Albert Chevallier TAYLER

Albert Chevallier TAYLER
aka CHEVALLIER-TAYLER
1862
1925
At school: 'Bertie'

Born in Leytonstone, London on 5 April, 1862 (GRO), the son of a lawyer, William M Tayler and his wife Sarah,  he studied at Heatherleys, the RA schools and at the Slade where he met Thomas Cooper GOTCH, and then also at Laurens Atelier in Paris. Another close friend, made in Paris, was Norman GARSTIN.

He lived for 12 years in Newlyn, after arriving first in 1884. (The Centre for Whistler Studies, holding a biography for Tayler, incorrectly states that he spent two years only in Cornwall before settling permanently in London. In fact, he lived successively at Belle Vue House, the Malt House with the Gotches, and later at Park Terrace).

He served on the provisional committee of artists when NAG opened on 22 October 1895, but moved soon after to settle in Kensington, London. Despite non-residence in Cornwall, he continued to show and sell paintings at NAG. In 1896 he married Mrs Elizabeth Cotes, the daughter of a surgeon to the Royal Household, who had one daughter by her first marriage. Together the couple had two sons, both of whom were killed in WWI.

His sister, Mary Beatrice Churchill Tayler (1869-c1939), moved to Cornwall in 1921, and became the resident Assistant Honorary Secretary of NAG and the NSA, with her friend Miss Hall acting as Custodian. Reginald DICK had taken over as Temporary Hon Sec when Henry RHEAM had died in post, and the two women were to rescue the Gallery from the lack of administrative control and direction which occurred.  Miss Churchill Tayler remained in post until 1934, when she joined the NAG Committee, and was made an Honorary Life Member. Hence the connections between the Tayler family and Newlyn were to span a period of some 55 years.

His subjects were interiors, dinner parties and other domestic celebrations, later concentrating on religious subjects.  He died on 20 December, 1925 in London.

A full page reproduction of his painting Feeding Time (detail), in the possession of Penlee House Museum, Penzance, is reprinted in PCF (2007).

[Photo likeness in Hardie 2009 with Henry Scott TUKE.]

media

Painter of portraits and genre

works and access

Works include: The Pedlar (c1895); The First Commission (c1895);The Convalescent (1898); Her Comfort (1899); The Shipwright's Workshop (1902);  Old Man's Head (1904); By Accident or DesignThe Carpenter's Shop (1906); Feeding Time (1884)

Access to Work:  portraits in Imperial War Museum; Guildhall; Devonshire Club; Birmingham; Bristol; Liverpool; Preston

Penlee House, Penzance:  Girl shelling peas (col pl Hardie 2009); Her Comfort

 

 

exhibitions

RA (from 1884) 1886 (2);  NAG Opening 1895, March 1889, July 1904 (first gallery sale); St Ives August 1889; Dowdeswells; Nottingham; Whitechapel; SS; PARIS SALON 1891; Alfred East Art Gallery, Kettering

memberships

In Cornwall: NSA

references

The Cornishman 28 Mar 1889, 1 Aug 1889

Bednar Every Corner was a Picture

Benezit

Crespon-Halotier

Dowdeswell Exhibition catalogue (see Hardie 2009 for repr)

Green Posing the Model

Hardie (2009) Artists in Newlyn and West Cornwall (p280):

Hardie (1995) 100 Years in Newlyn/Diary

Holmes Artistic Tradition

Johnson & Greutzner; 

NAG sales records (repr by Hardie 2009); 

NAG Loan (1958) Exh Cat

Newton et al Painting at the Edge (Ills)

Notts Exhibition catalogue (see Hardie 2009 for repr)

Public Catalogue Foundation (PCF) Cornwall & the Isles of Scilly: Oil Paintings in Public Ownership

Centre for Whistler Studies: www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk;

Whitechapel Exhibition Catalogue (see Hardie 2009 for repr)

Wood Victorian Painters;