Lot 245: Chamois Hunters, the Matterhorn beyond

Robert Taylor Pritchett (1823-1907)
Chamois Hunters, the Matterhorn beyond
signed and dated 'R. T. PRITCHETT. 1876' (lower left)
pencil and watercolor on paper
20¾ x 29in. (52.7 x 73.6cm.)

VARIOUS PROPERTIES


Pritchett, a gun maker and artist, was the son of Richard Ellis Pritchett, the head of the firm of Enfield gun makers which supplied arms to the East India Company and the Board of Ordnance. His early career was with spent at the gun makers where he invented a bullet that corrected the eccentricity of the Enfield rifle and won him fame as the 'Father of the Enfield rifle'. The company lost its principal customer with the abolition of the East India Company in 1858 and Pritchett embarked on a new career as an artist. Retaining as his device an ancient harquebusier and his gun, he travelled widely, and won the Queen Victoria's patronage in 1868. He was subsequently commissioned by the Queen to paint over 80 watercolours of her Jubilees and family events. A keen yachtsman, Pritchett was marine painter to the Royal Thames Yacht Club. He cruised the Pacific and tropics in the 1880s, on Joseph Lambert's Wanderer and on Sir Thomas and Lady Brassey's Sunbeam . His drawings illustrated the 1890 edition of Darwin's Voyage of the 'Beagle' . His published works include Gamle Norge: Rambles and Scrambles in Norway (1878), following his tour of Norway in 1874-5.