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Samuel Hieronymus Grimm (1733-94) was an 18th
century Swiss artist who specialized in watercolour and pen and
ink media. He studied under Johann Ludwig Aberli[2] in
Berne in his
home country before travelling in France until 1768 when he moved
to England. Critics of his time remarked that Grimm was a "man of
genious".[3] He
was adopted as a travelling companion of the Rev. Sir Richard Kaye who became Rector of Kirkby in Ashfield in 1765 - his role was
to record "anything curious".[4]. Kaye
held the largely ceremonial role as Prebend of Durham
Cathedral in the 1770s which was said to be "a period of
complacent materialism".[5]
Early
years
Grimm spent much of his early life producing etchings, pen and
ink and watercolours in England, but before he arrived he had already
supplied the illustrations for Friedrich von Hagedorn's
Poetische Werke which was published between 1769 and 1772[2]. In
1775 he was known to be in Derbyshire and Staffordshire. By 1778 he was working in
London.[3]
Role
as recording historian
Country Fair by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm
Grimm achieved a niche of recording events of history that might
otherwise have gone unreported in the detail he preserved them. For
example, the British Library credits him with producing the only
surviving scene of the coronation of Edward VI.[6] Another
example of a unique artistic recording of a perished Gloucestershire
architectural monument is the 1790 ink wash
drawing Grimm produced at the Calcot Manor chape], which is long since
ruined and a he recorded Samuel Pegge's church which was later
rebuilt after a fire.
The British
Library possesses 2,662 drawings in twelve volumes by this
artist, covering many of the counties of England[7] and a
further 886 watercolours, in seven volumes, dedicated to the county
of Sussex.[8]
Samuel died in Tavistock Street in London and left his money to a
niece in Switzerland. He was buried at St Paul's church in Covent Garden in a
service taken by his erstwhile benefactor, the Dean of Lincoln, the
Rev. Sir Richard Kaye.[1]
Patronage
Grimm's leading patron was Sir Richard Kaye, but this was not
his only income. He also undertook work for the naturalist Gilbert White[8] and
William Burrell. William Burrell gave Grimm's Sussex collection in
1796 whilst Sir Richard bequeathed his collection of Grimm's art to
the British Museum in 1810. Luckily they valued his work more than
Samuel who had left instructions for his papers to be destroyed
after his death.[8]
References
- ^ a
b
c
The Gentleman's Magazine, 1794, p399
- ^ a
b
Samuel Grimm at
Answers.com accessed 21 September 2007
- ^ a
b
[Henry Watson Kent, Bibliographical Notes on One Hundred Books
Famous in English Literature, 227 pages, The Grolier Club,
Original from Harvard University (1903)
- ^
British Library collection of
Grimm's sketchs accessed 21 September 2007
- ^
notes on Grimm sketch of
Durham cathedral accessed 21 September 2003
- ^
Peter Clark, D. M. Palliser, Martin Daunton, The Cambridge
Urban History of Britain, (2000) Cambridge University Press,
ISBN 0521431417
- ^
Wakefield.gov.uk art
gallery accessed 21 September 2007
- ^ a
b
c
‘Everything Curious’:Samuel
Hieronymus Grimm and Sir Richard Kaye by Brett Dolman. Accessed
September 2007
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