Design and Art Australia Online

watercolour painter, was an Englishman who came to Sydney about 1883 and remained for ten years. He exhibited with the Art Society of NSW (subsequently the Royal Art Society) from 1883 and was elected to its committee in 1884. Reviewing its 4th annual exhibition, the Sydney Morning Herald (5 October 1883, p.8) noted that this new and welcome contributor had sent in some 'powerful’ works, including Evening at Falaise, Normandy ('a striking picture’) and Egyptian war-tugs waiting transports (with 'a peculiar lurid sunset light which is very telling’). He also showed three drawings of parts of Westminster Abbey and a view of the interior of the Henry VII Chapel depicting the tomb and the Dean Stanley window in which the many cross lights, the shading of the pendant banners and the drawing of the whole picture were considered 'masterly in the extreme’ and 'one of the very best things in the exhibition’.

The following year the Art Society held a 'monochrome exhibition’ in which Fletcher Watson (regularly also called Fletcher-Watson in the press) showed Concord . It introduced to Sydney another favourite subject in his repertoire – river scenery. The Herald (17 April 1884, p.7) admired the artist’s 'firm, decisive hand, and a faculty for drawing fairly’, but considered his colour was 'not pleasing to the eye, and he has failed to produce any startling effects. The picture has a burnt appearance and one comes away from it with the impression of having looked at a chocolate boat liquefying in a pond of coffee streaked with stale milk. Mr. Watson’s misty, dreamy sunset at Windermere is a far more artistic production.’ At the Art Socety’s annual exhibition in July, he showed local subjects – Orange Grove, Middle Harbour (an 'effective sketch with a nice little bit of sky in it’, wrote the Herald critic on 17 July 1884, p.5), 'two attractive harbour studies’, a couple of Pittwater views and 'a beautiful morning effect on Lane Cove River’ – as well as a couple of English marine studies, another Westminster Abbey view and Searching the Register ('one of those picturesque church interiors which Mr. P. Fletcher Watson paints so well’).

Having set up an open air sketching class as well as teaching the principles of perspective and colouring, Fletcher Watson exhibited more plein-air watercolour views in the annual exhibitions of 1884 and 1885, which the Herald critic considered (11 April 1885, p.9) had benefitted from his own teaching; he now knew 'how to represent out-of-door light and atmosphere’ with 'dash and vigour and originality’. The Sydney Mail critic (11 April 1885, p.765), however, complained that his work was 'of the “slap-dash” sort, bold and occasionally effective, but never possessing that finish requisite for gallery exhibits.’ He showed 12 works in the 7th annual Art Society of NSW exhibition, some local subjects such as The Gap ('the spot where the Dunbar was wrecked’) and some English architectural views, including Lincoln’s Inn Gateway and St Mary’s Porch, Oxford .

The sketches he showed at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition at London in 1886 were not well received ('ambitious striving after effect to the disparagement of honest drawing’) though his use of colour was praised. At the 1887 Adelaide Jubilee International Exhibition P. Fletcher Watson, 'F.R.S., Sketching Institute of New South Wales, Bond-street, Sydney’, showed two Narrabeen views – On Narrabeen Lagoon, New South Wales and Road to Narrabeen – as well as Roslyn Abbey , Melrose Abbey and Andernach on the Rhine . He also showed his watercolours with the Victorian Artists’ Society (VAS) in 1889-99. In November 1987 Trevor Bussell Gallery (cat. 23) illustrated a watercolour landscape, Lane Cove River 1888, and called him 'an accomplished tonal impressionist’. Similar Lane Cove watercolours, dated 1887 and 1892 respectively, were offered by Deutscher in April 1985 (cat.41) and Sotheby’s on 17 November 1988 (lot 118, Lane Cove River, Early Spring Morning , estimate $2,500-3,500).

Fletcher Watson founded 'the Sketching Institute of New South Wales’ at the beginning of 1886 and held sketching nights in his studio in Foy’s Chambers, Bond Street, as well as regular daytime open-air classes. A lengthy review of his work in the Bulletin of 27 February 1886 (p.22) especially emphasised his sketching parties. In 1888 he offered classes in Tasmania. On 29 February 1888, the Hobart Mercury noted that Mr Fletcher Watson, 'President of the Sketching Institute of N.S.W., and President of the Australian Academy of Arts’, was proposing to visit Hobart in late March 'for sketching purposes’ and was inviting interested persons to contact him at 29 Bligh Street, Sydney.

He was foundation president of the Australian Academy of Arts, which held its first exhibition at Sydney in December 1887, then reformed in 1891. According to the Mercury , he also held 'the position of commissioner of Fine Arts at the Centenary Universal exhibition held in Sydney recently’, though this probably meant he was a NSW commissioner for the Centennial International Exhibition in Melbourne. At the Melbourne Centennial Exhibition P. Fletcher Watson, 'President of the Australian Academy’, showed a large collection of watercolour views, winning two 2nd prizes for Interior of Toledo Cathedral and Melrose Abbey and a 3rd prize for a group of 5 watercolours: Entrance to the Convent of St. Gregory ; St. Wolfran’s Cathedral, Abbeville ; The Temple of Philae ; An Oratory, Palestine ; and The Summer Pulpit, Jerusalem . Such subjects appear to have been worked up in Sydney from sketches made before he came to Australia.

P. Fletcher Watson was also secretary of the Institute of Architects of NSW (now Royal Australian Institute of Architects NSW Chapter), and he continued to paint architectural subjects. In 1889 he was commissioned to do a watercolour drawing of the tomb of Bishop Broughton in St Andrew’s Anglican Cathedral, Sydney , by the bishop’s descendants. Such work, opined the Herald (17 July 1889, p.5) was 'conventional but it is correct, and sometimes delicate’. The Bulletin critic (16 July 1892, p.10), on the other hand, much preferred his architectural pictures to his landscape sketches. In 1891 he entered the competition held by the National Art Gallery of NSW for watercolours illustrating picturesque New South Wales, offering 'a clever sketch at Twofold Bay, the clump of dark trees to the left contrasting well with the white beach’ ( Illustrated Sydney News 5 December 1891, p.12).

By 1894 Fletcher Watson was living in Manchester, England. Three drawings of European cathedal interiors he exhibited at London’s Dudley Gallery in 1895 were praised in the Sydney Morning Herald (16 March 1895, p.5). He also exhibited his watercolours in major exhibition venues at Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Dublin (Royal Hibernian Academy) as well as at the Royal Academy, the Royal Society of British Artists and the Dudley and New Galleries, London. He was elected a member of the Royal Society of British Artists in 1903. The following year he was living in Paignton, Devon.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1999

Last updated:

2011