Fonds 40 - John Scarlett Davis

John Scarlett Davis was an English landscape, portrait, and architectural painter, and lithographer born on September 1, 1804, in Leominster, England. He studied at the Royal Academy Schools in London, and began exhibiting his works at the annual Royal Academy shows in 1825.

Davis painted portraits, landscapes, and church interiors, and developed a distinctive specialty in painting the interiors of art galleries. His picture The Interior of the British Institution Gallery (1829) records a collection of Old Masters. He lithographed and published twelve heads from studies by Rubens, and in 1832 some views of Bolton Abbey, drawn from nature on stone. He also painted the interiors of the Louvre. Between 1842 and 1845 he was commissioned to draw copies of the paintings in the collections of the British royal palaces.

He was also commissioned to paint an interior of the Vatican, Vatican City and of the Escurial in Spain, and an interior of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

His works are in a number of public and private collections, with several in each of the National Museum Cardiff, the National Portrait Gallery, Tate Britain, Hereford Museum and Art Gallery, Leominster Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Yale Center for British Art. A major exhibition of his work was held at Hereford in 1937. A number of his letters are held by Herefordshire Libraries and Information Service.

He died on September 29, 1845, in London, England.