John Frederick Tayler

Frederick was the son of a country gentleman, Archdale Wilson Tayler and his wife Frances Eliza,[1] and was born at Boreham Wood, Elstree, Hertfordshire,[2] on 30 April 1802.

His siblings included Henry Joseph (b.1787), Elisa (b.1789), Sarah Maria (b.1790), Susannah Matilda (b.1791), Julia (b.1793), George Robert (b.

While still a lad he met Richard Parkes Bonington at Calais, and a friendship sprang up between the two painters, who for a time shared a studio in Paris.

Tayler's fondness for watercolour was no doubt encouraged by Bonington, and though he made his début in the academy of 1830 with an oil-picture, ‘The Band of the 2nd Life Guards,’ he did not long hesitate in his choice of a medium.

A dozen of these were painted in collaboration with the younger George Barret (d. 1842), and one, ‘The Favourites,’ with Thomas Miles Richardson On the death of Fielding in 1855 Tayler, as senior member of the committee of management, was vice-president for the year, and discharged the duties of president during the interregnum of eight months which, out of respect for Fielding's memory, was allowed to pass before the election of his successor.

His distress at this affair brought on a serious illness, from the effects of which he did not finally recover until peace was restored in the society by the election of Lewis as president.

His powers were best displayed in rapid and suggestive sketches, in which, says Mr. Ruskin, ‘the quantity of effect obtained is enormous in proportion to the apparent means’.

"Cluny MacPherson, chief of the Clan Chattan," watercolour, touched with bodycolour (over graphite), by the British painter and printmaker John Frederick Tayler (1801–1889). 267 mm x 182 mm. Courtesy of the British Museum, London.