John Louis Petit

During extensive travels both at home and in continental Europe (as well as the Middle East), Petit painted buildings of different periods and styles with a particular focus on medieval architecture.

His paintings were completed on the spot, and are frequently marked by a sketch-like immediacy that places his work outside the mainstream of 19th century picturesque travel views, calling to mind some aspects of Pre-Impressionism.

Born into a prominent and well-to-do family of French Huguenot origins, he was ordained into the Church of England in his mid-twenties, but ceased parochial work a few years later.

He never painted for money, and after his death his art disappeared from public view and was largely forgotten, although the impact of his architectural writings lingered into the following century.

He travelled often, especially in France (where he sketched most years), Germany, Italy, and Ireland, but also completing tours to Corfu, Greece and Constantinople (1857), Spain and North Africa (1858) and Egypt and Syria (1865).

In both the 18th and 19th centuries artists were regularly commissioned to provide drawings of particular places (for owners of country seats, Grand Tourists, collectors, or publishers of "picturesque" views or reports of antiquarian expeditions).

[14] Whereas these started out as predominantly documentary records of specific buildings or places, subsequently professional artists began to add the ingredients of poetic idealisation, contrived rusticity and Romantic sentiment to the mix, and by the 19th century an increasingly conventionalised style of topographical drawing was prevalent.

That he systematically inscribed the name of locations (initially on album pages, then on the versos of his paintings - and from 1854 onwards the date too) emphasises the "topographical" focus of his art.

Completing approximately 12,000-15,000 watercolours, he was a faithful recorder of architecture, urban environments and natural scenery, but at the same time he succeeded in conveying the emotional impact of the buildings and scenes he portrayed.

The collection, already depleted by damage, was then disposed of mainly through auctioneers Sotheby's Billingshurst in the 1980s and 1990s with little or no attempt at a systematic understanding of Petit's worth as an artist.

[19] The art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon considers Petit "an artist whose work, particularly in the medium of watercolour, reaches the highest peaks of innovation and virtuosity, worthy of comparison with that even of Turner".

[21] His other sisters Elizabeth (Haig), Susannah and Maria (Jelf), and his sister-in-law, Amelia Reid, and Sarah Salt, his niece, also painted alongside Petit on different occasions.

[26] A tour de force in two volumes, with over 300 illustrations from watercolours by Petit himself, it sought to gather multiple examples to demonstrate the range of beauty in all historical architectural styles, from the continent as well as Britain.

The underlying purpose was to counter the dogma of one "correct" style set out in Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin's Contrasts, which had appeared a few years earlier.

[27]Remarks on Church Architecture was widely praised in many quarters, but faced harsh criticism from the followers of Pugin, grouped around the Cambridge Camden Society and their recently-founded journal, The Ecclesiologist.

[...] How many a noble church, that for ages has preserved its beauty in spite of accident, violence, or decay, seems to writhe and struggle under the fantastic additions and incongruous ornaments of some architect who fancies he can supply what its original designer has omitted, or correct what he has planned!"

[31] Petit's advocacy of foreign models quickly gained wide acceptance, although when he argued at a RIBA talk in 1858[32] that even Byzantine architecture had much to offer he had to admit to sometimes being accused of indiscriminately advocating the style of the country he had most recently visited.

Petit demonstrated what he meant in practice on only two occasions: when he drew up the architectural designs for his house outside Lichfield and a chapel at Caerdeon, north-west Wales (see below).

Petit designed two buildings: his own house at Upper Longdon, outside Lichfield, built in 1855; and St Philip's Church, Caerdeon for his brother-in-law, The Reverend William Edward Jelf, erected in 1861-2.

[36] The National Library of Wales has nearly 200 works as part of the Ian and Eileen Cooke Bequest Collection (awaiting cataloguing), as well as 59 watercolours[37] mainly related to the building of the Chapel at Caerdeon, the only church which Petit designed (in 1861-2).