen Roberson Park, age 24, and niece Avril.

The business advertised extensively. C. Robe[r]son, rather than Roberson & Miller, advertised 'Unction', a new vehicle for oil painting (The Art-Union February 1840 p.29, March 1840 p.46, and subsequently, as 'Unction Mc’Guylp’), while Charles Roberson advertised 'Simpson's Chinese Fluid' for watercolour painting (The Art-Union June 1840 p.101). It was not until 1841 that the business advertised as Roberson and Co, featuring various painting and drawing materials, including oil colours in metallic collapsible tubes, and referring to their ‘New List of Materials for Drawing, Painting, &c’ (The Art-Union November 1841 p.178, and subsequently).

Roberson & Co exhibited at the Great Exhibition in 1851 and their catalogue featured a wide range of products, including Parisian lay figures (Price List of Materials for Drawing and Painting, 68pp, bound into the Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Great Exhibition 1851, vol. 16, copy in V&A National Art Library, EX.1851.135). Six Roberson trade and retail catalogues, dating from about 1840 to 1907, are listed in Carlyle 2001. Roberson’s published many fewer instruction manuals than Rowney or Winsor & Newton (for Hamerton’s Etcher’s Handbook, see below). Roberson’s opened a branch in Piccadilly in 1889, close to the Royal Academy, and this branch was listed with its own account, December 1889 to February 1904 (Woodco*ck 1997). The business advertised in The Year's Art (1888-1904, 1912-13), giving an address in Paris and featuring a Royal warrant of appointment to Queen Alexandra (1902). This warrant was awarded in 1901 (Daily Telegraph 7 September 1901).

Specialisms: Roberson’s had a wide-ranging reputation which extended to certain specific areas. It specialised in supplying lay figures to artists, 1840s to 1920s, using various subcontractors (see below). The Roberson archive includes a number of life-size lay figures (Woodco*ck 1998). For a detailed and well-illustrated survey, see Sally Woodco*ck, ‘The Life of a London Lay Figure: Charles Roberson, a Case Study’, in Jane Munro, Silent Partners: Artist and Mannequin from Function to Fetish, 2014, pp.62-71.

Roberson’s also became known for the lining and restoration of pictures, being listed as picture liners from 1853, using Frederick Haines as a subcontractor (see below), and later advertising testimonials from artists such as William Holman Hunt, 1897, George Clausen, 1899 and Thomas Sidney Cooper, as given in their catalogues (Artists Colours Materials, c.1931-2, 126pp). Cooper recalled the ‘perfect manner’ in which Roberson in 1882 repaired his Monarch of the Meadows, slashed from its frame (T.S. Cooper, My Life, 1891, p.309). Samuel Lane’s Frederick Lane, has the label of Roberson as ‘backliners’ (Dulwich Picture Gallery, see Ingamells 2008 p.213, misrecorded as Robinson).

The business was particularly known for Roberson’s medium, one of its most widely distributed products (see Carlyle 2001 pp.128-9), which was used, for example, by Ford Madox Brown, Charles Allston Collins, James Collinson, Edward Hughes, John Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti among Pre-Raphaelite artists (as documented by Carlyle in Townsend 2004 p.63), by Edward Armitage, Philip H. Calderon (see below), Sir John Gilbert and Lord Leighton (The Portfolio 1875 pp.15, 32, 63, 1876 p.13) and by J.B. Burgess, B.W. Leader, Edwin Long, Henry Stacy Marks and Edward Poynter (Don & Woodco*ck 2020).

Roberson’s had a connection with Thomas Gambier Parry (1816-88) and his ‘Spirit Fresco’ system, developed in response to the failure of fresco at the Palace of Westminster. Gambier Parry first published his technique in 1862 and modified the recipe in 1880. Roberson’s manufactured and sold it as a medium, possibly from 1861, until early in the 20th century. It was used by Leighton, Ford Madox Brown and Frank Salisbury, among others (information from Sally Woodco*ck; see, 'The "spirit fresco" technique and its historical context', in Thomas Gambier Parry 1816-1888 as artist and collector, Courtauld Institute of Art, exh.cat., 1993, pp.46-52, and Tracey Manning, ‘Spirit fresco': its genesis, development and dissemination, Courtauld Institute of Art, unpublished diploma thesis, 1994).

Overseas: E. Mary & Fils, followed by George Mary, acted as Roberson's Paris agent and held an account with Roberson, 1882-1908, making both purchases and sales (Woodco*ck 1997 pp.viii, 144; see also Woodco*ck 1995 and Constantin 2001 p.57); their trade catalogue featured various Roberson materials (E. Mary & Fils Catalogue des Couleurs Fines, Toiles, Panneaux et Materiels Divers, July 1888, 198pp). Subsequently this role as Paris agent was filled by G. Sennelier (Woodco*ck 1997 p.viii), but no account appears to be listed; Roberson gave Sennelier’s address as their Paris Depot in their trade catalogue as late as c.1937 (Artists Colours Materials, 127pp; this catalogue also featured their appointment to the King and Queen of Italy).

Roberson’s Medium was widely stocked overseas but otherwise Roberson products were carried by a limited number of foreign companies. In Italy by Felice Alman, Turin (see Catalogo de Pittura, 1904, 88pp); Alman had an account with Roberson, 1857-1906 (Woodco*ck 1997). In the United States they were sold by William Schaus, New York (Katlan 1987 p.11; trade catalogue, c.1857-61, quoted at length by Katlan 1992 p.363; see also Schaus’s Price-List of Materials for Oil, Water Color and Pastel Painting and Drawing, c.1875-85, 24pp); Schaus had an account with Roberson, 1852-85 (Woodco*ck 1997) but later turned to Winsor & Newton materials. In 1853, the American artist William Sydney Mount, wrote to Schaus expressing his delight in Roberson colours (Katlan 1987 p.11). Other companies with an account with Roberson include: Bullock & Crenshaw, Philadelphia, 1850-5; Scholz & Janentzky, Philadelphia, 1865; A.A. Walker & Co, Boston, 1867-80; Frost & Adams, Boston, 1887-91; and Wadsworth, Howland & Co, Boston, 1897 (Woodco*ck 1997).

Roberson’s contractors, 1828-84: The business used a variety of contractors over many years to supply it with certain materials, as is apparent from the Roberson purchase ledgers (Hamilton Kerr Institute, Roberson Archive, MS 944-1993, 148-1993, 180-1993, 183-1993, 232-1993). Ledgers covering the years, 1828-84 and 1896-1907, have been summarily examined to inform the following selective and preliminary listing, which is subject to review. Leslie Carlyle has used these ledgers in preparing her book, The Artist's Assistant (Carlyle 2001), which provides additional details.

For canvas, Roberson went to Alexander Glenday & Co (qv) and then to Alexander’s son, John Glenday (qv) of Cupar in Fife, 1828-54, and then from the 1840s to the larger firm of Richards & Co (qv) of Aberdeen. By the end of the century Roberson was purchasing Belgian canvas in considerable quantities from Gernay-Delbecque of Waregem (MS 232-1993, pp.407, 545; see also 204-1993, p.489), which it would seem was the source for the ‘foreign canvas’ advertised in Roberson trade catalogues of the period.

For colours, Roberson went to Giovanni Arzone (qv) in and following 1828, paying some £120 for Ultramarine in 1828-9, to George Field (qv) for vermilions and madders, 1842-54; to Noble & Rolls, later Nobles & Hoare for ‘Guimets Ultramarine’, 1842-94 (Carlyle 2001 p.473); to George Druke (qv) as early as 1820 and then to his widow Sarah, including for cobalt blue in the 1850s, until her death in 1859, followed by her brother John Cox; to Lewis Berger & Sons (qv) for many years; and to John Shea, 1874-82. For tubes for paint, Roberson went to John Rand and successor companies until 1865, and to H.G. Sanders and Sons (qv) for large quantities of tubes from at least 1863 until 1907 or later.

For oils and drying oils, Leslie Carlyle has identified Thomas Hopkins, later Hopkins, Purvis & Sons, as Roberson’s main supplier for linseed oils, 1829-93, Sherborn & Tillyer (qv) for poppy oil, 1857-1900, and Charles Turner, 1842-97, and Noble & Rolls (later Nobles & Hoare), 1845-1902 for drying oils (Carlyle 2001 pp.343-5). For litharge, a drier used in preparing drying oil, Roberson mainly used Lewis Berger & Sons (qv), 1830-53 (Carlyle 2001 p.42). For the occasional purchase of dammar varnish, Roberson turned exclusively to Charles Turner, 1842-1903 (Carlyle 2001 p.86) and for lac varnish George Field, 1843-54, Charles Turner, 1866, and Nobles & Hoare from 1879 (Carlyle 2001 pp.92, 97 n.39).

For brushes, John Capes (qv) was a significant supplier from at least 1842 until his death in 1879; he was followed in business by his daughter, Jemima Gascoine, who continued to supply Roberson (Hamilton Kerr Institute, MS 944-1993, 180-1993, 183-1993, 232-1993). G.C. Beissbarth (qv) of Nurnberg, supplied camel hair and other brushes, 1867-75. For Pitet Ainé in Paris, see below.

For lay figures, Roberson went to Auguste Gagnery in Paris, 1842-51, C. Barbe and Lechertier Barbe (qv), French connected but trading in London, 1851-3, Pitet Ainé in Paris, 1851-84 (also for brushes and other materials) and R. Briggs & Son (qv), later C. Briggs, in London, 1863-93 (new figures and repairing and hiring existing figures). For further details and additional suppliers, see Woodco*ck 1998 pp.445-64, especially n.30.

For copper plates, Roberson initially used William Stiles (qv), 1857, as a supplier, but then Russell Pontifex & Co (qv), 1857-8, 1874-1907, and especially Hughes & Kimber (qv), 1859-1905, who supplied copper and zinc plates, etching grounds and other etching supplies (Hamilton Kerr Institute, MS 180-1993, 183-1993, 232-1993). Roberson made a speciality in materials for etching and copper plate printing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It published P.G. Hamerton’s The Etcher’s Handbook in four editions from 1871 to 1912, with appended catalogues of etching and other materials.

For picture framing work and some picture strainers, Roberson turned to a neighbour in Long Acre, James Ryan, 1844-77, and, following Ryan’s death, to Alfred Jeffries (qv), 1878-83, and especially to Henry J. Murcott, 1882-1906 (for these makers, see British picture framemakers on this website). For picture restoration, Roberson regularly used Frederick Haines/& Sons, 1862-92, and then William Gleadall, 1893-1902. For occasional paper restoration Roberson went to William Baldwin, 1865, and following his death to his manager, William Grisbrook, 1869-83. Roberson may also have used Henry Woolcot. For these restorers, see British picture restorers on this website.

Artists using Roberson's materials, 1840-1910: Roberson’s supports were used by numerous artists, as the surviving Roberson ledgers testify (see Woodco*ck 1997). Roberson’s canvas stamps and panel labels are illustrated in the guide . Examples are also reproduced by Leach 1973 and Katlan 1992 pp.464-6. Staff at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, have used the Roberson Archive to establish the dates of various canvases in the Walker collection and that at Sudley House (see Morris 1996; several of the Walker paintings listed below are recorded as frame labels). Similarly, staff at Tate have used the Archive in research on Pre-Raphaelite painting techniques (see Townsend 2004), and some of the examples given below depend on entries in the Roberson ledgers, rather than on marked canvases. The supply of colours by Roberson to Charles Allston Collins, James Collinson, William Holman Hunt, John Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti has been documented by Leslie Carlyle (Townsend 2004 pp.39-49).

The relationship between Roberson and six significant artists working in the second half of the 19th century has begun to be explored in detail: John Frederick Lewis, William Holman Hunt, William Powell Frith, Edward Burne-Jones, Sir John Gilbert and Lord Leighton, as summarised here.

John Frederick Lewis had an account with Roberson, 1834-37 and 1852-75 but not while in Egypt, 1841-51 (Woodco*ck 1997). Roberson supplied the supports for his A Syrian Sheik, 1856, labelled panel (Fitzwilliam Museum) and A Lady Receiving Visitors (The Reception), 1873, incised and labelled panel (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven). Lewis’s use of Roberson as a supplier is discussed in depth by Emily Weeks (‘The Tools of His Trade: The relationship between John Frederick Lewis (1804-1876) and Charles Roberson & Company’, Hamilton Kerr Institute Bulletin, no.5, 2014, pp.101-9, repr. the Yale panel).

William Holman Hunt had an account with Roberson 1850-1906, which has been published for the years 1895-1900 (Woodco*ck 1997 pp.xi-xiii). He also entered into correspondence with the business concerning the quality of individual colours (Carlyle 2001 pp.271, 461-2) and was upset by Roberson's supply of adulterated orange vermilion pigment in 1873, used for example in Thomas Fairbairn, 1873-4 (Fairbairn family coll., see Bronkhurst 2006 pp.29, 235). Examples of Holman Hunt’s work on Roberson supports include The Eve of St Agnes, 1847-57 (Walker Art Gallery, see Bennett 1988), Valentine rescuing Sylvia from Proteus, 1850-1 (Birmingham Museum & Gallery, see Townsend 2004 p.113), The Hireling Shepherd, 1851-2 (Manchester City Art Gallery, see Townsend 2004 p.140), The Light of the World, 1851-3 (Keeble College, Oxford, see Townsend 2004 p.148, Bronkhurst 2006 p.152), Our English Coasts, 1852 (Tate, see Townsend 2004 p.158), Fairlight Downs: Sunlight on the Sea, 1852, label on panel reverse (Lord Lloyd-Webber coll., see Bronkhurst 2006 p.159), The Hireling Shepherd, replica, begun 1853, canvas supplied 1852 (Makins coll., see Bronkhurst 2006 p.161 n.2), The Thames at Chelsea, Evening, 1853 (Fitzwilliam Museum), The Awakening Conscience, 1853 (Tate, see Townsend 2004 p.174, Bronkhurst 2006 p.168, n.18), Honest Labour has a Comely Face, 1861, panel stamp (Christopher Gridley, see Bronkhurst 2006 p.191), John Blount Price, 1887, canvas supplied 1885 (private coll., see Bronkhurst 2006 p.264, n.8), The Lady of Shalott, begun ?c.1888, canvas supplied 1885 (Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT, see Bronkhurst 2006 p.271) and May Morning on Magdalen Tower, 1890 (Walker Art Gallery, see Bennett 1988). Holman Hunt used a dilute copal preparation by Roberson as a medium until 1853 (see The Portfolio 1875 p.45), for example in Rescuing Sylvia from Proteus, 1850-1 (Birmingham Museum & Gallery, see Bronkhurst 2006 p.143). See also Melissa R. Katz, ‘Holman Hunt on Himself: Textual Evidence in Aid of Technical Analysis’, in Erma Hermens (ed.), Looking Through Paintings, Leids Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, vol. 11, 1998, pp.415-44.

Frith held an account with Roberson for 59 years from 1850 until his death in 1909 (Woodco*ck 1997) and the canvases for such set pieces as Ramsgate Sands, 1856 (Royal Collection), The Derby Day, 1858 (Tate), The Railway Station, 1862 (Royal Holloway College) and The Marriage of the Prince of Wales, 1865 (Royal Collection) were all ordered from him, as were many artists’ materials (Sally Woodco*ck, ‘ “Very efficient as a painter”: the painting practice of William Powell Frith’, in Mark Bills and Vivien Knight (eds.), William Powell Frith: Painting the Victorian Age, 2006, pp.145-56). ‘For more years than I can remember I have had all my painting materials from you’, Frith wrote to Roberson in 1901; indeed, over the course of his career he ordered more than 520 canvas supports and stretchers from the business (Sally Woodco*ck, ‘William Powell Frith's double life: An artist coping with a changing market’, in Victorian artists' autograph replicas: auras, aesthetics, patronage and the art market, ed. Julie F. Codell, 2020, p.109). Marked canvases used by Frith include The Proposal, 1859 (Sir David and Lady Scott coll., Sotheby’s 19 November 2008 lot 127) and New Shoes, 1860 (Christie’s 23 November 2005 lot 124). Roberson advertised in The Year's Art (1887-1900), quoting a letter from William Powell Frith, 28 September 1896, on the perfect state of preservation of his picture, The Derby Day, 1858 (Tate).

Edward Burne-Jones, followed by his executors, had an account with Roberson from 1857 to 1900 (Woodco*ck 1997); this has been analysed and examined by Fiona Mann in two articles, ‘A “born rebel”: Edward Burne-Jones and watercolour painting, 1857-80’, Burlington Magazine, vol. 156, 2014, pp.657-64, and ‘”Opaque with a vengeance”: Burne-Jones’s later watercolours, 1880-98’, Burlington Magazine, vol. 161, 2019, pp.128-39. Examples of his works on marked canvases or stretchers include Laus Veneris, 1873-5, stamped on canvas: PREPARED BY/ CHARLES ROBERSON/ 99 LONG ACRE/ LONDON (Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle) and The Beguiling of Merlin, 1874, The Annunciation, 1879, and The Tree of Forgiveness, 1882 (all Lady Lever Art Gallery, see Morris 1994).

Sir John Gilbert had an account, 1859-97 (repr. in Sally Woodco*ck, 'Utility, Versatility and Obscurity: the Sources and Selection of Sir John Gilbert's oil painting materials', in Spike Bucklow and Sally Woodco*ck (eds), Sir John Gilbert: Art and Imagination in the Victorian Age, Guildhall Art Gallery, 2011, pp.220-39). Gilbert used Roberson’s Medium as a thick medium for oil painting (The Portfolio 1876 p.15). He used Roberson’s canvas for Don Sancho Panza, 1875, and Onward, begun 1888 (both Manchester Art Gallery) and for The Slain Dragon, 1885, and Landscape with Gypsy Encampment, 1888 (both Walker Art Gallery, see Morris 1996).

Lord Leighton held an account from 1860 until his death in 1886 and his relationship with Roberson’s has been examined by Sally Woodco*ck, who published an extract from his account for the purchase of canvas, probably for Flaming June, November 1894 (Woodco*ck 1996). Examples of his works on marked canvases include Sir Richard Burton, 1872-5 (National Portrait Gallery, see Later Victorian catalogue), Lucia, 1870s? (Metropolitan Museum, New York, see Katharine Baetjer, British paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1575-1875, 2009, p.284), Elijah in the Wilderness, 1877-8, Elegy, 1888, and Perseus and Andromeda, 1891 (all Walker Art Gallery, see Morris 1996), Psamathe, 1879-80, and Fatidica, exh.1894 (both Lady Lever Art Gallery, see Morris 1994) and The Last Watch of Hero, c.1887, and Captive Andromache, c.1888 (both Manchester Art Gallery). A box containing 16 Roberson & Co ceramic lidded jars containing pure pigment was on display at Leighton House in 2015. For Leighton’s connections with Roberson, see also Mrs Russell Barrington, The Life, Letters and Work of Frederic Leighton, vol. 2, 1906, pp.291-4, 299-300.

Five further artists using Roberson products were James Baker Pyne, John Linnell, John Everett Millais, D.G. Rossetti, and Alfred William Hunt.

Pyne had an account with Roberson, 1843-69 (Woodco*ck 1997). He records using Roberson’s canvases for various paintings and even made diagrams of the back of some of these canvases, showing Roberson’s canvas stamps, including Snowdon from the Bridge, 1847 (the canvas stamped CR 468), The Salute and Dogana, 1848 (the canvas stamped CR 467) and The Moselle at Coblentz, 1847 (Pyne’s Picture memoranda, V&A National Art Library, MSL/1947/1562-1563). He also notes using Roberson’s permanent white mixed with other pigments in Littlehampton Harbour, 1851, and The Island of Burano, 1854, as well as Roberson’s copal varnish in the 1860s.

John Linnell had an account, 1849-87 (Woodco*ck 1997), making his first purchases of colours and canvas in 1848 according to his account book (Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 22-2000). It would seem that Roberson replaced Thomas Brown (qv) as one of the artist’s main suppliers.

John Everett Millais had an account, 1850-96 (Woodco*ck 1997). He used Roberson for various works including Ophelia, 1851-2 (Tate, see Hackney 1999 p.76, Townsend 2004 p.135), The Prescribed Royalist 1651, 1852-3 (Lord Lloyd-Webber, see Townsend 2004 p.160), The Order of Release 1746, 1852-3 (Tate, see Townsend 2004 p.171), Mrs Charles Freeman, marked panel, 1862 (Christie’s 15 December 2010 lot 44), My Second Sermon, 1864 (Birmingham Museum & Gallery, repr. Cobbe 1976 p.86, Katlan 1992 p.287), and Benjamin Disraeli, 1881 (National Portrait Gallery).

Dante Gabriel Rossetti held an account with Roberson, 1851-82. In 1855 Rossetti wrote to Ford Madox Brown referring to visiting Roberson’s: 'I have a feud with the wretches…, but for oil colours they are the only eligible demons' (Fredeman 55.19). Rossetti makes further references to Roberson in his correspondence in 1872, 1873 and 1876 (Fredeman 72.68, 73.43, 76.14).

The watercolour artist, Alfred William Hunt, had accounts with Roberson in Durham and then London, 1863-96 (Woodco*ck 1997). He told his future wife, Margaret Raine, in about 1860 that in ordering watercolours, ‘Winsor & Newton’s or Roberson’s are the best’, and he himself used numerous Roberson sketchbooks between about 1866 and 1893 (Ashmolean Museum, see Newall 2004 pp.14, 173-8).

Marked supports found on the works of other artists from the 1840s and subsequently include Thomas Sully’s Elizabeth Cook, 1839 (Yale University Art Gallery, repr. Katlan 1992 p.466; however, the address 99 Long Acre would suggest a date after 1853), Richard Redgrave’s Ophelia Weaving Her Garlands, 1842, labelled panel, Cinderella About to Try on the Glass Slipper, c.1842, marked canvas, The Governess, 1844, marked canvas, and Throwing off Her Weeds, 1846, labelled panel (all Victoria and Albert Museum, information from Nicola Costaras), John Wilson Carmichael’s Flambro Head, 1844, labelled panel (Sotheby’s 2 December lot 178), Alfred Walter Williams's Eel Bucks at Goring, 1844? (Walker Art Gallery, see Morris 1996), Frederick Richard Say’s 1st Earl of Ellenborough, c.1845, and 5th Duke of Newcastle, 1848 (both National Portrait Gallery), Hippolyte Bellange’s Le Retour de la Ville, 1848, labelled: CHARLES ROBERSON AND COMPANY/ MATERIALS OF DRAWINGS AND PAINTINGS/ 51 LONG ACRE LONDON (Rouen, Musée des beaux-arts, accessed through Joconde), Walter Deverell’s Self-portrait, c.1849 (Fitzwilliam Museum), and Alfred Stevens's Study for Parmigianino painting The Vision of St Jerome, 1840s? and Six paintings for the Crystal Palace, 1850s (Walker Art Gallery, see Morris 1996).

From the early 1850s and subsequently, Henry Le Jeune’s Contemplation, panel stamped with address 51 Long Acre, indicating a panel date before 1855, and Rush Gatherers, exh.1852 (Walker Art Gallery, see Morris 1996), Alfred Hichens Corbould’s Thomas Walford Grieve, 1852, labelled (Victoria and Albert Museum, information from Nicola Costaras), John Frederick Herring's Still life of dead birds, fruit, vegetables, 1852, A Farmer’s Hack and Greyhounds, 1854, label repr. in catalogue, One of the Scots Greys, 1855, address 51 Long Acre and A Grey and a Dark Bay drinking at a Trough, 1855, address 99 Long Acre (all four Christie's 22 November 2006 lots 104-5, 107-8) and A Grey Horse in a Stable, 1859, labelled and impressed panel (Bonham’s 23 June 2015 lot 79), J.L.E. Meissonier’s The Recital, exh.1853, The Lost Game, 1858, and The Roadside Inn, 1860s (all Wallace Collection, see Ingamells 1986 pp.171 173, 175), Charles Allston Collins’ The Good Harvest of 1854, 1854 (Victoria and Albert Museum), Edward Lear's The Temple of Apollo at Bassae, c.1854-5, stamped canvas (Fitzwilliam Museum), Corfu, 1856 (Bonham’s 2 March 2016 lot 49), Bethlehem, 1861 (Walker Art Gallery, see Morris 1996), Jerusalem, 1865 (Ashmolean Museum), Mount Lebanon, 1866 (Christie’s 13 July 2016 lot 131) and The Plains of Lombardy from Monte Generoso, 1880 (Ashmolean Museum), William Sydney Mount’s Coming to the Point, 1854 (New York Historical Society, see Katlan 1987 p.299), and two William McTaggart life studies of female nudes, 1850s (National Gallery of Scotland, NG 2858, 2860, information from Helen Smailes, July 2012).

From the later 1850s and subsequently, Frederick Edwin Church’s Cotopaxi, 1855 (National Museum of American Art, see Katlan 1987 p.292), James Smetham's Counting the Cost, exh.1855 (Walker Art Gallery, see Morris 1996), Alfred W. Williams’s River Landscape with sheep and cattle, 1855 (Saint-Quentin, Musée Lécuyer), Jerome Thompson’s Apple Gathering, 1856, stencilled canvas (Brooklyn Museum, see Carbone 2006 p.1002), Philip H. Calderon’s Broken Vows, 1857 (Ashmolean Museum, information from Jon Whiteley), James Collinson’s Short Change, 1858, panel (Sotheby’s 17 December 2009 lot 35), Charles West Cope’s The Parting of Lord and Lady William Russell, 1858, labelled and stamped panel with address 51 Long Acre (Christie’s South Kensington 14 November 2013 lot 38) and Yes or No?, 1872 (Walker Art Gallery, see Morris 1996), William Jacob Hays’s Terrier’s Head, 1859 (New York Historical Society, see Katlan 1987 p.306, repr. Katlan 1992 p.464), Henry Wallis’s A Coast Scene, Sunset, Seaford, late 1850s (Walker Art Gallery, see Bennett 1988) and his Thomas Love Peaco*ck, 1858 (National Portrait Gallery). Edward William Cooke was using Roberson for canvases made to size and for colours in 1855 (Munday 1996 p.228).

From the 1860s and subsequently, F.R. Pickersgill's Prospero and Miranda, early 1860s (Walker Art Gallery, see Morris 1996), James Hayllar’s Guilty or Not Guilty, 1860, panel stamp (Sir David and Lady Scott coll., Sotheby’s 19 November 2008 lot 67), Robert Martineau’s The Poor Actress’s Christmas Dinner, c.1860 (Ashmolean Museum), George Healy’s Col. Albert Brochett, 1861 (National Museum of American Art, see Katlan 1987 p.293), Edward Matthew Ward's Antechamber at Whitehall during the Dying Moments of Charles II, exh.1861 (Walker Art Gallery, see Morris 1996), Heinrich Schiött's John Delane, 1862 (National Portrait Gallery), Mary Newton's Self-portrait, exh.1863 (National Portrait Gallery), Alessandro Ossani’s John Sims Reeves, 1863 (National Portrait Gallery), Horatio McCulloch’s Sundown: Loch Achray, 1864 (Glasgow Art Gallery, see Smith 1988 p.90), Frederick Sandys’s Mrs Jane Lewis, 1864 (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, see Elzea 2001 pp.181, 340) and Mrs Anne Susannah Barstow, 1868-9 (Williamson Art Gallery, Birkenhead, see Elzea 2001 pp.192, 340), Thomas Faed’s The Last of the Clan, exh.1865, stretcher label and stamped loose lining (Glasgow Art Gallery) and Free from Care, 1878 (Sudley, Liverpool, see Bennett 1971), Ford Madox Brown’s The Coat of Many Colours, 1866 (Walker Art Gallery, see Bennett 1988), Thomas Creswick’s Forest Glade with Deer, 1869 or before, with Richard Ansdell, and Landscape, Morning (Crossing the Stream), 1869 or before (both Walker Art Gallery, see Morris 1996), Thomas Satterwhite Noble’s Witch Hill, 1869 (New York Historical Society), William Fettes Douglas’s Women in Church, 1860s, stamped board (Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass., see Lees 2012 p.298 and Webber 2014), George Clayton Eaton's Alfred Stephens in his Library, late 1860s or early 1870s (Walker Art Gallery, see Morris 1996).

From the 1870s and subsequently, Camille Pissarro’s Fox Hill, Upper Norwood, 1870 (National Gallery, see David Bomford et al., Art in the Making: Impressionism, 1990, p.134), Hugh Carter's Sir Francis Ronalds, c.1870 (National Portrait Gallery), Edward Poynter’s The Sandal, 1871, small labelled panel (Christie’s 15 July 2021 lot 23) and The Ides of March, 1883 (Manchester Art Gallery), Arthur Hughes’s ‘As You Like It’, 1872-3 (Walker Art Gallery, see Bennett 1988), Frederick Daniel Hardy’s The Art Lovers, impressed panel, 1873 (Christie’s South Kensington 10 November 2011 lot 195), John Evan Hodgson’s A Tunisian Bird Seller, 1873, labelled panel (Sotheby’s Orientalist sale, 30 March 2021 lot 12), Charles Hunt’s The Stolen Child, 1874 (Sir David and Lady Scott coll., Sotheby’s 19 November 2008 lot 112), Briton Rivière’s The Last of the Garrison, 1875 (Manchester Art Gallery), John William Inchbold’s Gordale Scar, exh. 1876, stamped stretcher (Tate, see Tate database, ‘Technique and condition’, 1995), Alphonse Legros’s Thomas Carlyle, 1877 (Scottish National Portrait Gallery, recorded by Harry Woolford) and Rudolf Lehmann’s Mrs Jane Mary Stocks (née McEchran), 1879 (Cheffins, Cambridge, 22-23 June 2022, lot 310). Roberson’s Medium was used by Philip H. Calderon (The Portfolio 1875 p.15, listing nine paintings including The Young Lord Hamlet and A Moonlight Serenade). Edward Armitage used Roberson’s deep yellow madder (The Portfolio 1875 p.63).

In the Royal Academy’s ‘Technical forms of procedure’ questionnaires to exhibiting members, between 1876 and 1888, three artists recorded using Roberson canvas: Edwin Long, 1877-8 (‘tinted grey’); Briton Riviére, 1870, 1881, 1883, 1885-6 (‘thickest primed’) and Edward Poynter, 1884 (‘finest Roman’) (Don & Woodco*ck 2020 pp.146, 150, 154-5, 157, 159-62).

From the 1880s and subsequently, Charles Gregory's Weal and Woe, 1880 (Walker Art Gallery, see Morris 1996), Henry Holiday's Dante and Beatrice, exh.1883 (Walker Art Gallery, see Morris 1996), Philip Morris's Quite Ready, exh.1884 (Lady Lever Art Gallery, see Morris 1994), W.W. Ouless’s Sir George Scharf, 1885 (National Portrait Gallery, see Later Victorian Portraits Catalogue) and Prof. Sir G.M. Humphry, 1886 (Fitzwilliam Museum), J.M. Strudwick’s Circe and Scylla, exh.1886, Love's Palace, 1893, and St Cecilia, 1896 (all three Sudley, see Morris 1996) and When Apples were Golden and Songs were Sweet, exh.1906 (Manchester Art Gallery), Richard Beavis's Goats: Outskirts of Cadiz, by 1888 (Walker Art Gallery, see Morris 1996), Albert Moore’s The Umpire, c.1888 (Fitzwilliam Museum) and Emile Friant’s Madame Seymour, 1889, labelled mahogany panel (Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass., see Lees 2012 p.336 and Webber 2014). John Brett used some Roberson canvases in the mid-1880s (Lowry 2001 p.38), including for The Norman Archipelago, 1885 (Manchester Art Gallery). Frank Holl's biographer described Roberson as his colourman (A.M. Reynolds, The Life and Work of Frank Holl, 1912, p.251); examples include Sir William Agnew, 1883, Francis Holl and Sir W.S. Gilbert, 1886 (all National Portrait Gallery). Mortimer Menpes used card and panels supplied by Roberson, c.1889-95 (Payne 2014 p.184).

From the 1890s and subsequently, Luke Fildes’s The Doctor, 1890-91 (Tate, see Completing the Picture 1982 pp.65-8, repr.) and Applicants for Admission to a Casual Ward, after 1908 (Tate, see Tate Gallery Report 1970–1972), Sydney P. Hall's Gladstone reading the Lesson in Hawarden Church, 1892 (Lady Lever Art Gallery, see Morris 1994), Walter Richard Sickert’s Minnie Cunningham, 1892 (Tate, see ‘The Camden Town Group in Context’, research project, at www.tate.org.uk), Evelyn de Morgan's Life and Thought emerging from the Tomb, 1893 (Walker Art Gallery, see Morris 1996), William De Morgan, 1909 (National Portrait Gallery) and The Vision, 1914, labelled on blind stretcher (Sotheby's 15 November 2011 lot 62), John Swan's Orpheus, 1896 (Lady Lever Art Gallery, see Morris 1994), John Collier's Sir Edward Inglefield, 1897 (National Portrait Gallery), Joseph Southall’s Sigismonda Drinking the Poison, 1897, and Beauty Receiving the White Rose from her Father, 1898-9 (both Birmingham Museum & Gallery, see Dunkerton 1980 p.19).

From the 1900s, Lawrence Alma-Tadema's Among the Ruins, 1902 and Love's Missile, 1909 (both Sotheby's 14 December 2006, lots 121, 128), John Bacon's The Homage-Giving, 1903 (National Portrait Gallery), Alfred Wolmark’s George Uglow Pope, 1903, stretcher label (Bodleian Library, information from Dana Josephson, August 2012), Arthur Cope’s Viscount Knutsford, 1906 (National Portrait Gallery) and Albert Rutherston’s Laundry Girls, 1906 (Tate, see ‘The Camden Town Group in Context’, research project, at www.tate.org.uk).

Roberson’s were not John Singer Sargent’s main suppliers but it is possible to document his purchases: oil colours in 1884, Magenta in tubes in 1888, Flake White in 1893, Bone Brown in 1899, and, most especially, Marble Medium, which Sargent bought in greater quantities from 1902 to 1913. He purchased Ingres paper in 1892 and 1906. He used sketchbooks supplied by Roberson, c.1890 and c.1910 (Fogg Art Museum, Harvard, see Stewart 2000 pp.24, 26). There are a series of intriguing entries in Sargent’s account with Roberson’s for ‘Hook’ easels and jointed poles between 1906 and 1910. These purchases were made before travelling to the continent each summer. For more details, see John Singer Sargent’s suppliers of artists’ materials.

Roberson & Co Ltd, from 1908: The business became a limited company on 27 July 1908. By the First World War the company was in relative decline. It relocated to Camden Town from 25 March 1937 (The Artist March 1937, advertisem*nt) and was obliged to close its West End branch in or before March 1940 (The Artist March 1940, advertisem*nt). The business remained in the family until the 1970s, when sold to a Dutch firm, A. Ludwig & Sons Ltd, wholesale and retail stationers, which initiated liquidation procedures in 1985, along with Roberson and Wixon Supplies Co Ltd, all three businesses with H.C. Ludwig as director (London Gazette, 20 September 1985; additional information from Nicholas Walt). Liquidation was completed in 1987 (London Gazette 29 June 1987). The name was bought by the owner of Cornelissen (qv), who continues to use it for a small range of high-quality materials (Woodco*ck 1995). The business was registered at 1a Hercules St, N7 6AT from November 1993. It is one of three historic businesses listed (as at February 2005) in the Companies House register as incorporated at 105 Great Russell St, London WC1B 3RY: Brodie & Middleton Ltd, incorporated 1945, L. Cornelissen and Son Ltd, incorporated 1980, and C. Roberson & Co Ltd, incorporated 1985.

The business advertised ‘Roberson's Matt Colours Prepared with Parris' Marble Medium. The most suitable for ceiling or mural paintings' (The Year's Art 1913). Following the demise of the OW Paper and Arts Co Ltd (qv) in 1914, Roberson’s was one of five, including Winsor & Newton, George Rowney, Reeves & Son and James Newman, acting together as Associated Colour Merchants, which signed an agreement in 1916 with J. Barcham Green & Son to produce a range of papers for them, watermarked ‘A.C.M.’ and the words ‘Watercolour Paper England’ (Barcham Green 1994, p.35). Together with the restorer, Helmut Ruhemann, it patented a wax-based alkaline picture cleaning composition in 1940, designed to remove surface dirt from paintings (Patent 537152), a product Roberson continued to market for many years; for Ruhemann, see British picture restorers.

Works on Roberson supports from the 1910s and subsequently include Annie Walke’s Sorrowful Women, c.1913-36, exh.1936, canvas stamp (Private coll., see Maria Vittoria Pellini and Anna Vesaluoma, ‘“Richness of Colour and Boldness of Outline”: On Annie Walke’s Artistic Practice’, Materia: Journal of Technical Art History, issue 2, 2022, at https://issue-2.materiajournal.com/, accessed 2 August 2022). Philip de László’s Auguste Victoria, Queen of Portugal, canvas board study, 1915 (Christie’s 13 July 2016 lot 141), Sir George Henschel, 1917 (National Portrait Gallery) and Raymond Johnson-Ferguson, 1922 (Bonham’s 17 March 2010 lot 35), John Arnesby Brown’s In June, exh.1917, and Tom Mostyn’s Silver and Gold, 1918 (both Lady Lever Art Gallery, see Morris 1994), Frank Dicksee’s Mrs Austin Mackenzie, 1918, stamped canvas and labelled stretcher (Christie’s 2-16 December 2021 lot 25) and Ambrose McEvoy's Sir John Alco*ck, 1919 (National Portrait Gallery). Gerald Kelly had an account with Roberson, 1908-39 and subsequently (Katharine Waldron, ‘Exploring the work of Sir Gerald Faustus Kelly PRA (1879-1972)’, Hamilton Kerr Institute Bulletin, no.8, 2020, pp.83-103).

From the 1920s and 1930s, Oswald Birley's Glyn Philpot, 1920 (National Portrait Gallery), Arabella Huntington, 1924 (Huntington Library and Art Gallery, see Asleson 2001 p.32), Earl of Birkenhead, 1932, and Viscount Camrose, c.1933 (both National Portrait Gallery), Henry Lamb's Sir Paul Vinogradoff, c.1924 (Bodleian Library, information from Dana Josephson), Terrick Williams's Festa Notturna, Venice, c.1925 (Walker Art Gallery, see Morris 1996), Roland Penrose’s Painting 1925 (Sotheby’s 28 June 2006 lot 34), Henry Tonks’s A Conversation, Betteshanger Barn, 1927-8 (Christie’s 16 December 2009 lot 78), Geoffrey Rhoades’s Landscape at Charlbury, 1932 (Ashmolean Museum), James Gunn's Chesterton, Baring and Belloc, 1932 (National Portrait Gallery), J. McIntosh Patrick’s Winter in Angus, 1935, stamped canvas (Tate, see Tate database), Sir William Nicholson’s Trout, 1935 (Sotheby’s, Soames coll., 17 December 2014 lot 244), Michael Whelan's Malcolm MacDonald, exh.1937 (National Portrait Gallery), Ithell Colquhoun’s Scylla, 1938, stamped board (Tate, see Tate database), Peter Lanyon’s Nude Euston Road School, 1939, stamped ‘ROBMED’ canvas (Treves 2018 p.137) and William Coldstream’s Freesias with a Skull, 1939 (Ashmolean Museum). Sir Winston Churchill used Roberson as a London supplier (David Coombs and Minnie Churchill, Sir Winston Churchill’s Life through His Paintings‎, 2004, p.222), e.g. for Weald, c.1935, stamped canvas (Sotheby’s, Soames coll., 17 December 2014 lot 187).

From the 1940s, Augustus John’s Lord David Cecil, c.1943, stamped canvas from Long Acre, so possibly earlier (Hatfield House), Victor Pasmore’s Nude, 1941, and Reclining Nude, 1942, stamped canvas (both Tate, see Tate database) and Snow Scene, 1944 (Ashmolean Museum), William Scott’s Flowers and a Jug, 1946, also Roberson colours and probably canvas, and his Bottle Still Life, 1958, stamped ‘118’ canvas (Sotheby’s Paris, Ireland / France: Art & Literature, 16 May 2022 lot 25) and John Downton’s Susan Saneon, panel, c.1948 (Ashmolean Museum),

From the 1950s and subsequently, Marie-Louise von Motesiczky’s Still-life with Globe, 1953, stamped ‘120’ canvas, and Flavia Grassi, 1983 (Chiswick Timed, London, Works from the Motesiczky Charitable Trust, 30 June 2022, lots 1 and 18), Keith Vaughan’s Harvest Assembly, 1956, also Roberson colours and canvas (Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery; see Cobbe 1976a pp.30-1), Crowd Assembling I, 1967, and Flooded Landscape, 1968, both stamped ‘116’ canvas (Christie’s 25 May 2022 lots 50, 93), William Turnbull, Head, 1956, Roberson oil colours and cotton canvas (Tate, see Tate database, ‘Technique and condition’, 1995), Rodrigo Moynihan’s Sir Archibald Gray, 1956 (Royal College of Physicians), and Graham Sutherland’s Still Life with Apples and Scales, 1957, marked stretcher (Sotheby’s 11 November 2009 lot 31) and Edward Sackville-West, 1957-8, also Roberson colours (Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery; see Cobbe 1976a p.29).

From the 1960s and 1970s, Alan Davie’s Witches Chair No. 4, 1960 (Sotheby’s 14 September 2021 lot 68), Joy Bag No.1, 1961 (Sotheby’s 16 March 2021 lot 232), Yum Yum, 1961 (Sotheby’s 30 June 2022 lot 267), Double Jive, 1962 (Christie’s 21 October 2021 lot 267) and Flutter by Night, 1962 (Christie’s 21 October 2021 lot 254), all on stamped ‘135’ canvas, L.S. Lowry’s Yachts at Lytham, 1962, stamped ‘118’ canvas (Sotheby’s 30 June 2022 lot 244), Eileen Agar’s Morse Code, 1963, and Rite of Spring, 1971 (Christie’s 23 February-9 March 2022 lots 15, 14) and Feather for the Phoenix, 1969, and Wheel Bird, c.1960s (Christie’s 21 June- 5 July 2022, lot 27, 28), all on stamped ‘118’ canvas, John Bratby’s Hyacinth, by 1971, stamped canvas (Bonham’s, 11 July 2017, lot 30) and Top of The House, Cupola & Tower of the Winds, 1979, stamped canvas (Sotheby’s, Tim Ellis collection, 19 November 2014 lot 88). Bridget Riley used resin from Roberson to mix raw pigments for her painting, Late Morning, 1967-8 (Tate, see Robert Kudielka, Bridget Riley. The Complete Paintings, vol. 5. Early paintings, 1946-1958, appendix, 2018, p.1692). Roger Hilton described Roberson’s in Camden Town as ‘not bad’ in his ‘Night Letters’ (Timothy Bond (ed.), Roger Hilton, Night Letters, Drawings & Gouaches, 2007, p.54). He used their stamped ‘118’ canvas for September 1960, 1960 (Christie’s 2 March 2021 lot 197).

Francis Bacon used Roberson canvas for some forty years from the late 1940s, generally ‘118’ canvas purchased through Chelsea Art Stores (qv). Receipts for materials from Chelsea Art Stores, 1976-80, include one hundred ‘118’ canvases (Russell 2010 p.137). An example of such canvas, whether or not supplied by Chelsea Art Stores, is Three Figures and Portrait, 1975 (Tate).

Patrick Heron used Roberson materials from at least 1949. His The Long Table with Fruit: 1949, 1949, is on a Roberson canvas and his Vertical: January 1956, 1956 is partly painted in Roberson's artists’ oil colours (both Tate, see Tate database, ‘Technique and condition’). Other works on Roberson canvas are Abstract: July 1952, 1952 (Christie’s 25 May 2022 lot 47) and Vermilion and Lemon in Orange: Jan 62, 1962, stamped ‘118’ canvas (Christie’s 21 October 2021 lot 145). An analysis of colours in tubes in Patrick Heron’s studio at his death showed 61 colours, out of 155, in 627 tubes, out of 790, from C. Roberson & Co Ltd, many from the mid-1960s (Mary Bustin, ‘…The Relevance of an Artist’s Paint Archive’, in K.J. van den Berg et al., Issues in Contemporary Oil Paint, 2014, p.38).

For illustrations of this business’s canvas stamps, see .

Sources: Leach 1973 (for the firm’s addresses); Katlan 1992 p.464; Woodco*ck 1995 (for the firm’s addresses); Woodco*ck 1996; Woodco*ck 1997; Sally Woodco*ck, ‘The Roberson Archive: a colourful past’, The Picture Restorer, no.12, 1997, pp.14-17; Carlyle 2001 pp.279-80 (for a description of the Archive). The company’s records include ledgers (c.400) and records, 1815-1960s, including correspondence with client companies and artists, recipe books 1831-85, personal account books and ‘bought ledgers’ 1828-1907 (Hamilton Kerr Institute, University of Cambridge). Many of these papers have been studied in detail by Sally Woodco*ck and have been used by Leslie Carlyle. Information from Jevon Thistlewood on marked supports in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. For abbreviations, see Resources and bibliography.

Updated December 2020, November 2022
Archibald Robertson, Mill St, Hanover Square, London 1779, Saville Row Passage, adjoining Squib’s Auction Room, Conduit St 1781, Charles St 1779-1799, 15 Charles St, St James's Square 1782-1796. Engraver and publisher, landscape painter and drawing master.

Archibald Robertson (c.1748-1804) was not only an engraver and publisher, but also a landscape painter and drawing master. His trade card, as printseller and drawing master, address Saville Row Passage, and so apparently dating to 1781 or before, advertised, among other products, ‘Best Swiss-Crayons, variety of Drawing Paper, Port Crayons, all sorts of Italian and French Chalks, Colour Boxes, the best black Lead and Hair Pencils, Indian Ink, Port-folios with or without Leaves, Ladies black Tracing Paper, and very fine Transparent Do. for Etching, with Copper Plates prepared for Do. Etching Needles’ (Banks coll. 56.23, Heal coll. 100.61, repr. Clarke 1981 p.92; Museum of London, repr. Wedd 2001 p.31). The vignette view of his premises at the head of this trade card was drawn by Paul Sandby, whose preparatory sketch is in the Victoria and Albert Museum (repr. Luke Hermann, Paul and Thomas Sandby, 1986, p.159). Robertson stocked Reeves’s colours in 1781 (Morning Herald and Daily Advertiser 1 June 1781).

Robertson engraved or published jointly with Paul Sandby a set of aquatints of drawings by Pietro Fabris in 1777 (British Museum collection database; see also Ann V. Gunn, ‘Eighteenth-century views in and near Naples: aquatints by Paul Sandby and Archibald Robertson’, British Art Journal, vol. 14, no.1, 2013, pp.33-43). He occasionally exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1772 and was using Saville Passage, Conduit St as his address in the Academy exhibition catalogue in 1781. He is presumably the Archibald Robertson who married Elizabeth Halliley in 1779 at St George Hanover Square; his age was given as 31 in the marriage allegation (Alexander 2021 p.757). Robertson was in Mill St, Hanover Square in 1779 (Alexander 2021 p.756) and then Charles St by 1779-99 (Westminster Rate Books, see www.findmypast.co.uk). He advertised the publication of an engraving from 15 Charles St in 1794 (The Times 26 June 1794). He is sometimes confused with the miniature painter, Archibald Robertson (1765-1835). In his will, made 8 August 1786 and proved 26 September 1804, Archibald Robertson, drawing master of Charles St, left his estate to his wife, Elizabeth.

For Robertson’s work as a printmaker, see Alexander 2021 pp.756-7.

*Joshua Rogers 1835-1867,Joshua Rogers & Sons 1868-1878. At 133 Bunhill Row London EC 1835-1878, also 1 Shaftesbury St, New North Road 1853, 64 Shaftesbury St 1854-1865, retail 13 Pavement, Finsbury Square 1866. Oilman and tallow chandler, wholesale artists’ colourman.

Joshua Rogers (c.1800-1865) traded in the 1830s as an oilman and tallow chandler, but by the 1840s he was generally listed as an artists’ colourman. In censuses he was recorded in 1851 at Geranium Cottage, Wick Lane, Hackney, as an artists’ colourman, age 52, with his wife Elizabeth and daughter Avis, age 16, and in 1861 at Shaftesbury Terrace in Hoxton as a toy colour box maker, age 60, with his wife. He died at Shaftesbury Terrace in 1865, age 65, leaving an estate valued at under £3000, with his wife Elizabeth, his son William, artists’ colourman, and George Riley, oilman of Hoxton, as executors.

Rogers was awarded the Society of Arts’ silver medal for his shilling box of watercolours (Journal of the Society of Arts, vol.1, 17 June 1853, p.365), an innovation which apparently led to the sale of no fewer than 11 million such boxes by 1870 (Hardie 1966 p.24). The business used this award in advertising, describing it as the ‘Society of Arts Large Special Prize Council’s Medal’ for the superiority of their colours, brushes, pencils, etc (Post Office directory, 1869). It also advertised as a wholesale manufacturing artists’ colourman, featuring a wide-ranging stock and claiming to be artists’ colourman to the Royal Family, the Society of Arts, the Royal Academy, the Old and New Water Colour Societies etc (J.S.C. Morris,The Imperial Court Guide, London, 1866, advert p.3). The business had an account with Roberson, 1872 (Woodco*ck 1997), and supplied them with colour boxes from at least 1862 to 1871 or later (Hamilton Kerr Institute, MS 180-1993).

Added March 2019
William Sinclair Ross, 5 Frederick St, Edinburgh 1870-1879, 1887, 9 Hanover St 1880-1882, 9 Beaufort Road 1884-1885. Artists’ colourman and stationer.

William Sinclair Ross (1839-1894) was born in 1839 at Crichton, Midlothian, the son of George Ross, a gardener, and his wife, Rebecca Sinclair. He married Isabella Wilson in Edinburgh in 1867 (Glasgow Evening Post 17 August 1867). In census records he can be found as an artists’ colourman in Edinburgh, in 1871 with his wife Isabella and a young son, in 1881 with his wife and three young sons, in 1891 with his wife and three sons, ages 17 to 21, a photographer, bookseller’s assistant and an art student. He died in 1894, age 55, described as an artists’ colourman, leaving an estate valued at only £193.

Ross initially worked in Macgill’s Gallery of Art, as he acknowledged in his trade label in 1884, in which he described himself as ‘Late of MacGill's Gallery of Art’ (information from Edwina Milner, February 2013). Macgill’s Gallery of Art was a continuation by P. Westren, jeweller, from 1867 of the business of the late William MacGill (qv).

Trade as a colourman: Ross had an account with Roberson, September 1870-April 1888 (Woodco*ck 1997). For an illustration of his canvas stamp, see British canvas, stretcher and panel suppliers’ marks: Part 13, Scotland.

Added September 2018, updated March 2021
Dominic and Arnold Roudhloff, 81 Charlotte St, Fitzroy Square, London 1839-1848, 87 Charlotte St 1849-1857. Guitar manufacturers and artists’ colourmen.

Dominique and Arnauld Roudhloff were the sons of Charles Roudhloff, a well-known luthier from Mirecourt in north-eastern France. For the Roudhloff family, see www.luthiers-mirecourt.com/roudhloff_genealogie.htm, accessed 6 February 2021. Rather like C. Barbe (qv), and at much the same time, the Roudhloffs traded both in musical instruments, in their case guitars, and as artists’ colourmen. They are best known as guitar makers and advertised in 1844 that they were the only authorised agents for the sale of Barelli’s patent foreign strings, as also the only manufacturers of the melophonic guitars, approved of and performed on by Don J.M. and R.A. de Ciebra and by Giulio Regondi (Morning Chronicle, 26 September 1844). Guitars with the Roudhloff label come on the market from time to time.

The brothers advertised that they were from Winsor & Newton, where presumably one or both worked, c.1834-39, before setting up independently. Their canvas stamp can be found on a landscape, Rietz, near Saumur, artist unknown, stencilled: ROUDHLOFF BROTHERS/ FROM[?]/ WINSOR & NEWTON’S./ ARTISTS COLOURMEN/ -- Charlotte Street/ RATHBONE PLACE/ LONDON (Duchy Auctions, April 2018).

Dominique Roudhloff (c.1798-1857 or later) was in England by May 1834 when he married Andrienne Louise Jumel at St Pancras Old Church. In census records he can be found in Charlotte St in 1841 and again in 1851 at no.87 as a guitar maker, age 52, born in France, with his wife, age 37, also born in France, son Norbertus, age 13, born in London, brother Arnould, guitar maker, age 46, born in France, and nephew Edward, age 11, also born in France. Arnould Roudhloff (1804-1857 or later) was still active in London in 1857 when he returned from a visit to France.

The brothers can be found in trade directories trading as guitar manufacturers from 1839, when they appear in the addendum to Pigot & Co’s directory, and additionally as artists’ colourmen from 1844, with a final entry in London trade directories in 1857. They presumably retired to France thereafter. The son, Norbert, can be found in Paris in 1873.

Added September 2023
Oswald Rowell, 9 Percy St, Newcastle-upon-Tyne to 1869, 40 Blackett St, Newcastle-upon-Tyne 1869-1894, also at 1 Blackett Place. Carver and gilder, artists’ colourman.

Oswald Rowell (1837-94) was born in Gateshead on 15 September 1837, the son of John and Jane Rowell. He married twice, firstly Priscilla Craggs in 1872; she died in 1874 (Newcastle Courant 31 May 1872; Free BMD), and secondly Dorothy Graham in 1888. Described as a carver and gilder, age 57, he died at 93 Jesmond Road, Newcastle, on 26 December 1894 with his widow Dorothy and John Davidson Graham, engineer, being granted probate, his effects being valued at £310 (Free BMD; National Probate Calendar).

Oswald Rowell can be traced in census records. In 1841 in Gateshead in his parent’s household (his father recorded as a joiner). In 1851, age 13, in the household of his uncle, Ellison Ismay, carver and gilder, to whom he was apprenticed. In 1861 in Birmingham as a boarder, age 23, in the household of John Hudson. In 1871 as Usward [sic] Rowell at 40 Blackett St (and 1 Blackett Place), a carver and gilder employing a man and two boys. In 1881 at 40 Blackett St (and 1 & 2 Blackett Place) as a carver and gilder employing two men and two boys. In 1891 at 25 Lovaine Crescent as a carver and gilder with his wife Dorothy and her son John Graham, age 21, a locomotive engineer.

Rowell from time to time put collections of mainly modern pictures up for sale at auction from as early as 1868 (Newcastle Journal 26 March 1868). In 1869 Rowell advertised that he had removed from 9 Percy St to more commodious premises at 40 Blackett St and 1 Blackett Place (Newcastle Daily Chronicle 13 March 1869). These premises were on the corner of Blackett St with Blackett Place.

Rowell held an account with Roberson from 40 Blackett St, 1876-98 (Woodco*ck 1997). His canvas stencil with this address has been recorded on George Blackie Sticks’s A Highland Landscape with Anglers by a River and a Village Beyond, 1879 (Dreweatts, Newbury, Berkshire, 14 June 2023, lot 122), repr. in British canvas, stretcher and panel suppliers’ marks. Part 12, England outside London on this website.

Updated September 2015, August 2019, extended March 2022
Richard Rowney, corner of King St, St Giles, London 1785, Broad St, St Giles 1789-1793, jeweller and silversmith. Thomas Rowney by 1790-1793, T. & R. Rowney 1793-1801, 1803-1806 [subsequently the two brothers traded independently, Richard as a perfumer and Thomas (see below) as a colourman], Richard Rowney 1801-1825, Richard Rowney & Son 1811. At 95 Holborn Hill 1783-1804, 106 Hatton Garden 1801-1825, wholesale perfumers and hair merchants.

Guest & Rowney, 82 Pall Mall, London 1801-1802, colour preparers, T. & R. Rowney, 106 Hatton Garden 1803-1806, perfumers and colourmen, Thomas Rowney by 1808-c.1815, artists’ colourman, Rowney & Mash 1813, Rowney & Forster 1815-1831, colour preparers, varnish manufacturers and lithographic printers, George Rowney & Co 1832-1844, Rowney, Dillon & Rowney 1844-1848, George Rowney & Co 1848-1923, George Rowney & Co Ltd 1923-1985, Daler-Rowney Ltd from 1985, artists’ colourmen and pencil makers. At 30 Bartlett’s Building, Holborn by 1808-1814, 14 Oxford St 1814-1818, 51 Rathbone Place 1815-1862, 52 Rathbone Place 1854-1884, 29 Oxford St 1862-1881, street renumbered 1881, 64 Oxford St 1881-1907, 61 Brompton Road 1905-1925. Retail outlet at Princes Hall, Piccadilly from 1884 (no.190 until 1896, no.192 until 1893). Factory and wholesale (later head office) at Percy St W (no.10 1850-1970, no.11 1859-1970), retail shop at 12 Percy St from 1952. Factories at Diana Place, Euston Road, NW1 (no.10 from 1869, no.9 from 1875, no.12 from 1885) and Malden Pencil Works, Malden Crescent, Kentish Town, NW1 1880-1960s. Head office and colour factory relocated to Bracknell, Berkshire 1967.

Rowney’s is one of very few artists’ supply businesses in the world with its origins in the 18th century still trading today, as Daler-Rowney Ltd, albeit no longer in family hands. It was Winsor & Newton's closest rival and the only British firm other than Winsor & Newton and Reeves with significant ongoing overseas business. The following history, first made available in 2006, has been extended in 2022 using newly accessible documents (Rowney archive, see Sources below).

The following history is in seven numbered sections, arranged chronologically:

1. Early days as perfumers
2. Thomas Rowney as colourman, 1801-15

3. Rowney & Forster, George Rowney & Co, 1815-44
3.1 Rowney products, 1815-44
3.2 Business outside London, 1824-44
4. Rowney, Dillon & Rowney, 1844-48
5. George Rowney & Co, 1848-1923
5.1 Rowney products, 1840s-1920s
5.2 Artists using Rowney materials, 1840s-1920s
5.3 International trade, 1850s-1920s
6. George Rowney & Co Ltd, 1924-85
6.1 The 1930s and 1940s
6.2 The post-war years
6.3 Rowney acrylics from the 1960s
7. Daler-Rowney Ltd from 1985

1. Early days as perfumers. The Rowney brothers, Richard (1756-1824) and Thomas (?1759-1832), are said to have started a business in perfumery in 1789 (‘Brief History of George Rowney and Company Ltd’, typescript by George Rowney and Co Ltd, n.d., c.1952-57, and subsequent editions). Accounts of the business’s origins are confusing.

Richard was baptised on 31 March 1756 at St Peter and St Paul, Mitcham, Surrey, the son of Benjamin Rowney (c.1725-79/81), barber and peruke maker, and his second wife, Mary Morris. The Rowney family moved to the parish of St Andrew, Holborn, in about 1760. Thomas’s birth has not been traced. Both brothers served apprenticeships, Richard for seven years from 1 May 1770 for a premium of £40 to Frank Rochfort, joiner and citizen of London, a pawnbroker in Bishopgate St (Guildhall Library, MS 8052/7, f.108, Joiners' Company records, https://bifmo.history.ac.uk/entry/rowney-richard-1770). Thomas’s apprenticeship details remain to be located but he was admitted to the freedom of the Barbers’ Company in August 1780 (‘Freedom of the City Admission Papers, 1681-1930’, www.ancestry.co.uk). He was later Master of the company (Frederic Boase, Modern English Biography, vol.3, 1901, p.331).

Both brothers were in London in the late 1770s. Richard married Ann Hudson at St Pancras old church on 1 November 1778. Thomas married Ann Mayne at the same church two months later on 19 January 1779. Both couples had children christened at St Andrew Holborn. Thomas and his wife Ann were at Chick Lane when their eldest son, Benjamin Mayne Rowney, was christened in November 1779. They moved to Bartlett’s Building Passage by 1780 and to Holborn Hill by 1783, which was still their address when their youngest son George was christened in 1792 (a future partner in the business). Richard and his wife Ann were in Holborn Hill in 1784 when one of their sons, Richard Benjamin Rowney, was christened. The brothers were established at 95 Holborn Hill by 1783 on the evidence of a payment in a sewer rate book (‘Rewriting a company’s history’, The Times 30 March 1982). Thomas appears in land tax records in Holborn from 1783. His activities in the 1780s remain to be documented. He was listed at 95 Holborn Hill as a perfumer in 1790 and as a dealer in ornamental hair in 1793 (Universal British Directory, 1790; Wakefield’s Merchants and Tradesman’s General Directory of London, 1793, addenda p.22). In 1792, as ‘T. Rowney, Wholesale Perfumer, (At the Rose) No. 95 Holborn Hill’, he advertised Rowney’s improved Windsor soap (Kentish Gazette 10 April 1792). Thomas Rowney took as apprentices James Kingsnorth (1782), Josh Cordwell (1792), Alfred Hockaday (1796), Robert Sherratt (1801, freedom) and Josiah Kinsey (1803).

Richard’s progress once he gained his freedom can be traced from the ‘Proceedings of the Old Bailey’ and from poll books (www.ancestry.co.uk). A pawnbroker in 1778, apparently in Jermyn St, by 1780 he was a salesman in Oxford St and by 1782 in partnership there with Andrew Cook. Richard moved on to trade as a jeweller and silversmith. Two of his silver marks are recorded, the first entered as a small worker on 1 April 1785 from 95 Holborn Hill, the second on 30 August 1785 from the corner of King St, St Giles’s (Arthur Grimwade, London Goldsmiths 1697-1837: their marks and lives, 1976, p.648).

Richard Rowney, jeweller, advertised in 1793 from Broad St, Bloomsbury, that he was selling up his stock-in-trade as a silversmith ‘on going into the wholesale perfumery business’, giving 95 Holborn Hill as the address of T. & R. Rowney, wholesale perfumers (True Briton 1 May 1793). The brothers took out insurance on the property in 1794 as perfumers and hairdressers, also insuring their manufacturing facility in the adjoining Union Court, Thomas’s dwelling house in Islington and Richard’s household goods in his dwelling house at 14 Charles St, Hatton Garden (Sun Fire Office policy registers, 397/628933). The business stocked T. Reeves & Son’s artists’ colours in 1799 and those of George Blackman (qv) the following year (The Times 22 July 1799, Morning Herald 31 March 1800).

The partnership between Thomas and Richard Rowney as wholesale perfumers at 95 Holborn Hill was dissolved in 1801, the business being carried on by Richard (London Gazette 29 September 1801). In a subsequent partnership between the two brothers, 1802-6, they used their trade card, with royal coat of arms and Prince of Wales feathers, to advertise, ‘T. & R. ROWNEY, Perfumers, Pocket Book Makers, Cutlers, Comb Makers, & Superfine Patent Pallet Water Colour Preparers, to their Majesties, the Prince of Wales, & Royal Family. No. 95 Holborn Hill London. WHOLESALE & FOR EXPORTATION’ (Heal coll. 89.134). This partnership as wholesale perfumers and colourmen at 106 Hatton Garden was dissolved as from 31 December 1806 (London Gazette 8 March 1808). Richard acted as an agent for his brother’s colours when Thomas set up as an artists’ colourman (see below).

A trade card in the name of Richard Rowney from 95 Holborn Hill advertised Honey Water (Banks coll. 93.38, with added date 1804). While the shop in Holborn Hill may have been kept on until 1804 or later, Richard had leased premises nearby on the north side of Hatton Garden as early as 1801 for a rent of £38 pa, according to an auction sale advertisem*nt for a substantial brick-built freehold dwelling, late the property of Richard Farmer deceased (The Times 11 July 1801). Richard Rowney was made bankrupt in 1811 (London Gazette 19 February 1811, 11 May 1816). The perfumery business was listed as Richard Rowney & Son in two directories in 1811. Richard died in 1824 and was buried on 10 December at Elim Chapel, Fetter Lane, as of 106 Hatton Garden, age 69 (register transcription, www.findmypast.co.uk). In his will, made in 1815 and proved 15 December 1824, Richard Rowney, perfumer of Hatton Garden, mentions his son James Thomas Rowney.

2. Thomas Rowney as colourman, 1801-15. Thomas Rowney went into a short-lived partnership with the artist, Thomas Robert Guest (1754-1818), in or before 1801, preparing artists’ colours, called newly invented patent pallet colours, at 82 Pall Mall (‘Brief History of George Rowney and Company Ltd’, see above) or, according to one newspaper advertisem*nt, at 81 Pall Mall. These premises on the south side of Pall Mall were rented at £70 pa by Guest & Rowney as under-lessees according to an auction advertisem*nt (The Times 24 September 1801). Guest took out a patent in June 1801 for boxes to contain articles for drawing and painting, with a new arrangement of the palette of colours (The Repertory of Arts and Manufactures, vol.15, 1801, p.161). For such a palette, marked, GUEST & ROWNEY/ PATENT., see J. Duncan Macdonald, Early Water Colour Boxes, 2016, p.111.

Guest & Rowney’s patent pallet colours in sets were advertised for sale in January 1802 by W. Middleditch, chemist at Ipswich, and by John Galpine, bookseller and stationer, in Blandford (Ipswich Journal 9 January 1802; Salisbury and Winchester Journal 11 January 1802). Shortly thereafterwards, the partnership of Guest & Rowney, colour preparers at 82 Pall Mall, was dissolved (London Gazette 16 February 1802), perhaps owing to Guest’s ill-health, and the lease and stock-in-trade, including colours, colour boxes, drawing desks, sketchbooks, drawing boards, drawing paper, portfolios, pencils and crayons, were offered at auction (The Times 10 February 1802). Guest then took a shop in Salisbury where he advertised his likenesses and paintings, his new invented colours and varnishes and his work as a picture restorer (Salisbury and Winchester Journal 10 January 1803). He used his book on drawing from nature to promote his new preparation of colours for transparent painting on glass, which were for sale at his shop, the Library and London Warehouse, High St, Salisbury (T.R. Guest, A New Pocket Sketch Book…, 1807, p.[39]). For Guest, see Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, at http://www.pastellists.com/Articles/Guest.pdf, accessed 2 January 2022.

Following the dissolution of his partnership with Guest, Thomas Rowney entered into a new partnership with his brother, Richard, trading as perfumers and colourmen until 1806. By 1808 Thomas was in business independently at Bartlett’s Building, Holborn. He was recorded at this address in Land Tax registers, 1808-12, and described as a colourman to artists in Kent’s Directory in 1812 and 1813. A short-lived partnership with the otherwise unknown Thomas Mash, as Rowney & Mash at Bartlett’s Buildings, was dissolved in September 1813 (London Gazette 21 May 1814).

Thomas Rowney’s focus was on the wider market for watercolours and drawing materials unlike, say, another leading colourman, Thomas Brown (qv), who catered for Royal Academy artists working in oil. Thomas’s trade sheet as superfine colour preparer and varnish maker at 30 Bartlett’s Buildings, so dating to c.1808-14, advertised a wide range of articles (photocopy in Rowney Archive). These included colours sold in single cakes, bottles, bladders and boxes, as well as brushes, Brookman & Langdon’s black lead pencils, all sorts of drawing materials, primed canvas on strainers and prepared panels ‘manufactured on the Venetian principle, and not liable to peel or crack, and with absorbent grounds’. Certain products were featured as recommended by Benjamin West, PRA.

In 1810 Thomas Rowney advertised that his colours were on sale in Oxford at J. Munday, bookseller, Taylor, printseller, and Williams, printseller (Oxford University and City Herald 2 June 1810). His colours, colour boxes and patent pocket sketchbooks were also advertised by James and Andrew Duncan, Glasgow (Samuel Taylor, An Universal System of Stenography, 2nd ed., 1810, advertisem*nt, p.2). The American artist in London, Washington Allston, supplied his compatriot, Samuel Morse, with asphaltum from Rowney in 1812 (Nathalia Wright, The Correspondence of Washington Allston, 2014, p.60).

Thomas Rowney remarried in May 1813 to Fanny Jones. As early as 1814, he may have handed responsibility for some of the business to his son by his first marriage, George, who is recorded in Land Tax registers at 14 Oxford St, 1814-17. Thomas died on 17 January 1832, variously given as in his 75th or 78th year (The Sun 20 January 1832, John Bull 22 January 1832). He described himself as a gentleman of Tottenham in his will, made 30 August 1830 and proved 1 February 1832. He made no mention of his business, confirming that he had already passed on his interest.

3. Rowney & Forster, then George Rowney & Co, 1815-44. George Rowney (1792-1870), Thomas’s son, transformed the business. He was apprenticed to his father for seven years from August 1806 and was admitted to the freedom of the Barbers’ Company as a colourman in May 1813. He married Esther Forster (c.1790-1865) at Bath Abbey in November 1813; he was in partnership, as Rowney & Forster, with her brother, Richard Forster, varnish maker, by 1815 until Forster’s retirement on 31 December 1831, at which time the business was trading as fancy stationers and watercolour manufacturers (London Gazette 23 March 1832). The company then became known as George Rowney & Co, as is clear from trade directories and press advertisem*nts (The Times 7 January 1833). Yet Forster retained an account until 1837, when on 24 October there is a reference, ‘Partnership of R & F closed’ (‘Partnership Book’, 1825-46, Rowney Archive).

The Rowney business expanded rapidly. It leased premises in Rathbone Place in 1815 in an area dotted with artists’ studios, at an annual rent of £73.10s (Rowney history, 1970s or later, Rowney Archive). George Rowney’s and Richard Forster’s ‘share of stock & debts’ was £2300 each in 1825, increasing every year to reach £4150 in 1830, with a decrease to £3700 in 1831, when Forster retired (‘Partnership Book’, 1825-46). Thereafter George’s share increased from £4600 in 1832 to £8585 in 1838, after which there was a change in accounting practice and a gap in surviving records. Somewhat later, George’s share was recorded as £19,902 in 1859, increasing every year to reach £49,245 in 1870, the year of his death (‘Partnership Book’, 1859-70).

In an Old Bailey court case in 1829 Richard Forster stated that there were twelve men in the company’s employ, but only two regularly in the shop (Proceedings of the Old Bailey); some of the staff are identified by name below (section 3.2). The partnership had an account with Roberson, 1828-9 (Woodco*ck 1997). George Rowney & Co was listed as a subscriber to George Field’s Chromatography, 1835. George Rowney was a customer of the composition ornament maker, George Jackson & Sons, 1836-42 (see Jackson’s account book, V&A Archive of Art and Design, AAD/2012/1/2/3, and British picture framemakers on this website).

It is possible to gain insights into the equipping of the business (see ‘Partnership Book’, 1825-4). For grinding colours, there are occasional payments for colour stones and mullers and for preparing Purbeck stones, 1826-43. For preparing watercolour cakes, there are payments for colour moulds: ‘cake colour frames for colour moulds’ in 1830, ‘a set of brass colour moulds’ in 1833, an ‘iron frame for cake colours’ and ‘cake colour moulds’, both in 1841; also for six blocks for Varley’s tints in 1826 and for engraving nine colours in 1834. For preparing canvas, special frames with large screws were made, perhaps to hold the canvas while it was being prepared. These included six frames with five screws each for double threequarters (i.e. canvas at 30 x 25 ins) and three frames with five screws each for double Kit-Cats (36 x 28 ins) etc at the considerable cost of £30 in 1829 (‘double’ might indicate an arrangement where two canvases were primed side-by-side). And three canvas frames at 15ft 2ins by 4ft 8ins in 1830 (for priming canvas on a roll).

3.1 Rowney products, 1815-44: Thomas Rowney and Richard Forster in partnership expanded the business in the course of five years to include varnish making, black lead pencil manufacturing (an enduring feature of the business) and lithographic printing and publishing. They described the business as ‘Superfine Colour Preparers and Varnish Makers’ on their trade card, giving their address as 14 Oxford St and so datable to c.1815-18 (Heal coll. 89.135). Also dating to this period or slightly later, Rowney & Forster used the designation, ‘Superfine Color Preparers & Black Lead Pencil Manufacturers to their majesties the Prince Regent, Princess of Wales & principal artists’ on an early watercolour box trade sheet from 51 Rathbone Place, so dating to c.1815-20, offering drawing papers, Bristol boards and pencils of varying degrees of hardness, wholesale and for exportation (Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, Elizabeth Bay House, Sydney, information from Scott Hill, 2009). A later trade sheet, perhaps dating to the 1820s, promoted various products including Holland’s Extra Superfine Colours (named after the watercolour flower painter, James Holland), pencils and materials for oil painting (Holland’s Extra Superfine Colours for fruit and flower painting…, trade sheet).

In 1819 Rowney & Forster entered into the business of lithographic printers, advertising new publications in lithography (The Times 20 December 1819, also in 1820 and 1821). In 1821 they were offering to lend lithographic stones, to supply chalk, ink and transfer paper and to undertake printing (Michael Twyman, Lithography 1800-1850, 1970, p.116n). Rowney & Forster published a series of lithographic drawing books, 1820-3 (examples in British Museum Print Room; see also Twyman, p.190), before selling out to William Day, publisher and printer of lithographs, whose earliest recorded imprint is 1824, as ‘Successor to Rowney & Forster’. Rowney & Forster advertised their remaining stock of their lithographic publications at half-price in 1828 (Morning Herald 16 January 1828). They continued to publish drawing books and in the 1850s the Rowney business took up chromo-lithography (see section 5.1 below).

Turning to Rowney & Forster materials used by identifiable artists, one of the earliest references is to the artist, John Linnell, making a modest purchase of chalk and paper from ‘Rowney’ in 1818 (account book, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 20-2000). Illustrations of Rowney canvas stamps and millboard and panel labels, largely dating to after 1830, can be found at .

Works on labelled millboards supplied by Rowney & Forster include Andrew Richardson’s View near Bridgeport, Connecticut (New York Historical Society, see Richard Koke, American Landscape and Genre Paintings in the New York Historical Society, 1982, vol.3, p.95) and Joseph Kidd’s Sharp-Tailed Finch, 1831/3, after John James Audubon (National Gallery of Art, Washington, repr. Katlan 1992 p.467 [not the Yellow Warbler], p.263). The latter label reads: ‘Rowney & Forster, artists' colourmen, 51, Rathbone Place, London,’ advertising their ‘IMPROVED Flemish Ground Mill Boards.’ Audubon wrote to his engraver, Robert Havell junr, on 18 November 1830, ‘I wish you to try first Rowney & Forster and purchase those (the whole I mean) as low and [on] as long a credit as you can’ (see Howard Corning, ed., Letters of John James Audubon 1826-1840, 1930, vol.1, pp.123-5). The naturalist, Edward Forbes, went to Rowney & Forster as a student in 1831 ‘for millboard, etc., cheap; and oil to begin pictures’ (George Wilson and ‎Archibald Geikie, Memoir of Edward Forbes, F.R.S., 1861, p.80).

Works on panel board include Samuel Prout, The Chapel of St Joseph of Arimathea (Tate) and William Allen’s Sir Walter Scott, 1831 (National Portrait Gallery). Both have a label reading 'IMPROVED/ Flemish Ground Pannel Boards,/ …/ Prepared Canvass with or without absorbent grounds./ An improved White for Oil Painting./ Also, extra-fine bladder Colour./ Superior Mastic Varnish, Asphultum, and fine light Drying Oil./ With every other material for Oil Painting, of very superior qualities.' An identical label is in the Johnson Collection and another can be found on Samuel Colman’s The Tryst, panel (Christie’s South Kensington 13 March 2013 lot 98).

When the business began trading as G. Rowney & Co, very similar labels for panel boards and mill boards were produced. Examples include Philip Corbet's Edward Burton, c.1838, labelled panel (Bodleian Library, information from Dana Josephson), Thomas Cole's Ruins of Kenilworth Castle, 1841 (Juniata College Museum of Art, Huntingdon, PA, see Nancy Siegel, Burlington Magazine, vol.144, 2002, p.557) and Richard Caton Woodville’s Dr Thomas Edmondson, c.1844, marked board (Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore) and Self-portrait, 1848-50?, marked panel (Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, see Joy Heyrman (ed.), New Eyes on America: The Genius of Richard Caton Woodville, 2013, pp.85, 105).

Works on stamped canvas from the 1830s and early 1840s include George Clint’s Falstaff’s Assignation with Mrs Ford, exh.1831 (Tate) and his Charles Young as Hamlet and Miss Glover as Ophelia, exh.1831 (Victoria and Albert Museum), William Shiels’ Shorthorn Cow, 1839-42, circular shaped stamp (National Museums of Scotland, information from Fiona Salvesen Murrell, 2012), Robert Buss’s The Monopolist, 1840 (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne), William Scott's Robert Moffat, 1842 (National Portrait Gallery), H.P. Briggs’ Charles Druce (Dulwich Picture Gallery, see Ingamells 2008 p.242) and Thomas Sully’s Mrs Benjamin Franklin Sands, 1840 (Baltimore Museum of Art, see Katlan 1987 p.275) and Mrs James Montgomery, c.1845 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, see Caldwell 1994 p.359). Sully used Rowney’s newly introduced Siccatif as a varnish in 1861 (Lance Mayer and Gay Myers, ‘American painters and varnishing: British, French and German connections’, Journal of the Institute of Conservation, vol.33, no.2, 2010, pp.11x, 125).

James Baker Pyne recorded using Rowney & Forster’s bladder colours for Rye Old Harbour, exh.1840, and Rowney’s Ceruleum in the sky of S Giorgio Maggiore from the Dogana, 1859, and in some subsequent paintings (Pyne’s Picture memoranda, V&A National Art Library, MSL/1947/1562-1563). A sketchbook owned by J.M.W. Turner, c.1841-2, bears a small green printed label, G. ROWNEY & Co,/ 51, RATHBONE PLACE,/ LONDON. (Tate, see Bower 1999 p.81).

Rowney’s promoted their drawing pencils extensively in newspapers across Britain and Ireland in the 1830s and 1840s. Rowney’s advertised various new products in The Art-Union in the early 1840s: their new agent preserving envelope for oil colours, invented by Mr Templeton (perhaps John Samuelson Templeton), to supersede the use of the bladder, also new colours for oil painting, Palladium Red and a new permanent Blue equal to Ultramarine (January 1841 p.19), 'Aquaoleum, or a new Preparation of Moist Colours to give the effect of either Oil or Water-Colour Painting', sold in compressible tubes or in small earthenware pans' (June 1842 p.144) and a new permanent White for oil painting (February 1843 p.49). It is clear from the June 1842 advertisem*nt that Rowney’s were already selling colours in tubes. Rowney’s accounts record a legal expense in July 1841, relating to ‘Rand’, perhaps indicating a negotiation to use the colour tubes newly patented by John Rand (qv) (‘Partnership Book’, 1825-46, Rowney archive).

3.2 Business outside London, 1824-44: George Rowney, his partners and his salaried staff developed the Rowney business by travelling to various parts of the country to promote trade in Rowney products. To give an idea, in 1829 Rowney himself claimed 44 days expenses at just under £1 a day for a journey to the north including Edinburgh and Glasgow and in 1830 39 days expenses for a journey to the northwest and 31 days for a journey to the west (‘Partnership Book’, 1825-46). Rowney and his staff presumably travelled with sample products, as evidenced by payments such as that for a travelling portmanteau in 1834. It cannot have been comfortable travelling by horse-drawn coach from town to town over such prolonged periods.

Salaried staff making journeys in England and occasionally to Ireland included James Pounceby, 1825-29 (dismissed for theft), G.A. Phipps, 1825-33, possibly George Alderson Phipps (1810-74), W. Rummin, 1833-36, possibly William Rummin (1803-50), travelling as far as Waterford in Ireland, and Fr. Dimes, 1833-38, presumably Frederick Dimes (qv) who later set up independently. To take Phipps, he made a six-day journey in Kent in 1830, a 39-day journey to the northwest in 1831, a 43-day journey to the north, a 24-day journey to the west and another journey to Kent, all in 1832. Other salaried staff included W.H. Holland, 1830-44, possibly William Henry Holland (b.1796) and J. Osbourne, 1838-40. Rowney’s son, George Edward Rowney made many journeys in the 1830s, including an 85-day trip to the north-west in 1838.

Some specific outlets can be identified among the many. In Edinburgh Rowney & Forster’s watercolours were stocked in 1824 by Robert Hamilton (The Scotsman 29 December 1824) and also apparently by Adam Elder since Rowney & Forster appeared as a creditor owed £48 when Elder was made bankrupt in 1826 (National Records of Scotland, CS236/E/5/1). In Portsmouth Rowney’s colours in boxes and cakes were advertised by W.H. Charpentier in 1835 and thereafter, as were their bladder colours, ‘a fresh supply every ten days’ (Hampshire Telegraph 28 December 1835, New Portsmouth... Guide, 1846, p.[156]). In Bristol Rowney’s watercolours were among those stocked by Samuel Bedford in 1839; Bedford’s death two years later led to George Rowney travelling to Bristol for ‘Bedford’s affairs’ in July 1841 (Bristol Mercury 4 May 1839; ‘Partnership Book’, 1825-46). Also in Bristol Rowney’s millboard was stocked by S.G. Tovey, c.1840 (see ). In Birmingham in 1840, Morris & Gore (qv) advertised Holland's and Harding's colours, both produced by Rowney’s (Osborne's London & Birmingham Railway Guide, 1840).

In Paris Rowney & Co’s colours and crayons were available from Tachet, c.1838-44 (Almanach du commerce de Paris; see also Constantin 2001 pp.58, 66). In turn Rowney’s was stocking Tachet’s drawing instruments in 1837 and his drawing boards and curves in 1847 as ‘sole agents’ (Morning Herald 15 March 1837; catalogue appended to W. Pease, The Guide to Surveying and Levelling, [1847]). In Copenhagen C.A. Blankensteiner was advertising Rowney’s watercolours in 1841 (Kjøbenhavns Kongelig alene priviligerede Adresse comptoirs Efterretninger 3 July 1841). In New York Benjamin Hill was stocking Rowney’s watercolours, among others, in 1840 (American Railroad Journal and Mechanics' Magazine, vol.11, November 1840). The American artist, Asher Brown Durand, used some Rowney, Dillon & Rowney brushes, four marked examples of which now belong to the New York Historical Society. Rowney’s trade outside London and overseas remains to be explored in detail.

4. Rowney, Dillon & Rowney, 1844-48. Charles White Dillon joined the business in 1844 (‘Brief History of George Rowney and Company Ltd’), which traded as Rowney, Dillon & Rowney until Dillon’s bankruptcy in 1848 (London Gazette 26 December 1848, 12 October 1855). It is clear from a Chancery law case, Rowney vs Dillon in 1848 (National Archives, C 14/895/R44), that the Rowney family brought Dillon into the business primarily to extend its scope by travelling as a salesman in Great Britain and Ireland; however, they came to the view that he was ineffective in bringing in revenue, not least from Dillon’s brothers’ business, A. & J. Dillon, of Grafton St, Dublin, and from J.C. Grundy of Manchester (for whom see British picture framemakers). Rowney’s trading partner can probably be identified with Charles Wellesley White Dillon (c.1814-1894), who died age 80 in Dublin in 1894, leaving effects worth £358.

Rowney, Dillon and Rowney held an appointment to Her Majesty’s Stationery Office and the School of Design for their pencils (The Scotsman 16 December 1848). Firstly as Rowney, Dillon & Rowney, and then as George Rowney & Co, the business had both purchase and sales accounts with Roberson, 1845-1908 (Woodco*ck 1997). Rowney’s had long produced illustrated drawing books. Now they turned their attention to instruction handbooks at much the same time as Winsor & Newton was venturing into the field. Rowney, Dillon and Rowney published three pioneering ‘Guides to the Fine Arts’, each with an appended product catalogue: John Samuel Templeton’s The Guide to Oil Painting, 1845 (payment, 12 June 1845), Henry O'Neill, A Guide to Pictorial Art. How to use the black lead pencil, chalks and water colours, 1846 (payment, 16 August 1845), and William Pease, The Guide to Surveying and Levelling, [1847]. Rowney’s lithographic drawing books included Benjamin Richard Green, Illustrations of Perspective, 3rd ed., 1845, in six parts (payments for litho drawings, 1843-44). For payments, see ‘Partnership Book’, 1825-46.

Rowney, Dillon & Rowney’s drawing pencils were widely available, for example at Love & Barton, Manchester in 1847 (Manchester Guardian 3 April 1847). The business supplied the panel for Ford Madox Brown's The Seraph's Watch, 1846/7, marked: ROWNEY DILLON ROWNEY/ Manufacturers/ 51 Rathbone Place/ London (private coll., see Bennett 2010 p.82) and the millboard for his Self-portrait in a Brown Coat (Christie’s 15 December 2010 lot 24). It supplied canvas and stretcher, as well as colours in March 1848, for Brown’s The First Translation of the Bible into English, 1847-8 (Bradford Art Galleries and Museums, see Townsend 2004 p.94, Bennett 2010 p.94). For Rowney, Dillon & Rowney stamps and labels, see .

5. George Rowney & Co, 1848-1923. The Rowney business expanded enormously in the second half of the 19th century. An idea of its scale in 1861 can be gained from the census record for George Rowney, who was listed at 57 Oakley Square, Somers Town, as artists’ colourman, age 70, wife Esther, also age 70, employing 76 men and 32 boys and girls. At his death in 1870, George Rowney’s estate was worth almost £45,000, a considerable sum.

Two of George Rowney’s sons, George Edward Rowney (1816-64) and Frederick William Rowney (1821-1902), had joined the company in the 1830s, becoming partners. A third, Thomas Henry Rowney (1817-93) was employed for a time but left, eventually becoming a professor of chemistry. George Edward Rowney withdrew from partnership in 1854 (London Gazette 9 October 1855). It was Frederick William Rowney who followed his father in developing the Rowney business. By the time of his death in 1902 he owned much of the business’s capital (‘Estimate of F.W.R’s Capital in the business’, c.1902, Rowney Archive). He left effects valued at £119,828. In due course his three sons became partners: Frederick junior (1847-1904), Arthur (1859-1942) and Walter George Rowney (1862-1947). Both Arthur and Walter were listed as manufacturing artists colourmen, aged 21 and 19 respectively, in the 1881 census, living at 16 Cumberland Terrace. Walter, the youngest son, ran the business for the first forty years of the 20th century. He left effects valued at £39,312 at his death in 1947. Several members of the family were artists: Frederick senior, who married Emily Goodall, sister of Frederick Goodall RA, his son Walter George and Walter’s daughter, Margaret (1908-98).

George Rowney & Co exhibited at the Great Exhibition in 1851 and a contemporary copy of their catalogue described a wide range of products (Wholesale Catalogue, for the Trade only, 99pp, bound into the Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Great Exhibition 1851, vol.16, copy in V&A National Art Library, EX.1851.135). The business exhibited again at the International Exhibition in 1862 (some exhibits relating to chromo-lithography and the practice of drawing and printing are detailed in a small collection of circulars, Yale Center for British Art, ND1550 G36 1862). The main items featuring in Rowney catalogues of 1850, c.1864, c.1867, 1892 and 1907 have been listed (Katlan 1992 pp.354-9). Later catalogues continue to feature a very wide range of products.

Over the years Rowney’s took on several premises in London in addition to those in Rathbone Place. The business had retail outlets in Oxford St, 1862-1907, in Piccadilly (close to the Royal Academy), 1884-93, and in Brompton Road, 1905-1925. It maintained a factory and office in Percy St, close to Rathbone Place, 1850-1970. Cash takings on the till at Rathbone Place, Oxford St and Percy St are recorded, to take three sample years, in 1864 £3927, £1824 and £195 respectively, in 1867 £2594, £1898 and £604, and in 1870 £2641, £2390 and £1066 (‘Partnership Book’, 1859-70). As the manufacturing business expanded, Rowney’s set up a factory in Diana Place, off Euston Road, in 1869, adding further units in 1875 and 1885. Another factory, the Malden Pencil Works, was built in Kentish Town at a cost of £19,000 in 1880 (Rowney history, 1970s or later, Rowney Archive).

Rowney’s continued to rely on travelling salesmen, including ‘Harvey’, 1859-64, John Storr, 1859-70, and ‘Robinson’, 1864-70 (‘Partnership Book’, 1859-70, Rowney Archive). They made many lengthy journeys in England and Wales, presumably generally travelling by rail, and occasionally to Scotland and Ireland, as evidenced by expense payments. Payments for excess luggage suggest that they took samples with them (in 1859 payment was made for a ‘Travellers Sample Case’). Rowney’s trading partners at home and abroad are too numerous to list here; some feature in Rowney’s ‘Index of debts, 1871’. To take three examples, the Edinburgh printseller, Alexander Crichton, advertised ‘a constant and fresh supply of every article in the Artists Colour line’ from the ‘celebrated house of George Rowney & Co’ in 1852 (Royal Scottish Academy annual exhibition catalogue), the Manchester stationer, John Heywood (qv), was a customer from at least 1871 to 1934, while the London colourman and lithographic colour maker, Louis Cornelissen (qv), ordered Rowney drawing boards, academy boards, crayon paper and a few colours from 1882.

5.1 Rowney products, 1840s-1920s: In the following account of Rowney products general descriptions come first, followed by materials for oil painting, materials for watercolours and drawing, chromo-lithograph production and handbook publishing.

A particularly engaging description of the business in 1865, in the form of a periodical article written by or for Henry Mayhew, gives a very different estimate of the size of the business to the 100-plus employees reported by George Rowney in the 1861 census. Mayhew claimed that Rowney’s employed over three hundred hands, describing their manufacturing premises at 10 and 11 Percy St as entered by ‘a lobby lined with a phalanx of easels and rows of portfolios of the most Brobdignagian proportions’, from which one emerged into a large and lofty room, notable for ‘the array of colour-boxes, the walls of sketch-books, the plantations of brushes and groves of pencils, besides every other species of artistical materials and implements of every variety and in endless quantity’ (Henry Mayhew (ed.), ‘A visit to George Rowney and Co., artists’ colourmen, Percy Street, Rathbone Place, Oxford Street’, The Shops and Companies of London, 1865, pp.220-7, republished with illustrations of Rowney’s premises, copy in V&A National Art Library, 20.J Box III).

Mayhew went on to describe the carpenter’s shop for the production of easels and drawing boards and the related finishing room and timber store, the colour grinding and drying rooms, an apartment for forming children’s colours, the crayon machine, gum-store and cake watercolours room, the large canvas preparation room, the paper store, the oil colour section with a few old-style colour-grinding slabs, the paper packing and preparation rooms, the book-binding and leather department, the counting house, the rooms for preparing stones for lithography and for preparing millboards and academy boards, a room for an artist to trace paintings for chromolithography, the pencil packing room and, at the top of the premises, a room hung with gigantic rollers of drawing papers and other rooms for specialist purposes. He described the range of colours in preparation and mentioned ‘the Lilliputian colour-boxes’, great quantities of which were being sent to Paris. He detailed the preparation of canvas and the operation of filling tubes with colours, among other processes.

More mundanely, an 1871 stock book lists all Rowney’s stock, down to the labels which were kept to fix to the reverse of millboards and panels (‘Stock Book 1871’, Rowney Archive). In 1871 the business was carrying large quantities of some materials, such as 567 yards of 27 inch wide raw canvas, valued at £23.1s.6d and at the other end of the scale, 35¾ yards of 126 inch wide raw canvas, valued at £4.13s.10d. Cakes and half-cakes of colour are listed by the gross and dozen, with the largest holdings being of French ultramarine. Some outdated colours appear in the stock book but no longer featured in Rowney trade catalogues, such as Holland’s tints and Varley’s tints (introduced in the 1820s). There are listings of bound and unbound guides to the fine arts and lithographic drawing books and of mounted and unmounted chromo-lithographs. Lithographic stones are recorded by number and weight. There was a printing office at Diana Place. A feature of the valuation is the listing under personal names, Gentry’s stock (prepared canvas, panels and millboards), Hooper’s stock (raw canvas in course of preparation) and Hurst’s stock (oils, varnishes and gums). These items were included in the valuation and so belonged to Rowney’s. It is unclear whether the three named individuals were employees or contractors. ‘Gentry’ can be identified as Henry Gentry, recorded in the 1871 census as an artist’s colourman, age 29. The stock book warrants further study.

MATERIALS FOR OIL PAINTING: A three-page ‘List of Materials for Oil Painting’, appended to J.S. Templeton’s Guide to Oil Painting, 3rd ed., 1845, includes oil colours in tubes, powder colours, various oils and varnishes, prepared canvas and ticken on the roll, on strainers and on stretchers, prepared millboards and mahogany panels for oil painting, brushes for oil painting, easels and palettes.

It was Rowney’s that first made Cerulean blue available commercially as Coeruleum in 1860 (International exhibition, Jurors' Reports, Class I, London: Bell & Daldy, 1862, p.102, for a detailed description of this cobalt stannate). Rowney’s tube and powder colours, as listed in their catalogues, c.1849-85, have been tabulated, together with their dates of first and last appearance (Carlyle 2001 pp.541-3).

Rowney’s moved to grinding colours by machinery in 1861. They advertised their new system at the International Exhibition in 1862, describing their oil colours by this process as finer, brighter, less oily and quicker drying and their water colours as floating more evenly without granulation than any others (International Exhibition. Official Catalogue of the Industrial Department, 1862, p.52). Payments to ‘Allen’ for granite rollers in June 1860 are probably connected (‘Partnership Book’, 1859-70). (A triple roll mill for grinding colours with three polished granite rollers is illustrated in Robert Wraight, ‘Artists’ Colourman: 2. Rowney’s’, The Studio, vol.164, November 1962, p.201.)

In the 1880s there were public concerns about the quality and permanence of artists’ pigments, whether in oil or watercolour, leading to responses from leading colourmen. In 1889 Rowney’s published their Manual of Colours, with the results of trials made by the chemist, Henry Seward (qv) on the permanence of both their water and oil colours. The trials on watercolours ran from June 1888 to February 1889 and those on oil colours from August or September 1888 until March 1889. In each case pigments were exposed to indoor light in one series of tests and to sunlight in another. Rowney’s included a table on ‘The Composition and Properties of Artists’ Colours’ in their 1895 catalogue (but not in that for 1893), noting the results of exposure to sunlight as derived from Seward’s experiments. In 1891 Rowney’s advertised a new colour, Crimson Alizarine, as light fast (see Royal Society of British Artists, 68th annual exhibition, exh.cat., 1891, p.x).

Concerns among artists about colours clearly continued because Rowney’s issued a ‘Notice to Artists’ in January 1907, on the origins of their colours: ‘We contend that by selecting one colour from one factory and another from another we are able to produce such a palette for the artist as would be impossible had we ourselves been colour makers as well as colour preparers. We search the finest from the largest and best equipped factories and laboratories in England and the Continent whose business is colour making pure and simple. In many cases large works concentrate their whole energies on producing one particular pigment. Our name is sufficiently well known, and our purchases sufficiently important for these large colour houses to keep us in touch with their latest productions, and when any advance is shown us in permanency, brightness of tone, or any other desirable quality, we give that improvement to the artist at the earliest opportunity (among other colours, we were the first to introduce Ceruleum and Crimson Alizarin to British Artists).’

Rowney’s was one of the few companies to produce an egg tempera paint. It was introduced in about 1913 (rather than 1906 as in some later publicity) with the headline, ‘Introducing George Rowney & Co.’s Tempera Colours' (The Year's Art 1913, testimonial from C. Napier Hemy). These colours remained in production until at least 2005.

MATERIALS FOR WATERCOLOURS AND DRAWING: By 1846 Rowney’s was stocking a wide variety of drawing materials: ‘a new and very superior article in drawing pencils… of London manufacture, got up in the French style in polished cedar’, together with watercolours in cakes, Harding’s tints for miniature painting, Holland’s tints for flower painting, Varley’s tints for landscape painting, boxes of watercolours, prepared lead pencils, crayons and chalks, brushes for watercolour drawing, Whatman’s drawing papers, Turnbull’s London Boards, sketchbooks, portfolios, mahogany drawing boards, materials for sketching, pencil cases and porte-crayons, etc (trade catalogue appended to H. O’Neill, A Guide to Pictorial Art. How to use the black lead pencil, chalks and water colours, 1846).

Moist watercolours in tubes first feature in 1848: ‘the Colors are always fit for use… The troublesome process of rubbing the Color on the Palette is avoided. No waste is incurred by breaking as in the Cake. They will keep any length of time without drying up or spoiling…’ (catalogue appended to George Harley’s Guide to Landscape Drawing in Pencil and Chalk:, 1848)

A wide range of products appear in 1850 in a 44-page catalogue, seemingly the earliest to be illustrated, attached to R.P. Noble’s Guide to Water Colour Painting (1st ed.), not only the watercolour products listed in 1846, but also moist watercolours in tubes, japanned tin sketching boxes filled with moist colours, colours for glass painting, Chinese White in bottles or tubes, asphaltum for the use of watercolour painters, watercolour Megilp, improved drawing pencils (with numerous testimonials dating to 1848 including from Thomas M. Richardson, J.R. Pickersgill, Frederick Goodall, David Cox Jr and H. O’Neill), eight pages illustrating watercolour painting brushes, palettes, tinted drawing papers, solid sketchbooks, etc.

Rowney produced tinted prepared drawing papers in the 1850s and 1860s, marketed as ‘pencilling tints’ and ‘graduated tints’ as early as 1849, and sometimes carrying a blind stamp on the recto (John O’Neill, ‘Prepared tints for pencilling: A report on 19th century prepared tinted drawing papers’, The Quarterly: The Journal of the British Association of Paper Historians, no. 66, 2008, pp.26-8).

Both the fugitive nature of some watercolours and the quality of drawing paper available from colourmen came under scrutiny in the 1880s. As indicated above, in 1889 Rowney’s published their Manual of Colours, with the results of trials made by the chemist, Henry Seward on the permanence of both their water and oil colours. As to paper for watercolours, Rowney’s stocked O.W. handmade papers, manufactured by the newly established OW Paper and Arts Co Ltd (qv), under the direction of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours, from at least 1898 until 1913. Following the demise of the OW Paper and Arts Co Ltd in 1914, Rowney was one of five businesses, including Winsor & Newton, Reeves & Son, C. Roberson and James Newman, acting together as Associated Colour Merchants, which signed an agreement in 1916 with J. Barcham Green & Son to produce a range of papers for them, watermarked ‘A.C.M.’ and the words ‘Watercolour Paper England’ (Barcham Green 1994, p.35).

CHROMO-LITHOGRAPHS AND FINE ART HANDBOOKS: In his description of Rowney’s premises in 1865, Henry Mayhew recognised their role as booksellers and publishers. He identified that there was ‘another branch to their business, namely, that of chromo-lithography’, whose introduction he attributed to Frederick W. Rowney, in 1851. Described as ‘typo-chromatic printing invented by Mr F.W. Rowney’, specimens were shown at the Great Exhibition in 1851 (Morning Post 19 July 1851). There are various payments in 1861 for ‘drawing on stone’, to lithographers, namely Lynch (possibly James Henry Lynch), Long (M. Long), Coventry (identifiable as James Coventry), Pheney (identifiable as Richard Pheney) and Dicksee, for chromo-lithographs or lithographic illustrations to handbooks (‘Partnership Book’, 1859-70, Rowney Archive).

It was in publishing chromo-lithographs of watercolours that Rowney’s played a leading role (Michael Twyman, A History of Chromolithography, 2013, p.214). For a description of the chromo-lithographic production process in 1859, see ‘Visits to Art-Manufactories: No.4. Chromo-Lithography, The Establishments of Messrs. Rowney & Co, and of Messrs. M. & N. Hanhart’, The Art Journal, vol.5 NS, 1859, pp.102-3 (information from Helen Smailes). Hanhart was the printer that Rowney & Co generally used for chromo-lithographic printing; they were owed the considerable sum of £434 in 1871 (Rowney’s 1871 debt book). A list probably dating from the late 1860s recorded over 300 chromo-lithographs, so-called ‘fac-simile water-colour drawings’, published by Rowney (Twyman p.213). Rowney’s holdings in 1871 of mounted and unmounted chromo-lithographs are listed in the ‘Stock book 1871’ and holdings in 1890 are recorded in an annotated copy of George Rowney & Co’s Fine Art Publications. Chromo-lithographs (both Rowney archive). By the end of the century chromo-lithographs were going out of fashion and, with Frederick W. Rowney’s death in 1902, the lithographic business was wound down.

Like Winsor & Newton, Rowney published numerous instruction handbooks, with appended catalogues of their products. Of these Templeton’s Guide to Oil Painting was probably the first in 1845 (see section 4). It is worth looking in more detail at some of these handbooks. R.P. Noble’s A Guide to Water Colour Painting, first published in 1850, went through many editions and ‘Noble’ received payments in 1861, 1862 and 1865. For W. & G. Audsley’s Guide to the Art of Illuminating (1862), payment of £40 was made to Pheney for illustrations to the expanded 5th edition. C.H. Weigall received £69.6s for his Guide to Animal Drawing in 1862, to which Schulz contributed ‘prints’ for £21, and a further £16.16s for a 2nd series in 1863. For F.J. Baigent and C.J. Russell’s A Practical Manual of Heraldry (1864), with lithographic plates by M. Long, related payments totalling £42.12s occur in June 1864. For J. Bacon’s The Theory of Colouring (1866), payments totalling £25 can be found in 1864 and February 1865. For S.T. Whiteford’s A Guide to Figure Painting in Water-Colours (1870) there is a payment of £22 in December 1869.

Rowney’s holdings in 1871 of bound and unbound guides are listed in its ‘Stock book 1871’. Many of these guides went through numerous editions over the next fifty years, as loose guides were bound up or reprints prepared.

5.2 Artists using Rowney materials, 1840s-1920s: It would seem that Rowney’s did not have as significant a trade in artists’ canvas as Roberson or Winsor & Newton, on the basis of surviving marked canvases. However, by 1871 Rowney’s may have acted as suppliers of certain types of canvas to Reeves, in the light of a specifically designated account, ‘Reeves & Sons, canvas a/c’ (‘Index of debts, 1871’, Rowney Archive).

Works on Rowney supports from the later 1840s include Charles Ingham’s Mrs Theodore Camp, c.1845, stencilled canvas, supplied through Dechaux, New York (Brooklyn Museum, see Carbone 2006 p.675), and Unknown artist, Thomas Croker, c.1849, with label for millboards advertising oil colours in tubes and bladders (National Portrait Gallery). For illustrations of Rowney’s canvas stamps and panel labels, see .

From the 1850s and subsequently, canvases and panels include Charles Loring Elliott’s William Sidney Mount, c.1850, stencilled canvas, supplied through S.N. Dodge, New York (National Gallery of Art, Washington), Frederick Goodall’s Mother and Children, 1851, stamped mahogany panel (Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass., see Lees 2012 p.375 and Webber 2014) and Rachel and her Flock, 1875, stamped canvas (Bonhams 10 July 2019 lot 46), Erskine Nicol’s ‘Sperrits and Tibbaky’, 1851, labelled millboard (Lyon & Turnbull 4 December 2020 lot 39), John Taggart’s Col. Robert Milligan and Mrs Robert Milligan, 1851-2, stencilled canvases (Brooklyn Museum, see Carbone 2006 p.985), Frederick Church’s Grand Manan Island, Bay of Fundy, 1852, marked canvas, supplied through Williams & Stevens, New York (Wadsworth Atheneum, see Kornhauser 1996 p.112), Thomas Rossiter’s Joan of Arc in prison, c.1854, labelled millboard (New York Historical Society, see Richard Koke, American Landscape and Genre Paintings in the New York Historical Society, 1982, vol.3, p.113), William Dyce’s The Garden of Gethsemane, late 1850s (Walker Art Gallery, see Bennett 1988) and Man of Sorrows, millboard, c.1860 (National Gallery of Scotland), Augustus Leopold Egg’s Walk on the Beach, panel, c.1855-60 (Manchester Art Gallery), Steven Pearce’s canvases, Sir Richard Collinson, 1855, Sir Henry Kellett, exh.1856, Sherard Osborn, 1857, Sir Edward Belcher, c.1859 (all National Portrait Gallery) and George Elgar Hicks’s Dividend Day at the Bank of England, 1859, labelled board (Wimpole, Cambridgeshire, National Trust).

John Brett expressed a preference for Winsor & Newton materials to those of Rowney, as he advised his artist sister, Rosa, in 1859, ‘I would not use Rowneys [French blue] if I had any other’ (Bennett 1988 p.17). Lt-Col. George F. White (1808-98), known for his Views in India chiefly among the Himalaya Mountains (1838), was invoiced by Rowney’s for oil painting materials in 1858.

From the 1860s and subsequently, Atkinson Grimshaw’s Newlay Wood, Horsforth, Leeds, 1861, labelled millboard (private coll., see Jane Sellars (ed.), Atkinson Grimshaw: Painter of Moonlight, 2011, p.134), Near Lake Windermere, 1865, millboard, similarly labelled (Christie’s 15 July 2021 lot 94), The Crescent, 1871, millboard, similarly labelled (Bonham’s 23 June 2015 lot 53), and Late Autumn on the Esk, 1870, canvas (Christie’s 15 July 2021 lot 93).

From the 1870s and 1880s, David Bates's Interior of a Welsh Cottage, 1873? (Walker Art Gallery, see Morris 1996), Fedor Encke’s Mrs Edward Stieglitz, 1884 (Museum of the City of New York, label repr. Katlan 1992 p.469), Elizabeth King's Baron Kelvin, 1886-7 (National Portrait Gallery) and William Michael Harnett’s My Gems, 1888, stencilled mahogany panel (National Gallery of Art, Washington, see Franklin Kelly et al, American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, vol.1, 1996, p.267). William Holman Hunt was using Rowney in 1876 when a case including canvas was despatched to him in Jerusalem (Bennett 1988 p.88). Frances Hodgkins used a Rowney sketchbook in the 1880s (see Larsen 2009 p.5). James Jacques Tissot obtained some primed panels from George Rowney & Co (Kleiner 2019 p.239).

From the 1890s and 1900s, Adolphe Steinheil’s The Bibliophile, c.1890, impressed mahogany panel (Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass., see Lees 2012 p.754 and Webber 2014), Luke Fildes’s Sir Frederick Treves, 1896, William Symons's J.F. Bentley, 1902, and Frank Bennett's Sir Theodore Martin, 1908 (all National Portrait Gallery). John Singer Sargent used sketchbooks supplied by Rowney, c.1895, 1903, 1911 (Fogg Art Museum, Harvard, see Stewart 2000 pp.23, 26, 28, 32). The watercolour artist, Alfred William Hunt, used Rowney sketchbooks in 1892 and 1894 (Ashmolean Museum, see Newall 2004 p.175).

From the 1910s and 1920s, Spencer Gore’s From a Window in Cambrian Road, Richmond, 1913, and Richmond Park, 1914 (both Tate, see Morgan 2008 pp.134-5, and ‘The Camden Town Group in Context’, research project, at www.tate.org.uk) and Mark Gertler’s Staffordshire Group, 1921 (Ashmolean Museum, information from Jevon Thistlewood). Charles Henry Sims used Rowney sketchbooks, c.1913-8 (Colbourne 2011 pp.976-7). Edward Wadsworth used Rowney egg tempera for Seaport, 1923 (Tate, information from Joyce Townsend). Edward Steichen’s watercolour study for Rabbit (Le tournesol), c.1920, is on Rowney’s Whatman board (National Gallery of Art, Washington, see Charles Brock et al., ‘Back to the Garden: Edward Steichen's Sunflower Paintings’, Facture, vol.5, 2021, p.16, fig.10).

5.3 International trade, 1850s-1920s: Rowney products, especially watercolour paints, were widely sold overseas. The following listing is largely based on trade catalogues and on an ‘Index of debts, 1871’, compiled as part of Rowney’s 1871 stock take, from which debts over £20 have been noted. No doubt there were many other outlets.

Paris was a target market. Frederick William Rowney was paid for expenses to Paris in 1861 and Frederick Rowney junr for expenses to the Paris exhibition in 1867, at which Rowney’s won silver medals for chromo-lithographs and colours for painting. Geo. Rowney & Co’s depot in Paris, ‘chez Mons. Harding’, rue de l’echiquier, was advertised in 1855 in the Paris Universal Exhibition catalogue. The business was listed in Paris directories at 26 rue Neuve Saint-Eustache in 1857, 70 av. de la Grande-Armée, 1881-2, and 29 av. de Wagram, 1883-4. At the decease of their Paris agent, Monsieur Dreys, Rowney opened its own branch at 57 rue Sainte Anne in 1885, moving to 27 rue des Bons Enfants in 1906, closing in 1922. Rowney products were sold in Paris by A. De Prez, 1866 (Paris directory; De Prez owned Rowney’s the large sum of £626 in 1871), H. Vieille & E. Troisgros, c.1883 (Fabricant de couleurs surfines, trade sheet), E. Mary & Fils, 1888 (Fournitures Completes pour la peinture a l’huile...Extrait du Catalogue general), F. Dupré, c.1902-30 (Fournitures Générales pour Artistes, 7th ed., 1903, 76pp, and subsequent editions), L. Bourdillon, 1903 or later (Fabrique de couleurs fines et matériels d’artistes, 108pp), G. Sennelier, 1904 (Catalogue General Illustré, cat. no.26, 160pp), and Ph. Lecluse, 1907, 1927 (invoices). In Lyon Rowney products were sold by J. Nicolas Ainé, 1907 (Fournitures Générales de Dessin, Aquarelle et Peinture a l’Huile, 132pp) and Guyot Fils Freres, 1908 or later (Materiel Complet pour Artistes, 64pp).

In the Netherlands T.J. van Brederode, Haarlem, advertised a wide range of Rowney products for both oil and water colour painting in 1850 (Opregte Haarlemsche Courant 10 August 1850). In Antwerp the chemist-colourman, Jacques Blockx, had a significant trade with Rowney & Co, 1867-1904 (information from Dr Brian D. Barrett, August 2018). In Barcelona E. Texidor’s widow, sold Rowney products, 1910 (Precios Corrientes de la casa Viuda de E. Texidor, 219pp).

In the United States by A.H. Abbott & Co, Chicago, c.1922 (Catalog of A.H. Abbott & Co., … Artists’ Materials, School Supplies, Drawing Materials, 266pp), J.J. Adams, Boston, 1850 (The Literary World, supplement, no.162, 9 March 1850, p.267), Carpenter, Woodward & Morton, Boston, 1890 (Illustrated Trade Price List of Artists' Materials), Edward Dechaux, New York, stamped canvas, c.1845 (Katlan 1987 p.275), Dodge & Co, Boston (Rowney’s 1871 debt book), S.N. Dodge, New York, c.1850 (see above), J. Earle, Philadelphia (Rowney’s 1871 debt book), Favor, Ruhl & Co, New York, c.1905 (Trade Price List of Artists’ Materials, 144pp), Geo. Finkenaur Sons & Co, New York, c.1890 (Price list of Winsor & Newton's and Rowney & Co.'s water colors in cakes, moist pans, and tubes, 4pp, coll. Wintherthur Museum), Goupil & Co, New York, stamped canvas, c.1848-53 (Katlan 1987 p.272), Janentzky & Co, Philadelphia (Rowney’s 1871 debt book), Jeune & Almini, Chicago, lithographers (Rowney’s 1871 debt book), C.W. Keenan, New York, stamped canvas, c.1886 (Katlan 1987 p.275), Knoedler, New York (Rowney’s 1871 debt book), Ripka & Co, Philadelphia, trade catalogue, c.1878-81 (Katlan 1992 p.354), Schaus, New York (Rowney’s 1871 debt book), D.F. Tiemann & Co, New York, catalogue, c.1863 (Mayer 2011 p.146), Wadsworth, Howland & Co, Boston, 1894 (Catalogue of Colors, Artists’ Materials, Drafting Instruments and Supplies, 179pp), A.A. Walker, Boston (Rowney’s 1871 debt book) and Williams & Stevens of New York, c.1852 (see above).

In Canada, from Rowney’s 1871 debt book, customers in Halifax included Connolly & Kelly, Ticconi and Wetmore; in Montreal Chapeliam, Fabre & Gravel, Lyman Claire & Co, Mcadam, R. Miller, Morton Philips & Co, Scott, Sutherland, R. Weir, and Worthington (entered as a bad or doubtful debt); in Quebec J.W. Reid; in St John’s Chaloner, T. Hall, Hannington Bros and Potter; in Toronto Adam Stevenson & Co, Campbell & Son, Copp Clark & Co, G. Edwards, Elliott & Co, A.S. Irving, R.W. Laid, Macgach & Co, A. Miller, Rolph and M. Shewan.

In Australia in Melbourne by George Robertson, 1869 (Trade List. Writing & Printing Papers, Account Books, Envelopes, Artists’ Materials and Miscellaneous Stationery, 110pp) and H.J. Corder Pty Ltd, c.1910 (Everything for the Artist The H.J. Corder Revised Price List, 20pp). From Rowney’s debt book customers in 1871 in Sydney included Murray & Co and D. Nichol, in Melbourne Banks Bros & Co and G. Robertson, and in New Zealand, Holbrook & Stark, D.C. Hutton and Oakey.

6. George Rowney & Co Ltd, 1924-85. Rowney’s became a limited company in 1924 with four directors, Walter George Rowney as managing director (1862-1947, see above), his nephew Noel Montague Rowney (1884-1963), Richard Donald Bell Woods (1895-1960) and Frank Phillips Dorizzi (1879-1948). In the 1921 census Woods appears as factory manager at Rowney’s Diana Place works and Dorizzi as factory manager of the Malden pencil works. Walter George Rowney’s son, Thomas (‘Tom’) Hugh Rowney (1910-2003), entered the business in 1932, becoming a director in 1934 and managing director in 1946. Noel Rowney resigned as a director in 1932 and Walter Rowney in 1941.

6.1 The 1930s and 1940s: The 1930s were a difficult time for Rowney’s, largely owing to the depressed state of trade nationally and internationally, as is clear from the sole surviving ‘Directors’ meeting minute book’, 1931-43 (Rowney Archive). Rowney’s financial position was particularly weak towards the end of the decade, despite an upturn in trade in 1936. However, the early years of the war saw a marked improvement, with turnover in 1941 the highest since 1928. This was partly as a result of destocking and at the same time not being able to obtain sufficient materials to restock and to maintain all existing lines.

Tom Rowney was very keen on promoting advertising and marketing in the late 1930s as a way to expand orders but his fellow directors were more cautious. More generally he was very active in tackling problems with Rowney’s travelling agents in the home market, as well as other management matters. There are many references in the directors’ meeting minutes to the cost of ‘Travellers’ being too high in relationship to the returns.

In the face of a squeeze on profit margins, Rowney’s sometimes cooperated with Reeves and Winsor & Newton in the late 1930s. In 1937 this cooperation allowed increased raw materials cost to be passed on to the consumer (Directors’ meeting minute book, 19 July). In 1938 changes to the terms of sale for colour-boxes were discussed (21 March), as was an agreement on pricing proprietary lines in the Indian market (25 August). In 1939 the discount to school contractors was set and an agreement discussed for markets in India, Malay, Ceylon and Burma (11 and 16 January). There was also co-operation between artists’ suppliers whose facilities were damaged during the war, probably explaining Rowney’s agreement in 1942 to supply C. Roberson & Co Ltd with various artists’ colours (7 July). In turn Roberson is reported to have supplied Rowney’s with canvas (Woodco*ck 1995 p.31). Serious damage from bombing occurred at Rowney’s premises in Diana Place and Percy St in 1940 and 1941.

International trade remained important. There are numerous references in meeting minutes to problems with representation in overseas markets, e.g., in Canada, Egypt, Cyprus, Denmark, Spain (28 November 1934), Australia and New Zealand, South America (27 January 1936), Scandinavia, Western Australia, Argentina (30 June 1938), Cyprus, Syria and Palestine, Kenya, Turkey, Jamaica, Canada, Peru and East Africa, all under discussion (22 January 1940). Rowney’s had an office in Paris at 109 rue La Fayette, 10e, in 1938 (L'Annuaire industriel, accessed through Gallica). Two overseas businesses stocking Rowney products were L. Joannot, Paris (Couleurs Fines et Materiel d'Artistes, cat. no.15, 1935, 32pp) and B.K. Elliott Co, Pittsburgh (Elliott’s Artists Materials, catalogue, 1930s, 102pp). Rowney’s overseas trade in the 20th century remains to be explored in detail.

Rowney’s pencil production, an important component in the business, suffered from small orders and from German competition, subjects that came up repeatedly at meetings (‘Directors’ meeting minute book’, 1931-43). Rowney’s were unable to compete ‘with the cheapest surplus products of certain German manufacturers who were landing pencils in Bombay and Calcutta at prices as low as 2/9 [2s.9d] per gross’ in 100 gross cases (7 December 1931). Success in the Australian market ‘really depended upon introducing… a cheap pencil’, which it was proposed should be made by the Royal Sovereign Pencil Co in Australia from leads that Rowney would ship out (6 April 1936). In Scandinavia only German pencils were being purchased owing to subsidy, with prices as low as 3s per gross (30 June 1938). It was essential for economic working that goods should be produced in longer runs; the economic run for special pencils was 25 to 30 gross, whereas an order had been received for 15 gross (9 June, 19 November 1936). The type of cedar used in pencils features, whether Kenyan, from Florida or Californian incense cedar. By the early war years the business of making pencils was described as very healthy (14 August 1940). Yet in 1942 the government ordered that no branded or polished pencils could be made after 30 June that year or sold by manufacturers to wholesalers or retailers after 31 July, meaning that existing stocks had to be sold forthwith. Thereafter Rowney’s was rationed in two ways, by the amount of labour allowed and by the amount of wood the authorities released (28 July 1943).

Rowney's advertised regularly in The Artist: ‘Rowney’s Sketching Equipment’ (vol.7, June 1934), also their egg tempera colours, reproducing a tempera by W. Russell Flint executed in these colours (Art Review 1935). Among the oil paints left in Gwen John's studio on her death in 1939 was a supply of Rowney's colours, the only English colourman so represented (Bustin 2004 p.199). Later, Rowney’s advertising featured André Dunoyer de Segonzac, who was able to carry on painting during the war years using his ‘grande reserve de couleurs Rowney de tres bonne couleurs a l’acquarelle’ (Studio, vol.165, January 1963, inside front cover).

Artists using Rowney painting supports in the 1920s and 1930s include Harold Stanley Ede, Grey Fortification in a Mediterranean Harbour, c.1928, and House with Red Roof, c.1928, both canvas board (both Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge), Lamorna Birch, The Barle near Dulverton, 1931, with Quality ‘X’ stamp (Sotheby's 27 June 2006 lot 78), Adrian Daintrey, Beach Scene, Totland Bay, c.1936 (Ashmolean Museum, information from Jevon Thistlewood), George Wright, Huntsmen and Hounds going away in Full Cry, before 1938, with Quality ‘A’ stamp (Walker Art Gallery, see Morris 1996), and John Armstrong, Icarus, tempera on board, 1940 (Tate). Armstrong used Rowney’s tempera tube colours (Andrew Lambirth, John Armstrong: The Paintings, 2009, p.154). In the Philippines, Pablo Amorsolo used Rowney boards for his Piro, 1930 and Sisilyo, 1930 (both J.B. Vargas Museum, Manila, see Nicole Tse and Robyn Sloggett, ‘Southeast Asian oil paintings: supports and preparatory layers’, in Joyce H. Townsend et al., Preparation for Painting: The Artist’s Choice and its Consequences, 2008, p.151).

6.2 The post-war years: There were changes after the war. Tom Rowney became managing director in 1946. Rowney’s manufacturing facilities were divided between the colour factory in Diana Place and the pencil factory at Malden Crescent. An account of working practices at Rowney’s was published in 1962, focussing on the production of egg tempera colours, oil colours and brushes (Robert Wraight, ‘Artists’ Colourman: 2. Rowney’s’, The Studio, vol.164, November 1962, pp.200-3). In 1967 Rowney moved their factories and offices to a 4½ acre site on the edge of Bracknell in Berkshire. For views of the new factory, see the schools catalogues, Rowney Art Materials, 1969 and 1970, which also include information on purity standards for colours.

In the late 1940s Rowney’s brought out ‘Georgian’ Oil Colours, a range of inexpensive British-made oil colours for art students, schools and amateurs, which, they claimed, became by far the biggest selling oil colour in Britain (‘Oil Colours’, typescript, c.1973, Rowney Archive). Export figures for 1972 show Georgian Oil Colours outselling Artists Oil Colours, six to one, with New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Sweden and Italy among the best selling markets. For an illustration of the triple roll mill, with polished granite rollers, used to grind pigment into the oil medium, see Wraight p.201, cited above. While continuing to supply water colours in tubes and pans, Rowney’s gave up making them in cakes in 1958 following the loss of its moulds in a fire (Tom Rowney, ‘Water Colours’, typescript, c.1973, Rowney Archive). Rowney’s also continued to make artists’ soft pastels, claiming in 1978 to be the only manufacturer in Britain (Peter Garrard, ‘The making of artists soft pastels’, The Artist, vol.93, June 1978, pp.26-8). For Rowney’s acrylics, see section 6.3 below.

Rowney (Artists’ Brushes) Ltd was set up in Dartmouth in Devon in 1966, apparently an arranged takeover of the sable brush makers, Geoffrey Smith & Co, formerly located in Surrey (see interview with Tom Rowney by Zora Sweet Pinney, 1990 (Rowney Archive); see also John Eustace Hill, ‘The Family History of the Brush Making Trade’, c.2006, referenced under Rowland Hill in this resource). The Smith family had made brushes for Rowney’s over three generations.

Rowney's was in correspondence with Gluck (Hannah Gluckstein) concerning the appearance of her paintings from the late 1930s (Sitwell 1990). She was supplied with special hand-ground colours and also Claessens no.706 canvas at some time in the decade from 1967 (Souhami 1988 p.266). Gertrude Hermes used Rowney sketchbooks from 1952 (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, see Jane Hill, ‎The Sculpture of Gertrude Hermes, 2011, p.138). Sidney Nolan used Rowney’s newly introduced alkyd gel medium in a series of paintings begun in 1964 (Paula Dredge, Sidney Nolan: The Artists’ Materials, 2020, p.89). Mary Fedden used Rowney’s earth colours in Mauve Still Life, 1968 (Tate, see Tate database, ‘Technique and condition’). In 1978, the business featured a series of artists who used Rowney colours in advertisem*nts, including Leonard Boden, Ben Maile, Leonard Rosoman, Ernest Savage and John Ward (The Artist, vol.93, 1978).

Following the Second World War, the range of canvases marketed by Rowney’s was somewhat simplified (see Appendix 3 in ). Works on Rowney canvas include John Dodgson’s Market Place, 1950s (Tate, see Tate database, ‘Technique and condition’), L.S. Lowry’s St Annes-on-Sea, 1957 (Yale Center for British Art) and Viaduct Works, Manchester, 1959, ‘K’ quality canvas (Christie’s 20 October 2021 lot 26), Tom Phillips’ Here We Exemplify, 1967-68 (Tate) and William Brooker’s Still Life, New Studio, 1974, ‘X’ quality canvas (Tate, see The Tate Gallery 1974-6: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions, 1978). Lucian Freud made extensive use of Rowney canvas in the 1950s and 1960s, including for Girl with a White Dog, 1950-51, ‘X’ quality canvas (Tate) and Man’s Head (Self-portrait III), 1963, ‘K’ quality canvas, a finer weave used by the artist from the mid-1950s (National Portrait Gallery). The canvas range is described in Appendix 4 in . In 1978 or 1979 Rowney’s adopted the American company, E.H. & A.C. Friedrichs’s range of named canvases, including ‘Rix’, ‘Carleton’ and ‘Kent’, names long found in Friedrichs’s catalogues of Fredrix Artists Materials. By 1986, in Daler-Rowney’s first catalogue, this new range had been largely superceded or renamed again.

6.3 Rowney acrylics from the 1960s: In 1963 Rowney’s introduced Cryla, the first range of acrylic emulsion paints in Britain (Crook & Lerner 2000 p.30). Their sale was heralded in the press: ‘The 28 Cryla colours will be available from retail outlets throughout the country during October. They are made from an emulsion containing an acrylic’ (Advertisers Weekly: Organ of British Advertising, vol.201, 1963, p.51). Rowney’s advertised, ‘Cryla is the first emulsion paint to be marketed in tubes with the same consistency as an Artists’ Oil Colour. It is unequalled anywhere in the world. It is non-yellowing, non-oxidising, non-brittle and does not lose its brilliance through age, and remains stable. ... Like all colours which are based on emulsions, Cryla colours contain water and are miscible with water in all proportions.’ (Nomad: A magazine about painting, vol.1, no.1, summer 1964, p.35).

In a significant anonymous in-house history, ‘Acrylics’ (Rowney Archive), one of a series of Rowney product documents dating to about 1973, the production history of Rowney’s acrylics is set out. Rowney’s began research into acrylics in about 1955. They claimed to be the first company to sell acrylic paint in roll-up tubes but had an early problem with certain colours hardening in the tube owing to the critical nature of the pigment-to-binder ratio, a problem which other companies later ran into. Such hardening was remarked on by the artist, Bernard Cohen in a British Library interview in 2003 (National Life Stories, tape 33, minute 22). While this was easily overcome in England, bad stock as far away as California and Australia damaged their reputation. In any case a more fluid type of acrylic paint was preferred in the American market.

Although Rowney probably held 90% of the British acrylic market, there was a growing tendency among professional and student artists to use an imported American product, according to this in-house history, even though these might be almost twice the price. ‘A sufficient number of important young painters told us of a need for an acrylic paint that would perform within the context of their criteria, and not ours, to convince us that we should produce an alternative type of Cryla, to become known as “Flow Formula” Cryla’. This new product was introduced in about 1971. It was formulated from an unspecified resin for use by ‘hard edge’ and abstract painters (The Artist, March 1979). Rowney also produced three further products, each formulated with a different resin, ‘Acrylic Designer’s Gouache’, introduced in 1969, ‘PVA Colours’, a polymer resin paint for schoolchildren housed in transparent polythene tubes, on the market in 1966, and another polymer colour, ‘Redicolor’, for craft and collage work, introduced in 1970. Rowney was the only company in the world to offer five different varieties of polymer acrylic colour each formulated for a different purpose, according to this in-house history, which provides further informative details.

Rowney acrylics were extensively used by leading British artists, for example by Peter Blake, 1963-8, John Hoyland in 1963 and Bridget Riley by 1965, e,g. in her Cantus Firmus, 1972 (Tate) (Crook & Lerner 2000 pp.47, 101, 145, 147). They were also used by Frank Bowling in about 1964; recently Bowling has used Daler Rowney Systems 3 Acrylic Paints (see Laura Homer, ‘Frank Bowling: Material Explorations’, Tate Papers, no.31, spring 2019, ‘Bowling’s early career’ and ‘Colour and surface’). Leonard Rosoman used Cryla paints for his huge canvas, Death of Elizabeth I, for a Shakespeare exhibition at Stratford-on-Avon in 1965, and later extolled Cryla as ‘the only kind of paint that gave me everything I wanted’ (The Artist, vol.71, June 1966, p.ii, vol.93, May 1978, back cover). David Hockney used the Cryla range on occasion in the 1970s (Rebecca Hellen et al., ‘...Watery subjects, media, materials and conservation solutions for paintings by David Hockney’, in Interactions of Water with Paintings, eds R. Clarricoates et al., 2019, pp.104, 108). Stephen Buckley recalls using Rowney's acrylic primer for his Fresh End, 1971, as did John Murphy for An Indefinable Odour of Flowers Forever Cut, 1982-4 (both Tate, see Tate database, ‘Technique and condition’). Phillip King used Rowney’s acrylic paint for his sculpture, Dunstable Reel, 1970 (Tate, see Tate database).

Later developments in Rowney’s range of acrylics are spelt out in a Daler-Rowney promotional brochure: in 1987 the launch of a more free-flowing student quality range, ‘System 3 Acrylic Colours’, in 2006 ‘Graduate Acrylic Colours’ for entry level students and amateurs, and in 2008 ‘Simply Acrylic Colours’ for hobbies (The Acrylic Solution: Be Creative, c.2009-12).

7. Daler-Rowney Ltd from 1985. George Rowney & Co Ltd was purchased for about £600,000 for a 72% stake by Morgan Crucible Co in 1969 (The Times 28 January 1969), and from them by the Daler-Board Co (qv) in 1983, to become Daler-Rowney Ltd in 1985, see the company’s website, https://www.daler-rowney.com/history (accessed 11 July 2021). It has been claimed, reliably or not, that the business was troubled by poor management decisions in the years immediately preceding its acquisition by the Daler-Board Co (‘A brief history of Rowney’s’, anonymous manuscript, 1991 or later, Rowney Archive). By 1986 Terence Daler (1915-88) was chairman of the combined business and his widow Mary remained a director until 1997. Their son James (‘Jim’) Daler (b.1938) led the business subsequently until 2008.

The history of the business since becoming Daler-Rowney Ltd is traced on its website. In America, in 1988 Daler-Rowney USA opened in New Jersey to serve the United States and Canada, in 1990 the ink manufacturer, Robert Steig, was acquired, adding FW Artists’ Liquid Acrylics and Pearlescent Inks to the range, and in 1994 Robert Simmons, a US leader in art and craft brushes joined the group. In Europe, in 2012 the long-established German art supplies manufacturer, Lukas, was acquired for its brands such as Terzia, 1862 and Cryl. Closer to home, in 2017, Daler-Rowney opened a new warehouse facility in Lovelace Road, adjacent to its main site in Bracknell, to meet the growing needs of colour production. In February 2016 Daler-Rowney Ltd was sold to the Italian company, FILA (Fabbrica Italiana Lapis ed Affini spa) (Art & Framing Today, June 2017, p.58) and is now part of an international group including historic brands, Maimeri in Italy, Canson in France and Dixon in America.

8. Sources: Rowney company records are limited in extent (see Carlyle 2001 pp.278-9). This history draws on a small collection of documents with a family provenance studied in 2021, described here as ‘Rowney Archive’. These documents do not contain details of customer orders. The Archive will be made accessible once housed and catalogued, as will be signalled here. An initial listing is available from Jacob Simon at [emailprotected]. See also a ‘Brief History of George Rowney and Company Ltd’, typescript, n.d., c.1952-7, and subsequent revisions (copy on National Portrait Gallery files); this ‘Brief History’ is largely followed by Leach 1973 and Katlan 1992 pp.466-7. For portraits of the first four generations of the family, see the business’s wholesale catalogue of 1910-11. For family names and dates, see The Rowney Family: Painting and Production in Hampstead, exh. leaflet, Hampstead Museum, 1998. See also Katlan 1992 pp.354-9 (for trade catalogues), 466-70; Carlyle 2001 pp.278-9. For abbreviations, see Resources and bibliography.

Added September 2017, updated August 2019, September 2021
George Russell by 1839-1917, George Russell (Jas S. Tiley) 1918-1926, Russell & Chapple 1927-1939, Russell & Chapple Ltd 1939 to date. At 3 Little White Lion St, Seven Dials, London by 1839-1841, 12 Little White Lion St 1842-1844, 47 Great St Andrew St, Seven Dials 1845-1905, 11 Great St Andrew St 1906-1939, 23 Monmouth St, WC2 1939-2000, 68 Drury Lane, WC2B 5SP 2000-2015, 30-31 Store St, WC1E 7QE 2015 to date, factory and warehouse: 11 Garman Road, Tottenham, N17 0UR by 1992 to date. Initially a rope and twine maker, later tarpaulin, heavy textile and cordage manufacturers, from the 1970s canvas suppliers to artists and for stage scenery, by the 1990s artists’ suppliers more generally.

Russell & Chapple’s website describes the business as ‘London's oldest supplier of fabrics to theatres and artists’, established 1770, giving its speciality as ‘supplying the highest quality Fine Art, Scenic, and Digital canvases, sourcing and importing our canvas fabrics from all over the world’ (see ‘About us’, www.russellandchapple.co.uk/, accessed 11 July 2021). A very full range of canvas is presented in the business’s May 2014 trade catalogue.

It was not until the 1970s that Russell & Chapple began to specialise in artists’ canvas. Looking to the origins of the business, in the earliest reference traced so far, George Russell (c.1811-1861 or later) was trading as a rope and bed sacking maker at 3 Little White Lion St, Seven Dials in 1839 (Pigot & Co’s Directory of London). He was described as a rope and twine maker in Post Office directories from 1840. Russell traded over a long period until 1915 or later and it seems likely that the business passed from father to son of the same name. Russell continued to trade as the rope and twine maker until at least 1884 but, according to directory descriptions by 1895 he was described as a ‘rope, line, twine, matting, sale & rick cloth & tarpaulin maker etc’.

The business changed hands twice between the wars, firstly by 1918 when James Samuel Tiley (1872-1939), still trading as George Russell, took over, and secondly in 1938 when Frederick Thomas Chapple (1875-1939) took sole control.

The partnership between Frederick Thomas Chapple of 21 Branscombe Gardens, Winchmore Hill, N.21, Middlesex, and James Samuel Tiley of ‘Ethley’, Brunswick Avenue, Oakleigh Road, New Southgate N.11, Middlesex as tarpaulin, heavy textile and cordage manufacturers at 11 Great St Andrew St, trading as Russell & Chapple, was dissolved on 31 March 1938, with Frederick Thomas Chapple carrying on the business (London Gazette 12 April 1938). Both partners died in 1939 and the business may have been taken over by Chapple’s son, Frederick Lewis Chapple (1910-48) and daughter Ida Muriel Chapple (1904-97).

Russell & Chapple as artists’ canvas suppliers: In 1971 the business was advertising unprimed canvas stocked in widths 36 to 128 ins, cut to any length, fine artists’ linen, white cotton duck in various weights and flax canvas (The Artist, vol.82, November 1971) and in 1986 primed and unprimed artist canvases, fine artists’ linen flax canvas, white cotton duck 36 to 136 ins wide and canvas stretchers (The Artist, various issues, vol.101, 1986, accessed through Google Books). It advertised in 1990 as manufacturers of stagecloths, backcloths, tabs, cycloramas, legs, borders, vision gauzes etc and as suppliers of a wide range of canvases and hessian for stage scenery, flame-proofed flax, cotton duck etc (British Theatre Directory, 1990, p.474, accessed through Google Books).

From Russell & Chapple’s price lists, it is clear that by June 1992 the business was also stocking Spectrum oil colours, Spectracryl acrylic colours and artists’ brushes, and by August 1995 St Cuthbert’s Mill watercolour papers, Old Holland oil colours, Lukas artists’ watercolours and Golden Acrylics.

In 1988 and 1991, when such details were recorded in the London directory, Russell & Chapple employed between 11 and 20 people, with R. Boyd as Director. The fortunes of the business in the 1990s can be filled in from the history which prefaces the business’s May 2014 trade catalogue, where it is stated that the last Miss Chapple [presumably Ida Chapple, see above] died in her late nineties in the mid-1990s, leaving the business and the Monmouth St freehold to her manager, to his retired predecessor and to her accountant. After a few years the trio of owners sold the freehold to Shaftesbury Estates and the business to the owner of L. Cornelissen & Son (qv), who moved it to 68 Drury Lane, where it shared premises with Brodie & Middleton (qv).

The company changed its name from Russell & Chapple Ltd to Monmouth Street Ltd and it was under this designation, as distributors of textiles and artist materials, that the business was subject to liquidation procedures in March 2000 (London Gazette 31 March 2000).

As of 2014 the business was stocking primed and unprimed canvas, digital print canvas and photo paper, scenic and display materials, other fabrics, stretchers and stretched canvas, mediums and primers, Lascaux Studio, Golden Pip Seymour and Schmincke acrylic colours, Spectrum and Old Holland oil colours, artists’ accessories and brushes, and various papers (trade catalogue, May 2014). In 2019 they were advertising ‘Linen and polyester sail cloth. Bespoke pine, tulip & aluminium stretchers for artists & conservators’ (The Picture Restorer, no.54, spring 2019, p.63).

It is now part of the Artmat Group, comprising C. Roberson & Co, Brodie & Middleton, Store Street Framing, L. Cornelissen & Son and Automatic Pens (see www.artmat.co.uk/, accessed 11 July 2021).

Artists using Russell & Chapple: Robyn Denny is recorded as buying stretchers from Bird & Davis and canvas from Russell & Chapple, using cotton duck before switching to linen in the late 1950s (S. Gayler, A. Burnstock and A. Vasconcelos, ‘A technical study of seminal paintings from the 1960s by Robyn Denny in the Modern British Collection at the Gulbenkian Foundation', Zeitschrift für Kunsttechnologie und Koneserviereung, vol.22, 2008, p.65). Prunella Clough, Patrick Caulfield, Ian Stephenson and William Turnbull have also been recorded as buying stretchers from Bird & Davis and canvas from Russell & Chapple (Claire Shepherd, ‘The making of Prunella Clough’s urban landscapes’, The Picture Restorer, no.50, spring 2017, p.45; ‘Materials and manufacturers currently used by the artists’, Dulwich Picture Gallery archive, box C3).

Works on Russell & Chapple cotton canvas include Stephen Buckley’s Fresh End, 1971, Simon Callery’s Archive, 1996, Ian Davenport’s Untitled (Drab), 1990, Mark Francis’s Source, 1992, Maggi Hambling’s Portrait of Frances Rose, 1973, Lisa Milroy’s Finsbury Square, 1995, Fiona Rae’s Untitled (yellow), 1990, and Untitled (grey and brown), 1991, and on linen, Christopher Le Brun’s Forest, 1987-8, John Lessore’s Apollo and Daphne, c.1985, John Murphy’s An Indefinable Odour of Flowers Forever Cut, 1982-4, and Chris Ofili’s Double Captain sh*t and the Legend of the Black Stars, 1997 (all Tate, see Tate online database, ‘Technique and condition’).

Derek Jarman records visiting the business’s premises in March 1992, ‘Russell and Chapple, the canvas suppliers, was plunged into gloom by a power cut…’ (Derek Jarman, Smiling in Slow Motion, 2001, p.87).

Frank Bowling orders custom-made stretchers from Russell and Chapple, whom he has been using as a supplier for canvas, stretchers and other materials since the early 2000s (see Laura Homer, ‘Frank Bowling: Material Explorations’, Tate Papers, no.31, spring 2019, under ‘Drying and finishing’).

Found a mistake? Have some extra information? Please contact Jacob Simon at [emailprotected].

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