Thomas Davies, British Soldier, Naturalist, and Watercolour Artist

Creating watercolour paintings to record the countryside for the British army, Thomas Davies developed a talent that made him one of Canada’s best artists.

Paints and brushes, inks and pens, topographical map-making in the 18th century was a hands-on activity. Using the drawings for military strategies, accurate details were essential, the placement of trees, landmarks and waterways of utmost importance. Young soldier Thomas Davies, born 1737 in Shooter’s Hill, England, joined the British army as a Royal Military Academy cadet at about age 18 in 1755. He acquired the critical skills of munitions for duty with the Royal Artillery and developed the fine touch of watercolour painting for topographical records.

‘A view near point Levy opposite Quebec with an Indian encampment,’ Thomas Davies, 1788. National Gallery of Canada

Topographical Artist and Artillery Officer

Learning his watercolour craft under artist Gamaliel Massiot at the Royal Academy, Davies launched into his military career with duty in the wilds of North America. Shipped overseas to Halifax in 1857, Second Lieutenant Davies took part in the battle of Fort Louisbourg on Ile Royal (Cape Breton Island). While on the east coast, he made a watercolour drawing of Halifax, the piece dated as one of his earliest artworks. “It exhibits the dryness of line and lack of colour of the military artist, ” said R.H. Hubbard in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, “but it combines diagrammatic accuracy with a picturesqueness of conception that would become characteristic of Davies.”

In tours of duty during the Seven Years’ War under the leadership of officer Sir Jeffrey Amherst in 1759 and 1760, Davies was able to paint Lake Champlain, the fort at Crown Point, and the vicinity of Montreal. (At Montreal, Davies had the honour of being the first to raise the British flag over the town.) Putting brush to paper to capture the military action, Davies painted the British troops attacking a ship belonging to the French, a scene that included one of the row-galleys that the artist himself guided into battle.

Surveying the St. Lawrence River and the southern shores of Lake Ontario, the British army used Davies’ artistic talents to produce maps of the regions. The survey took three years, reaching as far as Niagara Falls, and Davies made good use of his available artistic time. In the mid-1760s while in England, Davies published a set of six etchings of beautiful waterfalls in eastern Canada and the United States. The book published in 1768 was titled “Scenographia Americana.”

Davies was posted back and forth between North America and England four times during his military career. “From 1776 to 1779 Davies served in New York, commanding Fort Washington on Manhattan Island during the American Revolution,” according to Rosemary E. Tovell in The Canadian Encyclopedia. A skilled artillery officer, he rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel by 1783, and was in command of the Royal Artillery in Gibraltar that year, and for the four years spent at Quebec City from 1786 to 1790.

Linnean Society and Royal Society

Combined with his military art duties, Davies also developed an interest in ornithology – the study of birds – and in the plants and wildlife he drew in Europe and North America. Those growing interests led him to become a member of two prestigious British societies, the Royal Society in 1781 and the Linnean Society of London in about 1787. His skill developing beyond those of an ordinary army topographical artist, Davies’ eye for composition, colour and style turned his brush strokes from adequate into excellent. Davies, said Hubbard, “now arrived at a style which, though still detailed, was monumental in composition, as well as delicate in its lines, simple and stylized in its rendering of forms, and rich in colour.” One of his last watercolours, noted as one of his finest works, was a vista of Montreal in 1812.

Captivating watercolour painting, ‘Montreal, 1812’ by Thomas Davies. Wikimedia Commons

The artist not only created eye-catching, light-filled paintings and etchings of colonial life, Thomas Davies wrote a number of articles on birds and zoology that were published in Europe.

Davies’ Compelling Art in National Gallery

At about age 75, artillery officer and artist Thomas Davies died on March 16, 1812 in Blackheath–London–England.  Davies married Mary and the couple had two children. The fine art of Davies did not make him a household name to other artists or collectors in his lifetime, since his works were bought and held privately. In the mid-1950s, the National Gallery of Canada purchased several pieces for the Gallery collection. “Today,” said Tovell, “Thomas Davies is considered one of the most talented and original artists to have worked in Canada.”

Sources:

• Hubbard, R. H., “Davies, Thomas,” The Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online Accessed September 23, 2011
• Tovell, Rosemary E., “Thomas Davies,” The Canadian Encyclopedia Accessed September 23, 2011

This article first appeared on Suite101.com in September 2011. (C) Susanna McLeod