Thomas Creswick (British 1811 – 1869) The Hidden Place

Creswick was born in Sheffield, England and studied with Birmingham landscape painter John Vincent Barber. He was just 16 years of age when he exhibited a landscape at the Birmingham Exhibition in 1827. The praise he received resulted in his sending two landscapes to the Royal Academy in London and in 1832 he moved there from Birmingham. Creswick would exhibit at the Academy from 1828 to his death in 1869. He would exhibit his landscapes at the British Institution and the Society of British artists as well. In addition to painting, he was sought after as a book illustrator.

During the height of his career in the late-1840s, he was regarded as one of one of the best-known members of the Birmingham School of landscape painters, followed in 1860 with the praise in the May 12, 1860 edition of the Illustrated Times, that “Creswick was one of the best landscape-painters the English school has produced.” Mary Cowling (2008) states that “Creswick’s particular achievement was to capture the beauty of the British landscape in its most familiar and undramatic aspects; epitomizing in well-chosen scenes everything it represented – its values as well as its appearances.”

He best known for his landscapes of Wales, Ireland and the North of England, notably, and almost without exception, containing streams. Although there is no record of a visit to the United States, there is a painting of Mount Tom in Massachusetts in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and a view of the Hudson River was on display at his memorial exhibition in 1870.

High auction record for this artist: $70,485.