Briton Rivière

St. George and the Dragon - Briton Rivière's depiction of an exhausted St. George lying down beside the slain dragon is a radical departure from the triumphant equestrian position in which this saint is traditionally depicted.

Daniel's Answer to the King. Painted in 1890, it is now in Manchester Art Gallery

File:'Requiescat', oil on canvas painting by Briton Rivière, 1888, Art Gallery of New South Wales.jpg

Requiescat, oil on canvas painting by Briton Rivière, 1888, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.

Briton Rivière (14 August 1840 – 20 April 1920) was an artist born in London, England, of Huguenot descent.

His father, William Rivière (1806–1876), was for some years drawing-master at Cheltenham College, and afterwards an art teacher at Oxford University. He was educated at Cheltenham College and at Oxford, where he took his degree in 1867. For his art training he was indebted almost entirely to his father, and early in life made for himself a place of importance among the artists of his time. His paternal uncle Henry Parsons Rivière (1811–1888) was also a noted watercolourist.

His first pictures appeared at the British Institution, and in 1857 he exhibited three works at the Royal Academy, but it was not until 1863 that he became a regular contributor to the Academy exhibitions. In that year he was represented by The eve of the Spanish Armada, and in 1864 by a Romeo and Juliet. However, subjects of this kind did not attract him long, for in 1865 he began, with a picture of a Sleeping deerhound, a series of paintings of animal-subjects which later occupied him almost exclusively for the rest of his life. In a lengthy interview published in Chums Boys Annual (No. 256, Vol. V, 4 August 1897) entitled "How I paint animals", Rivière explained some of the practicalities of painting both tame and wild animals: "I have always been a great lover of dogs but I have worked at them so much that I've grown tired of having them about me. However, you can never paint a dog unless you are fond of it. I never work from a dog without the assistance of a man who is well acquainted with animals..... Collies, I think, are the most restless dogs....greyhounds are also very restless, and so are fox terriers..... The only way to paint wild animals is to gradually accumulate a large number of studies and a great knowledge of the animal itself, before you can paint its picture...... I paint from dead animals as well as from live ones. I have had the body of a fine lioness in my studio..... I have done a great deal of work in the dissecting rooms at the Zoological Gardens from time to time."

Works

• Thomas Jenkins (1856; Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum)
• Strayed from the flock (1867)
• The empty chair (1869)
• His only friend (1871; Manchester Art Gallery)
• Circe and the friends of Ulysses (1871)
• Daniel (1872; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool)
• Warranted quiet to ride or drive (1873)
• All that was left of the homeward bound (1873)
• War time (1874; Chrysler Museum of Art)
• Double Entendre (1875)
• The last of the garrison (1875; Manchester Art Gallery)
• Pallas Athena and the herdman's dogs (1876,93–94; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
• Humpty dumpty (1876)
• Comala ('Where art thou, O! Fingal? The night is gathering around' — Ossian) (1876)
• Lazarus (1877)
• The legend of St. Patrick (1877)
• Sympathy (1877) Royal Holloway, University of London), bought by Martin Holloway, 1878, £2,626
• An Anxious Moment (1878) Royal Holloway, University of London, bought by Martin Holloway, 1883, £1,732 10s
• Persepolis ('They say the lion and the lizard keep the courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep') (1878)
• 'In Manus Tuas, Domine' (1879; Manchester Art Gallery)
• The night watch (1880; Walters Art Museum, Baltimore)
• Hope deferred (1881; Private collection)
• The magician's doorway (1882)
• Una (1882)
• Giant's at play (1882; Tate, London)
• Companions in misfortune (1883; Tate, London)
• The miracle of the gaderene swine (1883; Tate, London)
• 'The mouse ran up the clock' (1884)
• 'Vae Victis' (1885)
• 'Union is strength' (1885)
• Necessity is the mother of invention (1885)
• Rizpah (1886; Private collection)
• Jilted! (1887; Philadelphia Museum of Art)
• Adonis wounded (1887; Private collection)
• An old world wanderer ('The first that ever burst into that silent sea') (1887; Nottingham City Museums and Galleries)
• Requiescat (1888; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney)
• A blockade runner (1888; Tate, London)
• 'Of a fool and his folly there is no end' (1889)
• Rus in urbe (1890; Private collection)
• A mighty hunter before the Lord (1891; Untraced)
• Pride of place (1891; Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter)
• The king's libation (1893; Private collection)
• Out with intent (1894)
• 'The most devoted of her slaves' (1894; Private collection)
• Beyond man's footsteps (1894; Tate, London)
• Phoebus Apollo (1895; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery)
• Aggravation (1896)
• The temptation in the wilderness (1898; Guildhall Art Gallery, London)
• St. George (1900)
• 'When our gudeman's awa' (1900)
• To the hills (1901)
• Aphrodite (1902; Dahesh Museum of Art, New York)
• Lost or strayed (1905; Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum)
• Childe Roland to the dark tower came (1917; Norwich)

He also painted portraits, most notably of his brother-in-law, Sydney Thompson Dobell, the poet and breeder of deerhounds. A pencil sketch of Sydney Dobell by him is in the National Portrait Gallery. Sydney Dobell's deerhounds appeared in several of his works, notably The empty chair of 1869. A faithful bloodhound figures prominently in Requiescat (he made a repetition of the work in 1889, now in a private collection), The last of the garrison and Naughty boy or compulsory education (1909), which was used by Pears Soap in the sequence of promotional pictures begun with Millais' Bubbles. Early in his career, he made some mark as an illustrator, beginning with Punch. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1878, and R.A. in 1881, and received the degree of DCL at Oxford in 1891. He was only narrowly defeated in the election for President of the Royal Academy in 1896. His wife, Mary Alice Rivière (née Dobell; 1844–1931) who he married in 1867, was a painter and exhibited briefly at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1869–70. After his death she presented the British Museum with four of his drawings (and an etching The king drinks), which complements the dozens of prints made after his work housed there, especially by Frederick Stacpoole and William Henry Simmons. The artist and his wife had seven children; five sons and two daughters. One of the sons, Hugh Goldwin Rivière (1869–1956), became a noted portraitist.

See Sir Walter Armstrong, Briton Rivière, R.A; His Life and Work, The Art Annual (1891).

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This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)