Artist Information
Artist
Louis Bosworth Hurt, RA (1856-1929)Role
PainterDate made
1900Time Period
20th CenturyNotes
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Louis Bosworth Hurt, born in Ashbourne, north Derbyshire in England, was a well-known landscape artist who painted the dramatic skies and moody mists of Scotland’s Highlands and his work is characterized by the Highland cattle that feature in his best known paintings. He was an early student of George Turner (1841–1910), also an English landscape artist who was dubbed "Derbyshire's John Constable"*, and the style of their paintings is similar. Hurt was influenced by the animal paintings of Sir Edwin Landseer RA (1802-1873) and the Scottish landscapes of Peter Graham RA (1836-1921). He continued the tradition of landscape painting established in the early Victorian period, where the Queen’s love of the Highlands initiated a vogue for paintings of those districts, thus providing subject matter that Hurt painted for his entire life.
Most of Hurt’s work was carried out at his home in Ivonbrook in Darley Dale, Derbyshire, where he lived with his wife Harriet, also a professional artist. Hurt also made frequent visits to Scotland. Hurt had a cottage in Bettwys-y-Coed, North Wales, where he would paint small landscapes of Snowdonia and the surrounding areas. Occasionally he also painted views in the Southern Counties. Hurt was a popular and prolific artist, exhibiting 13 times at the Royal Academy in the 1880s and 1890s, as well as 26 times at the Royal Society of Artists and holding exhibitions provincially. The Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum in Bournemouth holds a large collection of his paintings.
* John Constable RA (1776-1837) was a famous English landscape painter in the Romantic tradition. Born in Suffolk, he was largely responsible for reviving and revolutionizing the genre of landscape painting in the 19th century with his pictures of the area surrounding his home.
