Hector Caffieri | Victorian watercolour painter

Hector Caffieri (1847-1932) was a British watercolourist painter, born in Cheltenham Gloucestershire in England, son of French parents who had settled temporarily in England.

He studied at the Académie Julian with academic painter Léon Bonnat (1833-1922) and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre (1836-1911), both great exponents of genre painting and both traditional academicians.

Caffieri worked and lived in London in 1880.

Caffieri travelled regularly across the Channel to the French coastal town of Boulogne-sur-Mer where he made studies of the fisherfolk, peasants and children, along with watercolours of quaysides and coastal scenes, all of which constituted his principal subject matter.

He settled there permanently in 1897 and became an active member of the Société des Beaux-Arts et des Arts Décoratifs du Boulonnais until 1925, the last time he participated in its annual exhibitions.

He also maintained regular contact with the London art world where his work was appreciated and found a ready market.

An exhibition of his watercolours, Cliff, coast and quay, was held at the Continental Gallery, London in 1902.

The type of subject matter in which Caffieri chose to specialise was undoubtedly given currency by the popularity of the Newlyn School – a group of painters who established an artists’ colony in the 1880s at the fishing village of Newlyn in Cornwall where they could depict, in a manner influenced by French realism, the lives of ordinary people.

He was a masterful watercolourist, painting fishing scenes, English and French ports, flowers, landscapes and on some occassions, sporting subjects.

Caffieri was a member of the New Watercolour Society which later became the Royal.

He died in January of 1932.

Hector Caffieri (1847-1932) è stato un acquarellista raffinato Britannico, nato a Cheltenham Gloucestershire in Inghilterra, da genitori francesi che si erano stabiliti temporaneamente in Inghilterra.

Parte di una generazione di giovani artisti britannici che viaggiarono in Europa negli anni '70 e '80 dell'Ottocento per completare la loro formazione artistica, anche Caffieri si diresse a Parigi.

A Parigi studiò all'Académie Julian con Léon Bonnat (1833-1922) e Jules-Joseph Lefebvre (1836-1911), entrambi grandi esponenti della pittura di genere ed entrambi accademici tradizionali.

Caffieri viaggiava regolarmente attraverso la Manica fino alla città costiera francese di Boulogne-sur-Mer, dove fece studi sui pescatori, sui contadini e sui bambini, insieme ad acquerelli di banchine e scene costiere, che costituivano tutti il suo soggetto principale.

Il tipo di argomento in cui Caffieri scelse di specializzarsi fu senza dubbio valorizzato dalla popolarità della Newlyn School, un gruppo di pittori che negli anni Ottanta dell'Ottocento fondarono una colonia di artisti nel villaggio di pescatori di Newlyn in Cornovaglia, dove potevano rappresentare, influenzati dal realismo francese, la vita della gente comune.

Caffieri fu membro della New Watercolor Society che in seguito divenne la Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours.

Hector Caffieri morì nel gennaio del 1932.