Aaron Edwin Penley (20 May 1806 – 15 January 1870) was an English watercolour-painter.

Biography

Born in 1806, he first appeared as a contributor to the

Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its purp ...

exhibition in 1835. He continued to exhibit at intervals till 1857, his contributions being chiefly portraits, though he was afterwards better known as a landscape painter. He was elected a member of the New Water Colour Society (now the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours) in 1838, when he was living at 26 Percy Street,

Rathbone Place Rathbone Place is a street in central London that runs roughly north-west from Oxford Street to Percy Street. it is joined on its eastern side by Percy Mews, Gresse Street, and Evelyn Yard. The street is mainly occupied by retail and office p ...

, but he resigned in 1856, aggrieved in consequence of some alleged slight in connection with the placing of his pictures. At his own request, however, he was reinstated in 1859. He was watercolour-painter in ordinary to

William IV William IV (William Henry; 21 August 1765 – 20 June 1837) was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and King of Hanover from 26 June 1830 until his death in 1837. The third son of George III, William succeeded ...

and

Queen Adelaide , house = Saxe-Meiningen , father = Georg I, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen , mother = Princess Louise Eleonore of Hohenlohe-Langenburg , birth_date = , birth_place = Meiningen, Saxe-Meiningen, Holy Rom ...

, he painted a miniature of Queen Victoria from a sitting (1840 NPG) and taught Victoria's son Prince Arthur to paint; he was also professor of drawing at

Addiscombe College The East India Company Military Seminary was a British military academy at Addiscombe, Surrey, in what is now the London Borough of Croydon. It opened in 1809 and closed in 1861. Its purpose was to train young officers to serve in the East India ...

from 1851 to its dissolution, after which he held a similar post at

Woolwich Academy The Royal Military Academy (RMA) at Woolwich, in south-east London, was a British Army military academy for the training of commissioned officers of the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers. It later also trained officers of the Royal Corps of Si ...

till his death. In 1864 a mysterious advertisement, offering a reward for any information about Penley, ‘living or dead,’ appeared in several of the London newspapers. He died at

Lewisham Lewisham () is an area of southeast London, England, south of Charing Cross. It is the principal area of the London Borough of Lewisham, and was within the historic county of Kent until 1889. It is identified in the London Plan as one o ...

on 15 January 1870.

Works

His art was of the showy, artificial kind, which was encouraged by the early popularity of

chromolithography Chromolithography is a method for making multi-colour prints. This type of colour printing stemmed from the process of lithography, and includes all types of lithography that are printed in colour. When chromolithography is used to reproduce p ...

, and may be said to have become quite obsolete before his death. An enthusiastic follower of his art, Penley published various elaborate treatises on its principles and practice, some of which are illustrated by chromolithography. Among them are his ''Elements of Perspective'' (1851), ''English School of Painting in Water Colours'' (1861), ''Sketching from Nature in Water Colours'' (1869), and ''A System of Water Colour Painting''.

Notes

External links

* ;Attribution {{DEFAULTSORT:Penley, Aaron Edwin 19th-century English painters English male painters English landscape painters 1806 births 1870 deaths 19th-century English male artists