Tag: William Matthison

William Matthison was a Victorian watercolourist, many of whose pictures were made into chocolate-box-style postcards. Born in 1853 in Harborne (a parish that was transferred from Staffordshire to Warwickshire in 1891 and is now part of Birmingham) he attended King Edward’s School in Birmingham. At the age of 15 he took evening classes in advanced drawing at Birmingham’s Central School of Art and then became a pupil of the Birmingham artist Edward Watson.
In 1875 Matthison decided to become a professional artist. He spent the summer of 1877 sketching in south Warwickshire and, in 1883 he moved to Oxfordshire where he was forced to supplement his income from painting by taking private pupils, but spent his summer holidays painting in other parts of the country, particularly Whitby.
Matthison was having to travel to Oxford three or four times a week to give lessons, and so in 1902 he and his wife moved to Park Town in Oxford. The picture postcard industry was just beginning, and Matthison was commissioned by Robert Peel to paint over 70 views of the University and City of Oxford. The cards were sold at seven for a shilling. He was also commissioned to paint scenes of the Lake District, Whitby, and Looe, and painted scenes of London and Cambridge for postcards produced by Raphael Tuck & Sons.
By 1910 the postcard boom was coming to an end and Robert Peel gave up postcard publishing. The plates of Matthison’s Oxford postcards were sold to Alden & Co., who continued to sell them and also published a book entitled Fifty Watercolour Drawings of Oxford, for the most part comprising his pictures.
Matthison showed extensively at some of the country’s most prestigious galleries and institutions, including 25 works at the Royal Society of British Artists, 2 at the Royal Academy, 4 at the Manchester City Gallery, 21 at the Fine Arts Society and others at Birmingham, Glasgow and Liverpool.