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John Trivett Nettleship was one of nineteenth-century Britain’s leading animal illustrators. His sketches, pastels, and paintings in water colour and oil commanded great respect among critics, collectors, and the public from his first exhibition in 1871 until his death in 1902.
Born on 11 February 1841, in Kettering, Northamptonshire, Nettleship was the second of five sons of Henry John Nettleship, a solicitor, and Isabella Ann. When he was a boy, Nettleship was a chorister at New College, University of Oxford, following which he attended the Durham Cathedral school.
Although he worked for a few years in his father’s office and then became a solicitor
in London, Nettleship soon embarked on an artistic career. His formal training was
undertaken at the Heatherley School of Fine Art and the Slade School of Fine Art,
which opened in 1871 and was part of University College, London. The UCL
Nettleship’s one and only contribution to
Nettleship’s interest in wild animals in their natural (sometimes violent) states, rather than domesticated creatures such as cats and dogs, has been attributed to his admiration for vigorous physical activity. In addition to his artistic pursuits, Nettleship boxed, hiked long distances, and even trained barefoot before embarking on a mountaineering expedition in the Alps. A review of Nettleship’s oeuvre published a few months after his death claimed for his works a “masculine strength of draughtsmanship” and a “robustness of execution” (“J. T. Nettleship: Animal Painter” 77).
Nettleship’s aesthetic treatment of non-human animals was deeply informed by the
visual information he recorded during his frequent sketching trips to London’s
Zoological Gardens. In 1880, Nettleship had an opportunity to observe exotic beasts
in their native environment when he travelled to India on the invitation of the
Gaekwar of Baroda.
Nettleship also created illustrations for several books: his friend Arthur W.E.
O’Shaughnessy’s
In addition to his visual art, Nettleship, who was one of the “permanent guests” of
the Rhymers’ Club (Nelson 168), wrote two books. The first, which appeared in 1868,
was a series of essays on Robert Browning’s poetry. This collection, which the
In 1898, Nettleship published a biographical study of the eighteenth-century English painter George Morland. While their styles and subject matter diverged widely, some of Nettleship’s comments reveal an admiration of and even a trace of inspiration from the earlier artist’s treatment of animals: “In painting horses ... he seems to have had an intuitive knowledge of the beast, and so powerful is the impression of getting at the root of things when pigs or horses form his main subject, that the men in these pictures are apt to seem shadowy things, wisps of a half-seen vision” (51).
Nettleship passed away at 33 Beaumont Street, London, on 31 August 1902. On 3 September he was interred at Kensal Green Cemetery. The parish church at Kettering, his birthplace, has a bronze memorial tablet designed by the artists Sir George Frampton, Sir Alfred East, and Thomas Cooper Gotch (the latter two were likewise born in Kettering).
© 2011, Morgan Holmes
Morgan Holmes holds a PhD in English from McGill University. The director of WordMeridian Communications in Toronto, his research and publication focus on early modern literature and culture, Victorian/Edwardian history, and current developments in post-secondary education and health-care policies and service delivery.