Edward Thomas Daniell


Edward Thomas Daniell was an English landscape painter and etcher best known for his drawings made during an expedition to the Middle East, including at the coast of Lycia. He was associated with the Norwich School of painters, a group of artists connected by location, and personal and professional relationships.
Born in London to wealthy parents, Daniell grew up and was educated in Norwich, where he was taught art by John Crome and Joseph Stannard. After graduating in classics at Balliol College, Oxford in 1828, he was ordained curate at Banham in 1832 and was appointed to a curacy at St. Mark's Church, London in 1834. He became a patron of the arts and an influential friend of the artist John Linnell. In 1840, after resigning his curacy and leaving England for the Middle East, he toured Egypt, Palestine and Syria, met the explorer Sir Charles Fellows and joined his archaeological expedition in Lycia as an illustrator. He contracted malaria there and reached Adalia to recuperate, but died from a second attack of the disease.
He usually selectied a limited palette, and his watercolours have a distinctive style that was formed in part by Crome, and John Sell Cotman. His etchings demonstrate his great skill in the use of drypoint: his surviving sketches may have been made in preparation for future works. They were printed by Daniell's friend and neighbour Henry Ninham, whose technique he influenced.

Background

Edward Thomas Daniell was associated with the Norwich School of painters, a group of artists connected by geographical location and their depictions of Norfolk landscapes, as well as by personal and professional relationships. The school's most important artists were John Crome, Joseph Stannard, George Vincent, Robert Ladbrooke, James Stark, John Thirtle and John Sell Cotman, along with Cotman's sons Miles Edmund and John Joseph Cotman. The school was a unique phenomenon in the history of 19th-century British art: Norwich was the first English city outside London which had the right conditions for a provincial art movement. It had more locally born artists than any later school, and its theatrical, artistic, philosophical and musical cultures were cross-fertilised in a way that was unique outside London. Daniell was, according to the author Geoffrey Searle, associated more with the "wider circle of Norwich-based artists" and more weakly linked with his contemporary artists because of his social class, artistic connections in London, and travels abroad.
The Norwich Society of Artists, which was founded in 1803, arose from the need for a group of Norwich artists to teach each other and their pupils. Not all of the members of the Norwich School were members of the Norwich Society, which held regular exhibitions and had an organised structure, showing works annually until 1825 and again from 1828 until it was dissolved in 1833.
At the end of the seventeenth century, other schools of painting had begun to form, associated with artists such as Francis Towne at Exeter and John Malchair at Oxford, and other centres of population outside London were creating art societies, whose artists and drawing masters influenced their pupils. Unlike the artists of the Norwich School, many other provincial artists did not benefit from wealthy merchants and landed gentry demonstrating their patriotism at a time of international unrest, by acquiring picturesque paintings of the English countryside. The Norwich Society of Artists, the first group of its kind to be created since the formation of the Royal Academy in 1768, was remarkable in acting in its artists' interests for thirty years, longer than for any other similar group.

Life

Family

Edward Thomas Daniell was born on 6 June 1804 at Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, London, to Sir Thomas Daniell, a retired attorney-general of Dominica, and his second wife Anne Drosier, the daughter of John Drosier, of Rudham Grange, Norfolk. Sir Thomas' first wife, with whom he had a son Earle and a daughter Anne, died in London in 1792. Earle Daniell was by 1806 an officer in the 12th Dragoons and in 1802 his sister Anne had married John Holmes in Norfolk. She died in child birth in May 1805.
Sir Thomas purchased land and slaves in the Leeward Islands, which were then part of the British Empire. His estates, including at Dickenson Bay on the island of Antigua, had been bought in 1779 from the family of his first wife. He retired and moved to the west of Norfolk, but his health deteriorated and he died of cancer in 1806, leaving a young widow and infant son. He left his Dominican lands to Anne, and his Antigua estate to his adult son Earle, subject to him providing a guaranteed annual income of £300 to the family in Norfolk. Sir Thomas' slaves were included as part of the bequest to his wife.
Anne Daniell and her son moved to 68, St. Giles' Street, Norwich. He she died there in 1836 aged 64, and is buried in the nave of St Mary Coslany, Norwich.

Early life and education

Relatively little is known of Daniell's early life. He grew up in Norwich and was educated at the Norwich Grammar School, where his drawing master was John Crome. Daniell was taught etching by Joseph Stannard, and during school holidays practiced at Stannard's studio in St. Giles' Terrace, which was around the corner from his own house. Their influence is apparent in his early etchings, but he later became more affected by the works of J.M.W. Turner. Daniell became involved in the art world at a young age; the brothers Thomas and Chambers Hall wrote to the artist John Linnell in 1822 about "our young friend Mr Daniells who accompanied us to your house last week and who wishes to possess a drawing by Girtin".
On 9 December 1823, aged nineteen, Daniell went to Balliol College, Oxford to read classics, graduating in November 1828, despite having neglected his studies in favour of art. In a letter by Daniell to his friend Linnell, he wrote: "I find that the examinations for which I am preparing next month require a closer application to my literary studies than I had imagined & that I must not attempt to 'serve two masters' ". He began a Master of Arts degree on 25 May 1831.

Travels in Europe, Scotland and Ireland

Daniell had the financial means to travel abroad to find subjects to paint; of the Norwich School painters, only John Sell Cotman travelled further. During 1829 and 1830 he spent the months between his classics studies and his master's degree on a Grand Tour through France, Italy and Switzerland, producing small oil paintings and watercolours of local scenery, which were described by the art historian William Dickes as "well-centred, painted with fluidity and revealing a delicate appreciation of tone".
The route taken during his eighteen months on the Continent is revealed by the order of Daniell's drawings. The wealthy Englishman of his day often toured Europe; his travels through Switzerland are reminiscent of those of the artist Captain James Pattison Cockburn, who published his Swiss Scenery in 1820. When in Rome and Naples, he met the artist Thomas Uwins, who wrote, "What a shoal of amateur artists we have got here!... there is a Daniel, too, come to judgement! a second Daniel! — verily, I have got more substantial criticism from this young man than from any one since Havell was my messmate."
Daniell may have visited Spain as his drawings of the country were copied by the Norwich artist Henry Ninham. However there is no direct evidence that he went there himself. It is possible that he returned to Norwich in time to attend the funeral of his former teacher Joseph Stannard, who died from tuberculosis in December 1830 aged 33.
Accompanied by Oxford contemporaries George Denison and the author and politician Edmund Walker Head, he went on a walking trip in Scotland in the summer of 1832, which provided him with subject material and influenced his use of drypoint etching, as he was able to study the work of important etchers such as Andrew Geddes. According to the art historian Jane Thistlethwaite, Daniell's drawings and etchings of Scottish scenes "testify in their subjects to his enthusiasm for the beauties of Scotland and in their technique to his almost certain acquaintance with the Scottish etchers".

Church career

On 7 October 1832 Daniell was ordained as a deacon at Norwich Cathedral by the Bishop of Norwich, Henry Bathurst, and licensed by the bishop as the curate of Banham parish church, a post he held for eighteen months. From letters to John Linnell it is evident that he was short of money, and might account for his decision to enter the Church. Little is known of his career as a Norfolk curate, but the parish registers for Banham, all of which have been preserved, show that he led an active life within the parish. In Thistlethwaite's view, his "loveliest and most sophisticated plates" were produced whilst living at Banham.
On 2 June 1833, Daniell was ordained to the priesthood at Norwich Cathedral, but continued as the curate at Banham until 1834. That year he was appointed to the curacy of St. Mark's, North Audley Street in London, taking rooms at 77, Park Street, close to Grosvenor Square. He also worked at St. George's Hospital, but as with his curacy at St. Mark's, there are no surviving records of his employment.
In 1835 letter from Daniell to his former Oxford tutor Reverend Joseph Blanco White, Daniell indicates the friendship still felt by him towards "his old coadjutor". Referring to his life as a curate in London, he wrote, "You, probably, thought I was haranguing the plough-boys in Norfolk, and you find me among the Dons of Grosvenor Square, and having to preach next Wednesday at St. George's, Hanover Square. I wish you would come and give me some assistance." In about 1836 he moved to rooms at 13 Green Street, near Grosvenor Square and close to St. Mark's, staying there until his departure for the Holy Land in 1840.
The outer shell of Norwich Castle's keep was refaced in Bath stone from 1834–1839, replicating the original blank arcading. Daniell strongly opposed the proposed refacing. Although living in London during this period, his letters to his friends Ninham and the botanist Dawson Turner show that he had not forgotten this contentious issue. Daniell wrote to Turner, "I have had a very beautiful drawing made of it, and I mean to etch it the size of the drawing". His etching of the old keep, however, was never completed.

Tour of the Near East

At some date after June 1840, perhaps inspired by the Scottish painter David Roberts, who had travelled to Egypt and the Holy Land to gather subject material, Daniell resigned his curacy, left England to tour the Near East, and arrived in Corfu in September 1840. Although Roberts' drawings of the Middle East are thought to have compelled him to tour abroad, he had also heard of recent discoveries in Lycia from his friend, the British explorer Charles Fellows.
Daniell was in Athens by the end of the year, and had crossed to Alexandria early in 1841, travelling up the Nile to Nubia, and then from Egypt to Palestine, on a route that took him past Mount Sinai. After travelling on to Syria, he reached Beirut in October 1841.
At the Turkish city of Smyrna Daniell met Fellows and joined his expedition, boarding HMS Beacon, a ship sent by the British Government to Lycia to convey home antiquities recently discovered at Xanthos. During the expedition eighteen ancient cities were located. Daniell spent the winter at Xanthos and when Fellows left, remained to make a more thorough survey of the country, in company with Thomas Abel Brimage Spratt, a lieutenant in the Navy, and the naturalist Professor Edward Forbes. Spratt was responsible for researching the area's topography and Forbes its natural history: Daniell was to make records of any antiquarian discoveries. He recorded their journey by producing a series of sixty-four drawings. The poet and art scholar Laurence Binyon said of them "What strikes one most at first is the astonishing air of space and magnitude conveyed, the fluid wash of sunlight in these towering gorges and open valleys".
After Fellows departed with HMS Beacon on 3 March 1842 to bring back ships more suited to transporting large marble tombs to London, Daniell travelled to Selge, sketching and exploring its ruins. He copied inscriptions from monuments in Lycia, the Cibyratis, Pisidia and Pamphylia, visited Sillyon, Marmara, Perga and Lyrbe, and also collected coins. 200 inscriptions were copied by the expedition, in the main by Daniell. His originals produced are now lost, but were published in Travels in Lycia, Milyas, and the Cibyratis, in company with the Late E.T. Daniell, and were transcribed by Samuel Birch for a book. Now in the British Museum, the book contains a single page of Daniell's original manuscript.
In April 1842 the expedition arrived at Antalya. Spratt and Forbes left the city before Daniell, who travelled overland after meeting the Pasha. Daniell visited Cyprus that year and painted his only extant watercolour of the island, possibly while anchored off shore. an untitled work now in the British Museum. The author Rita Severis has compared it with the watercolour paintings of Turner, a painter he was known to admire. In her book on artistic representations of the island from 1700 to 1960, Severis wrote that "the interplay of the blue sea and the sandy colour of the land—which is repeated successfully in the foreground of the picture—accentuates the distance between the viewer and the land while simultaneously increasing the desire to look more closely and attentively at the subject".

Death

By late May 1842, the ships and Media had arrived as replacements for HMS Beacon, and Daniell had accepted an offer of a passage to England. In June, he left Rhodes to return to Lycia and rejoin Forbes and Spratt. He missed his ship—the ships having set sail the previous day— and was forced to amend his plans. There was a chance for him to go back to Rhodes by caïque and join the returning ships there, but he travelled to Adalia in the company of the newly-appointed consul for the city, John Purdie. During the journey Daniell became ill with malaria, contracted, according to Forbes and Spratt, "by lingering too long among the unhealthy marshes of the Pamphylian coast".

Daniell stayed at Purdie's residence to recover his health, from where he wrote to Forbes and Spratt, describing his discoveries at Apollonia and Lyrbe. He chose to leave Adalia before he had fully recovered, and undertook a solitary expedition to Pamphylia and Pisidia during the hottest part of the year. He was forced back after suffering a second attack of malaria, and at Purdie's house dictated his last letter, in which he expressed his intentions to continue his work. He lost consciousness, after sleeping whilst exposed to the heat of the day on the front terrace of Purdie's residence, and died a week later. He was buried in the city. The Norfolk historian Frederick Beecheno wrote in 1889 that Daniell was "buried beneath an ancient granite column in the court of a Greek church in the centre of the town of Adalia".
Forbes paid tribute to his friend Daniell, saying that his illness "destroyed a traveller whose talents, scholarship, and research would have made Lycia a bright spot on the map of Asia Minor, and whose manliness of character and kindness of heart endeared him to all who had the happiness of knowing him". Roberts wrote, "Poor Daniell, like Wilkie, went to Syria after me, but neither returned. Had Daniell returned to England, I have reason to know, from Turner's own mouth, he would have been entrusted with his law affairs."
A memorial was placed near his tomb in Antalya "by his affectionate and grieving relatives". Another memorial can be seen on the wall of the church of St. Mary Coslany, Norwich. His will is preserved in the National Archives at Kew.

Friends and associates

Many of Daniell's etchings were printed by his friend Henry Ninham, whose home and printing shop was a short distance from Daniell's house on St. Giles Street. His friendships with Ninham and Joseph Stannard may have begun at school.
As well as continuing as an artist during his years in London, Daniell was an active patrons of the arts, and held regular dinner parties and other gatherings at his home. His rooms at 77, Park Lane, in Mayfair became a resort of painters that included John Linnell, David Roberts, William Mulready, William Dyce, Thomas Creswick, Edwin Landseer, William Collins, Abraham Cooper, John Callcott Horsley, Charles Lock Eastlake, and William Clarkson Stanfield. Alfred Story, Linnell's biographer, wrote that Daniell's home was "a treasure-house of art, and comprised works by some of the best painters of the day".
One of Daniell's pupils was the writer Elizabeth Rigby, who remembered in 1891 as an "old friend" who introduced her to etching and admired her drawings. She wrote that "his face was that of one of the openest that could be seen—a superb forehead, and splendid teeth, which showed themselves with every smile, and no one smiled and laughed more genially". In a letter by Daniell to Rigby, he referred to himself as an example of a "tree and house sketcher".

John Linnell

Daniell was an influential friend of the artist John Linnell, whom he first met when Daniell was at Oxford. Their friendship began when Linnell wrote to Daniell to solicit his aid in promoting the sale of Illustrations of the Book of Job by the English artist and poet William Blake, who was Linnell's great friend. He commissioned him to produce the painting now known as View of Lymington, the Isle of Wight beyond for the price of 30 guineas. At a later date he exchanged it for Boy Minding Sheep, paying the difference of 20 guineas. In 1828, Linnell made a miniature of Daniell, and taught him how to paint in oils.
They corresponded regularly and Linnell was a frequent guest at Daniell's rooms in London. Daniell encouraged Linnell to complete his St. John the Baptist Preaching in the Wilderness, offering to buy it himself if it did not sell. When the painting was exhibited in 1839 at the British Institution, it helped to enhance Linnell's reputation as an artist.
Linnell first met J. M. W. Turner at Daniell's house in 1838. Before leaving for the Middle East, Daniell commissioned his portrait from Linnell. Turner had previously refused to sit for the artist, and it was difficult to get his agreement to be portrayed. Daniell positioned the two men opposite to each other at dinner, so that Linnell could observe Turner carefully and portray his likeness from memory. Due to Daniell's death, the completed painting was never delivered.
When Linnell's painting was rejected by the Royal Academy in 1840, Daniell came to his friend's assistance. The picture was taken to Daniell's house and hung above the fireplace, where it was admired by his dinner guests, including two members of the Academy. Daniell then reprimanded them, saying "You are a pretty set of men to pretend to stand up for high art and to proclaim the Academy the fosterer of artistic talent, and yet allow such a picture to be rejected!"

J. M. W. Turner

Daniell's friendship with Turner, whom he met in London, was short but intense. He was a regular guest at Daniell's gatherings and dinner parties, and they quickly became close friends. He was considered by Daniell's circle of artists in London to be their doyen. Beecheno, in his E.T. Daniell: a memoir, recalled that on one occasion Turner was asked his opinion of Daniell's work. ""Very clever, Sir, very clever" was the great master's dictum, delivered in his usual blunt way". Elizabeth Rigby wrote of Daniell, "His admiration for Turner inspired Turner with genuine affection for him. Boxall has told me that at an R.A. dinner, he and Turner sitting with one between them, Turner leant back, and touched Boxall to attract silently his attention, and then pointing to a glass of wine in his other hand, whispered solemnly, "Edward Daniell"". The painter David Roberts wrote of Daniell, "He adored Turner, when I and others doubted, and taught me to see & to distinguish his beauties over that of others... the old man really had a fond & personal regard for this young clergyman, which I doubt he ever evinced for the other".
He may have helped to Turner spiritually. His biography James Hamilton writes that "he would have been able to supply spiritual comfort that Turner required to help him fill the holes left by the deaths of his father and friends and to ease the fears of a naturally reflective man approaching old age". The old artist is known to have mourned Daniell's early death deeply, saying repeatedly to David Roberts that he would never form such a friendship again.
Turner's romantic style is approached by Daniell's watercolours of his travels abroad. Coincidentally, Turner toured Switzerland in 1829, visiting sites that Daniell had previously depicted.

Artistic career

Due to his social class, Daniell remained an amateur artist throughout his life. His private income and social position as a parish priest freed him from having to earn a living from etchings and paintings.
The writer Derek Clifford believed that Daniell's distinctive style was influenced by the methods of John Sell Cotman, an artist he deeply admired. The historian Josephine Walpole, who believes Daniell's talent has yet to be properly recognised, praised his ability to "create a sense of space, a feeling of heat or cold, of poverty or plenty, with apparent lack of effort". She has written admiring his rare talent and highly individual approach. For her, his drawings are appealing for their "delicacy of outline" and his watercolours, the best of which were produced on his last tour, are "impressive in their simplicity, having a powerful feeling for the landscape involved" and having washes that are "muted but distinctive".
In 1832 Daniell exhibited a number of his own pictures of scenes in Italy, Switzerland and France with the Norwich Society of Artists, which were favourably commented upon by the Norwich Mercury. During the sole instance of an exhibition of Daniell's works with the Society, which was disbanded the following year, he showed Sketch from Nature, Lake of Geneva, from Lausanne, painted on the spot. Ruins of a Claudian Aqueduct, in the Campagna di Roma, and Ruined Tombs, on the Via Nomentana, Rome, painted on the spot.
Daniell's oil paintings, which generally depicted subjects encountered on his continental travels, were shown in annual exhibitions during his time in London. He was an honorary exhibitor with the Royal Academy, showing four pieces there: Sion in the Valais ; View of St. Malo ; Sketch from a picture of the Mountains of Savoy from Geneva ; and Kenilworth, as well as four at the British Institute ; Ruins of the Campagna of Rome ; Meadow scene ; and The Lake of Geneva, from near Lausanne ). For his watercolours, he deliberately selected a limited palette, for instance with the paintings made during his tours of the Middle East. The 120 sketches at Norwich Castle and the 64 drawings at the British Museum may have been made in preparation for etchings and paintings that were never made.
Daniell served on bodies involved with the arts, becoming a Fellow of the Geological Society of London in 1835, and a committee member of the Society for the Encouragement of British Art in May 1837.

Etchings

Daniell's etchings, though small in number and not exhibited during his lifetime, are the basis for his reputation as an artist. The author Geoffrey Searle asserts that only a lack of plates has prevented him from being one of the great etchers of the world. In 1899, Binyon considered his etchings to be—from a historical point of view—the most remarkable of his works, anticipating, with their freedom of line, the etching revival personified later in the century by Seymour Haden and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Malcolm Salaman, writing in the 1910s, observed, "No etcher of this early English period evinced a truer and more subtle understanding and handling of the medium than Crome's pupil, the Rev. E. T. Daniell, a very interesting artist of the Norwich School, whose plates, etched in the eighteen-twenties, are remarkable for genuine etcher's vision, expressive charm, and delicacy of craft. His View of Whitlingham, full of light and air, proves him to be in the direct line of the masters."
Miklos Rajnai, a Keeper of Art at Norwich Castle Museum, compared Daniell's skill as an etcher with John Crome and John Sell Cotman. The British art historian Arthur Hind said that the etchings "anticipated far more than nearly anything of Crome or Cotman the modern revival of etching".
Daniell, whose first etchings were made with Joseph Stannard in 1824, became skilled in this particular method of printmaking. An etching made in 1824 of a church tower and trees resembles one by Stannard, who is thought to have taught his friend how to etch. Three distinct groups of etchings can be identified: those produced in Norfolk, including Flordon Bridge, his masterpiece from his early years, which according to Searle has "an assured and individuality"; a more grandiose group of etchings made during his tours of Scotland and the continent; and those etchings made in Norfolk during his curacy at Banham, which includes his most assured work of this period, Whitlingham Lane near Trowse. He stopped etching after his move to London. Although his Norfolk prints were nearly all of landscapes, they were intended to be artistic rather than topographically accurate, and any figures were used simply to indicate the scale of the landscape they were set in.
Daniell later employed a looser style, moving away from Stannard and towards that of Andrew Geddes and other Scottish etchers, whose etchings he almost certainly first saw while in Scotland in the summer of 1831. His was outstanding in the use of drypoint as a technique, which allowed him to strengthen his design by using the needle's point to create a burr in the plate. Burrs allowed the ink to collect, producing a darker tone in the print. Thistlethwaite views his large drypoint etchings and Norfolk landscapes as being "supremely independent and for his time unique" after 1831, once he had moved away from the traditional style of etchers like Geddes. He is thought to have introduced drypoint etching to his Norwich peers; both Thomas Lound and Henry Ninham etched in this way after 1831, producing works of a quality that approached Daniell's own.

Legacy

Most of Daniell's works are held at either the British Museum, or as part of the Norfolk Museums Collections. The British Museum obtained some of his etchings before 1852 and had purchased his prints as early as 1856. Binyon's biographical article appeared in 1889.
None of Daniells' etchings were exhibited or published during his lifetime, but some were given to friends. They were first shown in public in 1891 in a Norwich Arts Circle exhibition. The original impressions are generally held in public collections, and so it is unusual for any to appear for sale. In 1882, Inglis Palgrave wrote Twelve Etchings of the Rev. E. T. Daniell, and 24 copies of the book were made, but it was never published.
In 1921, the author Martin Hardie delivered a lecture to the Print-Collectors' Club in which he discussed Daniell's etchings. He later described the prints as being "full of interest and technical value, and at the same time curiously modern in their spirit", adding of Daniell that "he reaches a very high level of refined thought and execution in his Borough Bridge". Daniell's Middle East landscapes have provided important documentary evidence of the region.
His works were exhibited at Aldeburgh in 1968, and at an exhibition From Norfolk to Nubia: The Watercolours of E.T. Daniell, held at Norwich Castle in 2016. Examples of drawings that have appeared at auctions include a group of pictures, sold in 2005 for £70. Houses and Bridge, Switzerland sold at auction at Keys in 2013 for £390.