John Brett

John Brett painted landscape with almost scientific precision. His early pictures, made under the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites and the critic John Ruskin, record every pebble, leaf and rock in brilliant light. Later he turned to the sea, painting wide views of the coasts of Cornwall, Wales and the Channel Islands, with the horizon and the colour of the water carefully observed.

Born near Reigate in 1831, he entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1853. The Stonebreaker (1858) made his name, and Ruskin bought Val d’Aosta (1859), which he had urged Brett to paint. Brett was also a keen astronomer, elected to the Royal Astronomical Society in 1871, and in later years sailed his own schooner in the Mediterranean and spent summers painting the Pembrokeshire coast. His large seascape Britannia’s Realm (1880) is in Tate Britain. He died in 1902.

A View of Whitby from the Moors and Arran show his sharp eye for distant detail.