Aberdeen Evening Express, Thursday, 03 Apr 1879, page 4
DEATH OF A YORKSHIRE ARTIST
Mr. Ralph Stubbs, well known throughout the whole of Yorkshire as an artist, expired at Lewisham, near Whitby, on Sunday morning.
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Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough, Wednesday, 02 Apr 1879, page 2
DEATH OF A WHITBY ARTIST
On Sunday morning, as the "ding dongs" of the village church bells were sounding, and when the honest and quiet folk of the country were wending their way to offer their prayers and thanksgiving to the Creator of all good, there departed from this world to the Haven of Rest the pisit of a man whose name has been a household word in almost every home of refinement and taste in Yorkshire. We refer to the demise of Ralph Stubbs, the artist.
In the quiet and somewhat remote village of Lewisham, Mr Stubbs spent his last days, apart from the vast number of friends and admirers which he possessed. Few in the locality in which he died knew his singular ability as an artist, though many would no doubt have preivously learnt how to appreciate him as a jovial fellow, full of anecdote, mischief, and fun. Wherever he went he was the life and soul of the company, accommodating to all, and generaous to a fault. He was born at Burlington Quay some fifty years ago, and he was reared among those very scenes which he knew so well how to depict on canvas. The wild scenery of the Yorkshire coast had charms for him, and while a boy of tender years he rambled along the shores sketching the rugged headlands, with the ever-restless seas dashing beneath.
He had no schooling--his parents were too poor or too careless to train the youth; and of book learning, as understood now-a-days, he had none. Nature, perhaps the best teacher of all, embraced him as a favourite, and certainly no child of Nature was ever more diligent in learning. He passionately loved to roam about the wilds of the coast, and he plied his pencil, and latterly his brush, with a devotedness and an earnestness which could not fail to be recognised. He had no patron; no one ever gave him a lesson in drawing; no one ever taught him how to blend the colours; no one ever suggested to him the value of a due regard for perspective. All this was born in him. Correctness of drawing, the judicious blending of colours, and the proper appreciation of perspective came intuitively to him. He was pre-eminently self-taught. He was passionately fond of art, and he worked, and worked nobly, for it. The difficulties he had to encounter in early life were enough to discourage many an enthusiast, but difficulties to him, while in his youth and in the bloom of manhood, were but incentives to him. He was conscious that his delineations of the scenery amidst which he lived were in the man correct, and he cared not for the carping criticisms of bejewelled drawing-room coinnoisseurs who could not see merit in any pictures unless there occurred in it "angles" or scantily-dressed nymphs.
In his earlier life he worked hard; he knew that while he possessed the talent he could make no mark in the world of art unless he worked, and he toiled with a will and with an enthusiasm which, even in a less naturally gifted man, must in the end have commanded success. His earlier works fell into the hands of the picture dealers, and they were afterwards bought by other better skilled as judges of art work, and were thus spread over various parts of the country. As time went on, and as his facilities for observing interesting objects became more numerous, the scope and variety of his work became more obvious and, needless to say, more matured. Commissions came in thick and fast. The poor struggling artist had achieved a name. The neglected gem, so long concealed in common clay, so long hid in obscurity, became the talk of the world of art. His admirers were numerous and influential. He was petted on all sides, and, like many more men with stronger mental calibre than he ever possessed, he fell a victim to the flatterer's smooth tongue. He was introduced to good society, but in some cases was injudiciously treated, and, unfortunately for him, he contracted habits which he could never afterwards entirely shake off. He struggled hard to beat his enemy; but it was to the interest of some to prevent him becoming master of himself, and when once in the hands of knaves it was more than he could do, looking at the matter in the light he did, to recover himself. He had other troubles it would be unwise to mention here, which sometimes drove him into courses not suggested by prudence. The mistakes and follies of his youth told upon him as he grew older, but it cannot be said that his love of his art was any the less sincere and enthusiastic, or that his hand ever lost its cunning.
When he became known to the world as a genuine and original artist he left the place of his birth and located himself at Scarborough. He did not remain there very long, but removed to York, then to Filey, and thence to Whitby. At the latter place he painted some of his best pictures. At Whitby, as is well known, there is all the scenery, both marine and pastoral, which delight the eye of a true artist and a sincere lover of nature. The coast abounds with that grand, romantic scenery, that sombre and majestic beauty which no human hand can create; while, inland, there are the expansive moors with their old thatched homesteads, and away down in the valley the pure pastoral beauties of the English home life -- each valley alive with human industry, each valley with its glistening streams overhung with luxuriant foliage, and each stream with its rustic bridge. These were the scenes in which the ardent student of nature loved to linger; these were the scenes he knew how to paint so well. Perhaps it may be said that Mr Stubbs did not always paint photographically; -- defacto, he did not; but his pictures were not the less works of art from that circumstance. He was by no means a mechanical painter -- he had more poetry in him than that, and here lies, to a considerable extent, the success of some of his finest productions.
The pictures which he sent to the Royal Academy were hung in splendid situations, and the criticism which they called forth hat the time of their appearance were highly appreciative. But his pictures could scarcely be fairly appreciated then, nor can they be now. .They are altogether different in style to those of other artists. They are strikingly original, and, though some of them may appear to be crude in conception and rather careless in drawing, there is on every one of them the stamp of genius. It would take too much space to enumerate even those of his pictures that are well known. They are scattered all over Yorkshire, and grace some of the finest collections in the best known galleries. There are many in the hands of the picture dealers, and their value has been for years on the increase, and as time goes on they will become even more valuable.
In the quiet churchyard are now laid the mortal remains of Ralph Stubbs. With all his skill as an artist, it is feared that he has died in poverty. He never thought of the proverbial rainy day. He was a generous man, with a kind and good heart. All who knew him not only admired, but loved him. He is now at rest, after a strangely restless life, and the deft little hands will paint no more to charm the lovers of the beautiful.
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Hull Packet, Friday, 04 Apr 1879, page 7
DEATH OF MR. STUBBS, THE ARTIST
The death of Mr. Ralph Stubbs, which melancholy event occurred at Lewisham, near Whitby, on Monday morning, is announced. Deceased was well known throughout Yorkshire as a high-class marine and landscape painter, and had during his life portrayed on canvas much of the familiar and picturesque scenery to be met with on this part of the Yorkshire coast. Particularly does this apply to the neighbourhood of Whitby, which abounds in great natural beauties, and which affords material for the display of high artistic talent. Mr. Stubbs was an unassuming man, who personally did not seek prominence, and a curious illustration of tihs peculiarity is afforded by the fact that he had not up to the year 1872 sent a picture to the Royal Academy. In the year named, Mr. R. Collinson, of Scarborough, who owns a large collection of Stubbs' choicest works, determined to send one of his pictures to the Academy, where it was duly admitted. In the following year, 1873, Stubbs painted a large and magnificent picture for Mr. Collinson of "The Beggar's Bridge", being a representation of a romantic bit of scenery at Egton, near Whitby, which was exhibited in the Royal Academy in that year, and was universally admired.
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Leeds Mercury, Thursday, 05 Jun 1879, page 2
This Day, at two o'clock,
The Collection of PICTURES by Ralph Stubbs, the contents of his Studio, and about 60 Pictures from another source, will be sold by Auction, in our Rooms, East-parade, Leeds. See catalogues. Hepper and Sons, Auctioneers, East-parade, Leeds.
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