With his family’s support, Priest then studied art in London, and was taught by James Stark and Edward William Cooke.

He specialized in marine painting and rural scenes of his native Norfolk, and exhibited at the Society of British Artists and the Royal Academy.

He died in Norwich of tuberculosis at the age of 39, two years after ill health forced him to return home from London.

[2] John Priest was a chemist, who ensured his son was educated well enough for the boy to follow in his father's profession.

He returned to Norwich after a period at sea and then briefly worked as an apprentice to a surgeon in the Norfolk town of Downham Market.

[2] Ill health forced Priest to return to Norfolk in 1848,[3] and he spent much of the following year living on the coast.

[14] Priest, along with Robert Leman, Thomas Lound, Henry Bright and John Middleton, is considered by the art historian Andrew Moore to be one of the outstanding artists of the final phase of the Norwich School during the middle of the 19th century.

Walpole notes that Priest's landscapes make good use of warm ochres, greens and browns, but that his later paintings can be dull-looking.

[2][7] The British Museum hold proofs of what are probably a complete collection of Priest's etchings,[2] which are small and of every find of subject.