John Crome

1768 - 1821

Known as the father of the Norwich School of painters, and Old Crome to distinguish him from his son, painter John Berney Crome, John Crome was the son of a weaver, born and spent his whole life in the city. After an apprenticeship with a sign painter, he met and travelled around Norfolk on sketching trips with fellow painter (and at the time printer), Robert Ladbrooke. Through a local collector, Crome gained access to works by Gainsborough and the Dutch landscape painter Hobbema to copy, and went on to receive instruction and encouragement from John Opie and William Beechey. In 1803, Crome and Ladbrooke set up the Norwich Society of Artists, and Crome was several times its President. Besides trips to London, the Lake District, and a post-Napoleonic visit to Paris, Crome remained in Norwich, a successful drawing master in the city. Crome was an etcher as well as an oil painter, producing a series of etchings of local scenery. These were not published in his lifetime, but posthumously, firstly in 1834 by his widow, and subsequently, with alterations instigated by Cotman's patron Dawson Turner, in 1838, as Etchings of Views in Norfolk.