Page 8 - Hindsight Issue 26 April 2020

KetteRIng
KETTERING’S ARTISTIC HERITAGE 1883–1913
Ian Luck
Ian Luck is Chairman of the Kettering & District Art Society (KDAS) and an acknowledged authority on Kettering artists. He is an artist himself and has authored a chapter in the ‘Catalogue of the Permanent Collection of the Kettering Art Gallery’ on the history of KDAS. More recently he has written ‘Alfred East – the Incidental Etcher’, the definitive book on East’s etchings.
It was with great public interest that in Kettering, during the latter part of Queen Victoria’s reign, the careers of local-born artists J t nettleship, Alfred east and thomas Cooper gotch were avidly followed by local people. their new works were reported both in the local and national press. Kettering was no longer an ‘artistic desert’, as east had suggested in earlier years. east, nettleship and gotch were now established as painters of renown and distinction, leading a national art publication to remark that ‘the air of Kettering breeds artists’.
Kettering born John Trivett Nettleship (1841–1902) was slightly older than east and had been exhibiting in London at the Royal Academy for several years. He had studied painting at Heatherley’s and then the slade school. He was known for his animal paintings, particularly savage wild ones. His eldest daughter Ida was Augustus John’s first wife.
‘Touch Me If You Dare’ by J T Nettleship
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