Thomas Lound

Parish records show that Thomas Lound was born on 13 July 1801, the son of Thomas and Mary Lound, and was christened by his parents in Beeston St Andrew parish church on 9 August 1801.[1]

He married Harriot Wetherill in 1821 and there were several children. An amateur artist, he was involved with his family's brewing business in Norwich, Charles Tompson & Sons, which was the source of his wealth.[2][3] He was later employed as an agent for the insurance company County Fire and Provident Life Office. He lived in comfort, residing throughout his adult life on King Street, in the centre of Norwich.[4] He used his yacht Kathleen, which was adorned with a number of oil paintings, as a venue for entertaining his friends.[4]

According to the author William Dickes, Lound was a pupil of the artist John Sell Cotman.[5] He exhibited in London from 1845 to 1859, and with the Norwich Society of Artists from 1820 to 1833, first exhibiting his painting St Benet's Abbey.[3]

A popular painter amongst his peers,[2] he was a great friend of the amateur artist Robert Leman.[3] John Middleton was in turn devoted to Lound.[6] An artist with a prolific output,[7] he specialised in producing views of his native county of Norfolk,[2] but surviving sketchbooks show that he went to Wales and Yorkshire on sketching tours in 1845, 1853 and 1854.[8] He was a competent copyist, reproducing works such as Cotman's St. Martin's Gate, Norwich and his Yarmouth Jetty, as well as paintings by John Crome and Robert Dixon.[9][3] His artistic output was influenced by Edward Thomas Daniell's drypoint technique, whose etchings have a dark, rich quality.[10] His works have at times been confused with those of John Sell Cotman, John Crome and John Thirtle.[3] The local Norwich Mercury praised his powers as an amateur artist.[7]

He became a member of the Norwich Society of Artists at the age of 18.[4] He exhibited in Norwich and London between 1842 and 1862, showing pictures at both the British Institution and the Royal Academy of Arts.[3] Writing in the 1980s, the art historian Andrew Moore has praised his View of Norwich (Mill in Foreground) as "the most perfect example of Lound's original compositions".[11]

Lound helped to form the Norfolk and Norwich Art Union, and was a while its President.[3] He was also a keen photographer who was wealthy enough to possess his own photographic equipment,[12] and was a committee member of the Norwich Photographic Society.[13][14] Little of his work as a photographer appears to have survived.[2]

He was a great admirer of the Norwich artist John Thirtle, and used his wealth to acquire seventy-five of Thirtle's paintings.[4]

Lound, who suffered from ill health all his life, died suddenly of apoplexy on 18 January 1861, whilst at his Norwich house in King Street.[15] His wife Harriot had died two years' previously, in 1859, and his son Henry Edwin Lound also predeceased him, dying in 1860.[7] His large collection was sold in March 1861, and included 39 sketches, 215 watercolours, 46 oil paintings, and 11 etchings.[3][16]

• 
  A View near Norwich (c.1850), Yale Center for British Art
• 
  Devil's Tower Looking towards Carrow Bridge from Norwich (c.1832, after John Thirtle), Yale Center for British Art
• 
  St Benet's Abbey, Norfolk (undated), Norfolk Museums Collections
• 
  View of Norwich (undated), Norfolk Museums Collections
• 
  Yarmouth Beach and Jetty, after John Crome (undated), Norfolk Museums Collections

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Lound, Thomas". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.

• Dickes, William Frederick (1905). The Norwich school of painting: being a full account of the Norwich exhibitions, the lives of the painters, the lists of their respecitve exhibits and descriptions of the pictures. Norwich: Jarrold & Sons Ltd. OCLC 192940599.
• Moore, Andrew (1985). The Norwich School of Artists. London: HMSO. ISBN 0-11-701587-3.
• Taylor, Roger; Schaaf, John (2007). Impressed by Light: British Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840-1860. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 9781588392251.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Thomas Lound.

Wikisource has the text of the 1885–1900 Dictionary of National Biography's article about Thomas Lound.

• 280 works by (or related to) Thomas Lound in the Norfolk Museums Collections
• Thomas Lound - Suffolk Artists website
• Thomas Lound in Early Norfolk Photographs 1840-1860 by Norwich Heritage Projects
• Works by Thomas Lound at ArtUK
• History of Tompson's Brewery
• 4 works by Lound held at National Trust properties in the UK