Lot 734: John James Chalon, Swiss 1778-1852- "Gil Blas";

John James Chalon, Swiss 1778-1852- "Gil Blas"; watercolour, 30x43cm: S J Howard, 19/20th century- Alpine view; watercolour, signed, (2) Note: Swiss painter of French descent, born in Geneva on 27 March 1778. Chalon's family were French Protestants who had fled persecution in France. Chalon did not remain in Switzerland long, however. By the age of 18 he had enrolled in the Royal Academy Schools, and he exhibited his first oil painting at the Academy in 1801. Yet it is Chalon's watercolours that brought him most esteem. In 1808 he was elected a member of the Society of Painters in Watercolours; he went on to exhibit regularly at the Old Watercolour Society and the British Institution from this period until 1843. A landscape and genre painter, he advocated the benefits of open-air sketching and became one of the founders, also in 1808, of the 'Society for the Study in Epic and Pastoral Design', although this later became known as the 'Bread and Cheese' Society (from the fare of their evening meetings) before finally earning the title of the 'Chalon Sketching Society' or just the Sketching Society. At his best, his landscapes have an element of freshness and vitality that attest to his working practice based on outdoor sketching. He was elected a Royal Academician in 1841 and died in London on 14 November 1854. He was always close to his brother Alfred Edward Chalon RA (1780-1860), a portrait and subject painter, who was equally well known and a co-founder and pillar of the Sketching Society with him. (NMM)