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James Sant

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James Sant
RA CVO
Self-portrait, 1884
Aberdeen Archives, Art Gallery & Museums
Born
James Sant

(1820-04-23)23 April 1820
London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Died12 Jul 1916 (aged 96) (1820-04-24)
London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
NationalityBritish
Alma materRoyal Academy Schools
OccupationCourt & Society Painter
Known forRoyal portraitist
Notable workQueen Victoria
The Royal Family
Capt. Colin Mackenzie, Madras Army
Miss Martineau's Garden
MovementHistory painting
Symbolism
Romanticism
Academic Art
English School
SpouseElizabeth (Eliza) Thomson
Children6
Relatives
AwardsRoyal Victorian Order
Royal Academician
Accademia Raffaello, Italy
Paris Exposition Universelle (1889)
PatronQueen Victoria

James Sant RA CVO (1820–1916) was one of the most eminent English painters of the Victorian era, specialising in portraiture and known particularly for images of aristocratic women and children,[1] with a strong allegorical approach to childhood symbolism.[2] He was an elected member of the Royal Academy[3] and appointed Principal Court Painter in Ordinary to Queen Victoria and the Royal Family.[4]

Biography

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Sant was born in Croydon, Surrey, England, on 23 April 1820. He was taught first by the watercolourist John Varley, then by Sir A. Callcott RA,[5] then from the age of twenty was taught by the Royal Academy Schools.

He lived to the age of 96 and exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery as well as producing nearly three hundred canvases for exhibition at the Academy. The first of these, a portrait of his father, William Sant,[6] was exhibited in 1840;[7] the last was exhibited in 1915.

In 1851 he married Elizabeth (Eliza) Thomson, daughter of Dr R.M.M. Thomson, a surgeon and member of the Agri Horticultural Society of India,[8] and sister of Gen. Sir Mowbray Thomson.

His 1853 picture of The Infant Samuel was his first popular success, and engravings of this by Samuel Cousins and of Little Red Riding Hood and The Soul's Awakening sold in great numbers.

In 1861, twenty-two portraits of friends and relatives of Frances, Lady Waldegrave, known as the Strawberry Hill Collection, were exhibited by Ernest Gambart at his French Gallery in Pall Mall and at the Paris Salon. This enhanced his reputation, and he was elected ARA and later RA; in 1871 he was appointed Principal Painter in Ordinary (official portraitist) to Queen Victoria, having become known for his portraits of the royal children and in particular his 1870 Portrait of Prince Leopold and Princess Beatrice.[9] He was the last artist to hold the title.

Sant is best known for his portraits, particularly of aristocratic women and of children; he was "the emperor of children", in the words of the Athenaeum. Nevertheless, many of his pictures were landscapes and particularly gardens; he also painted seascapes, landscapes with animals, and other subjects, including The Wish Tower,[10] a Martello Tower at Eastbourne. His later pictures are freer in style; some have been favourably compared with the work of the French Impressionists[11] and some have a visionary or mannerist quality; his landscapes could include figures with blank or distorted features or simple silhouettes, such as The nun in Convent Walls (1910).[12] He continued painting into old age; All My Fancy! (1910), an Italian landscape with villa and hills, he painted in bed from memory.[13]

He became a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO) in 1914 and resigned from the RA in the same year to "make room for younger men". He died in Lancaster Gate, London, on 12 July 1916. His work can be found at the National Gallery, Tate Britain and the National Portrait Gallery in London.

At auction, Sant's work can achieve hundreds of pounds sterling or hundreds of thousands of pounds depending on size, quality and subject matter.[14] Allegorical subjects remain popular; Courage, Anxiety and Despair: Watching the Battle (circa 1850) achieved £61,250 in 2012[15] and Astronomy almost twice this in 2008.[14]

His The Schoolmaster's Daughter (1870) and Miss Martineau's Garden (1873) are illustrated in Victorian Painters by Jeremy Maas;[16] The Seventh Earl of Cardigan Relating the Story of the Cavalry Charge of Balaclava... (1854) is illustrated in the same volume and in Victorian Painters by Christopher Wood.[17] Many of his works were reproduced as prints during his lifetime; his Courage has since been reproduced as a greetings card and his Hilda Pennington-Mellor, aged three (1880), as a postcard.[18]

Sant's work can also be seen at the Victoria Memorial in Kolkata, India, the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia and the Yale Center for British Art.

Family

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Sant's brother, George Sant RBA (Royal Society of British Artists) (1821–1877), was a landscape painter, and the two brothers occasionally collaborated on paintings. Both James and George Sant were among the notable artist acquaintances of Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll); James Sant, his daughter Sarah Fanny[19] and son Jemmy were the subjects of photographic studies by Dodgson.[20][21]

His sister, Sarah Sherwood Clarke (1825–1906), was also an accomplished artist but all that is presently known of her work is a collection of 48 different views of Scotland from 1854;[22] these were exhibited for the first time at the Watercolours & Works on Paper Fair in London in February 2010.[23] She married Frederick Clarke, Superintendent and later Secretary of the London and South Western Railway.

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Legacy and offices

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Court offices
Preceded by Principal Painter in Ordinary to the Queen
1871–1901 		Succeeded by
—

Sources

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References

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  1. ^ Jeremy Maas (1988). Victorian Painters. Barrie & Jenkins. p. 215. ISBN 0-7126-2051-6.
  2. ^ "James Sant, C.V.O., R.A. (1820–1916)". Retrieved 22 April 2017.
  3. ^ "James Sant (1820–1916), Painter". Retrieved 22 April 2017.
  4. ^ "Sant, James". Who's Who. A & C Black. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  5. ^ "The Library of Nineteenth Century Photography". Retrieved 24 September 2015.
  6. ^ "Sant, James (1820–1916), portrait and genre painter". Archived from the original on 22 December 2015. Retrieved 22 December 2015.
  7. ^ "Classical Portrait of a Man". Archived from the original on 23 December 2015. Retrieved 22 December 2015.
  8. ^ "James Sant; Eliza Sant (née Thomson)". Retrieved 22 April 2017.
  9. ^ Gere, C. (2010). Artistic Circles: Design & Decoration in the Aesthetic Movement. Harry N. Abrams. p. 42. ISBN 978-1-85177-602-3. Retrieved 1 May 2019. James Sant, who in 1871 succeeded Sir George Hayter as Queen Victoria's Principal Painter-in-Ordinary, had a successful career as a portrait painter.
  10. ^ "The Tower Gate". artnet. Retrieved 4 September 2025.
  11. ^ Sir Charles Holmes. The National Gallery: France and England. G Bell & Sons Ltd. p. 240.
  12. ^ "Convent Walls". 28 September 2015. Retrieved 12 May 2017.
  13. ^ "All My Fancy". 28 September 2015. Retrieved 22 April 2017.
  14. ^ a b "Art auction result for James Sant". Retrieved 22 January 2018.
  15. ^ "Courage, Anxiety and Despair: Watching the Battle". Retrieved 22 January 2018.
  16. ^ Jeremy Maas (1988). Victorian Painters. Barrie & Jenkins. ISBN 0-7126-2051-6.
  17. ^ Christopher Wood (1999). Victorian Painters. Antiques Collectors' Club. ISBN 1-85149-172-4.
  18. ^ "British Museum; James Sant (1820–1916), Painter". Retrieved 13 September 2025.
  19. ^ "James Sant (1820–1916), Painter". Retrieved 22 April 2017.
  20. ^ "Lewis Carroll". Retrieved 24 September 2015.
  21. ^ "James Sant". Retrieved 22 December 2015.
  22. ^ "Sarah Sherwood Clarke nee Sant". 12 September 2015. Retrieved 22 April 2017.
  23. ^ "Watercolours + Works on Paper". Lilium's Compendium. Retrieved 4 September 2025.
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Media related to James Sant at Wikimedia Commons

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