Samuel Lines
Encyclopedia
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
design
Design
Design as a noun informally refers to a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system while “to design” refers to making this plan...
er, painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
and art teacher
Art education
Art education is the area of learning that is based upon the visual, tangible arts—drawing, painting, sculpture, and design in jewelry, pottery, weaving, fabrics, etc. and design applied to more practical fields such as commercial graphics and home furnishings...
.
A significant figure in the development of art in Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
during its rapid growth in the early nineteenth century, Lines pioneered the teaching of drawing
Drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...
and painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
in the town and was one of the founders of the life drawing academy that would eventually evolve into the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists
Royal Birmingham Society of Artists
The Royal Birmingham Society of Artists or RBSA is a learned society of artists and an art gallery based in the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham, England. it is both a registered charity. and a registered company The Royal Birmingham Society of Artists or RBSA is a learned society of artists and an...
and Birmingham School of Art
Birmingham School of Art
The Birmingham School of Art was a municipal art school based in the centre of Birmingham, England. Although the organisation was absorbed by Birmingham Polytechnic in 1971 and is now part of Birmingham City University's Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, its Grade I listed building on...
.
Life
Samuel Lines was born in the village of AllesleyAllesley
Allesley is a civil parish on the northwestern edge of the City of Coventry, West Midlands, England, about 3 miles west of Coventry city centre. According to the 2001 census. the parish had a population of 805. Until recently it contained to a factory belonging to the car maker, Jaguar...
in Warwickshire
Warwickshire
Warwickshire is a landlocked non-metropolitan county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, although the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare...
, where his mother was a schoolmistress. After a period working in agriculture for his uncle he moved to Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
in 1794 and secured an apprenticeship as a designer for a firm of clock
Clock
A clock is an instrument used to indicate, keep, and co-ordinate time. The word clock is derived ultimately from the Celtic words clagan and clocca meaning "bell". A silent instrument missing such a mechanism has traditionally been known as a timepiece...
makers and enamellers
Vitreous enamel
Vitreous enamel, also porcelain enamel in U.S. English, is a material made by fusing powdered glass to a substrate by firing, usually between 750 and 850 °C...
.
Lines studied drawing under Joseph Barber
Joseph Barber
Joseph Barber was an English landscape painter and art teacher.Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, Barber moved to Birmingham in the 1770s, where he worked painting papier-mâché and japanned goods. By the mid-1880s he was well established as the town's first drawing master, with an academy training...
at the latter's academy on Great Charles Street, and in 1807 opened his own academy for training pupils in drawing
Drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...
and painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
in Newhall Street
Newhall Street
Newhall Street is a street located in Birmingham, England.Newhall Street stretches from Colmore Row in the city centre by St Phillip's Cathedral in a north-westerly direction towards the Jewellery Quarter. Originally the road was the driveway to New Hall occupied by the Colmore family...
. This was so successful that he was able to build his own house in Temple Row.
Lines' pupils included Thomas Creswick
Thomas Creswick
Thomas Creswick was an English landscape painter and illustrator.-Biography:Creswick was born in Sheffield . He was the son of Thomas Creswick and Mary Epworth and educated at Hazelwood, near Birmingham.At Birmingham he first began to paint...
, Andrew Hunt
Andrew Hunt (painter)
Andrew Hunt , landscape-painter-Biography:Andrew Hunt was born in 1799 at Erdington, near Birmingham. Hunter learnt his skills under Samuel Lines . He married in Birmingham and then the couple went to live in Liverpool where he had a drawing academy and "artists repository" in Bold Street...
, William Wyon
William Wyon
William Wyon, RA , was official chief engraver at the Royal Mint from 1828 until his death. He was influenced by the master of relief sculpture, John Flaxman. Wyon was a highly visible proponent of the Neoclassicist vogue, and was elected to the Royal Academy in 1838.Wyon was born in Birmingham,...
and his own sons Samuel Restall Lines
Samuel Restall Lines
Samuel Restell Lines or Samuel Rostill Lines was an English painter and illustrator.Born in Birmingham, he was the third son of Samuel Lines, one of the founders of the academy for the training of artists that would eventually evolve into the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists and Birmingham...
, Frederick Lines and Henry Lines. His art classes notoriously started at five o'clock in the morning, with Lines himself personally visiting latecomers to rouse them.
In addition to his influence on Birmingham's fine art
Fine art
Fine art or the fine arts encompass art forms developed primarily for aesthetics and/or concept rather than practical application. Art is often a synonym for fine art, as employed in the term "art gallery"....
ists, Lines' tuition was to have a deep impact upon standards of design and craftsmanship across Birmingham's industries: at the time of the exhibition of works by his pupils in 1854 it was found that "by a reference to the Catalogue of the Great Exhibition of 1851, in London, it may be seen that upwards of forty-two of the most distinguished manufacturers of Birmingham received the rudiments of their artistic requirements at their Academy."
Lines' own academy held annual exhibitions of pupils' work, with prizes for "Best Perspective Drawing" and "Best Drawing in the Round", though Lines himself remarked that "No exhibition would satisfy me until we could have a public one, on similar lines to the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
". In 1809 he was one of a group of local artists who founded the Birmingham Academy of Arts – a school of life drawing that came closer to Lines' vision by holding its first public exhibition of its members' works after moving to Union Street in 1814. In 1821 this was refounded as the Birmingham Society of Arts with the help of wealthy local patrons, until the breakaway Birmingham Society of Artists
Royal Birmingham Society of Artists
The Royal Birmingham Society of Artists or RBSA is a learned society of artists and an art gallery based in the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham, England. it is both a registered charity. and a registered company The Royal Birmingham Society of Artists or RBSA is a learned society of artists and an...
formed in 1842 in protest at the society's decision to reform itself into a dedicated Government School of Design. Lines was the treasurer and curator of the society until he resigned at the age of eighty, when he was elected an honorary life member.
Although he was most notable as a teacher, several of Lines' topographical landscapes
Landscape art
Landscape art is a term that covers the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, and especially art where the main subject is a wide view, with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works landscape backgrounds for figures can still...
are in the collection of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.
External links
- Biography and works by Samuel Lines, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
http://www.birminghamcathedral.com Samuel Lines is buried in the St. Philips Cathedral Cemetery.