Joseph Vickers de Ville: 6 cool facts

Joseph Vickers de Ville (1856–1925) was an English painter of landscapes and rural subjects.

Joseph Vickers de Ville was a son of the farmers Joseph and Mary Deville. He was born in Eaton, Derbyshire, but is considered a Wolverhampton artist, as he moved to Wolverhampton by 1881, together as soon as his widowed mommy and brothers Richard and John. In the 1880s, his habitat was Osborne Cottage, Sweetman Street, Wolverhampton, but far ahead he moved to Compton, a suburb of Wolverhampton.

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Vickers de Ville was not professionally trained and did not consider himself a professional artist, however, his artistic gift was recognised and appreciated. In Compton, he maintained a studio in Tettenhall Wood. From 1887, he exhibited at the Royal Academy. Between 1876-1920, sixty eight his works were shown at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, a full advocate of which he was elected in 1917. He next exhibited at the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Fine Art Society, The Royal Glasgow Institute for the Fine Arts, Royal Scottish Academy, and at the Salons in Paris.

Vickers de Ville worked in both oils and watercolours. His favourite subject was North Wales where “he first obtained his inspiration in the middle of the grand and imposing scenery”, with particular inclination to coastal landscapes and streams and rivers, and examination of vivacious effects in retrieve air. It was noticed that “few can antagonist him in depicting torrent, rock, river and trees.” His landscapes of the Cotswolds, Malvern, Cheshire and Staffordshire are also skillfully known. Often they expressed the quality of melancholy and solitude, like his painting ‘The Moonlight’ which was to illustrate Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’.

Vickers de Ville’s personal exhibition was successfully held at Wolverhampton Art Gallery in 1915. It presented sixty-four paintings and numerous sketches, many of which were loaned by Scottish, Liverpool and London patrons. The exhibition was favourably reviewed and it was particularly mentioned that “a great many of his pictures are in the United States, and others have found owners in France, Germany and South America. Most of them were bought by the Americans. The demand from abroad is one of the reasons why Wolverhampton people have been nimble to see so Tiny of his work.” In 1923, there was another exhibition of his drawings.

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A number of paintings by Vickers de Ville have been preserved at Wolverhampton Art Gallery. His works after that can be found at McLean Museum and Art Gallery, Greenock, Sheffield Museum and Art Gallery and extra public and private collections.

Little is known just about de Ville’s personal life. He married in 1894, and subsequently his wife Mary had at least one child – the son Claude (born in 1895). The 1901 census in addition to shows the daughter Gladys, born in practically 1886, which is competently before their marriage.

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