Albert Chevallier Tayler

ALBERT CHEVALLIER TAYLER, RA Leytonstone 1862 - 1926 London Alexander Chevalier Tayler was born at Leytonstone in Essex, the son of a solicitor. He won a scholarship to the Slade School of Art in 1879, and later studied in Paris where he attended the ateliers of Jean-Paul Laurens and Carolus-Duran. In 1884 Tayler arrived in Newlyn, where he was to stay intermittently until 1895. There he stayed at Bellevue where Alexander Stanhope Forbes and Blandford Fletcher were also living. He also travelled abroad to paint, including a visit to Venice sponsored by Arthur Tooth in 1887, and a trip to Boulogne in 1890, which resulted in his picture La Vie Boulonnaise being exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1891. Tayler was greatly affected by his religious convictions and converted to Roman Catholicism circa 1887. There followed a phase of specifically Roman Catholic subjects, such as The Last Blessing, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1890. According to Norman Garstin, he moved to London circa 1895, 'having folded up his sketching umbrella and silently stolen up to Kensington'. By this date he had renounced his interest in plein-air naturalism, and up until his death he concentrated mainly on scenes of fashionable society life, dinner parties and drawing-rooms. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1904 and became a full member in 1910. He won a medal at the Paris Salon in 1891, and was Honorary Secretary of the Royal British Colonial Society of Artists.