William Joseph Mallory was one of the lesser known members of the East Kent School of Artists<\/p>\n
He is mainly associated with seascapes painted in and around his home town of Deal but he also completed a large number of religious works and illustrated a number of books of poetry by his close friend and travelling companion Thomas Punney<\/p>\n
Both Mallory and Punney visited the Holy Land on a number of occasions and the latter in his later years lived in the Pas-de-Calais which occasioned frequent visits from Mallory from 1860 onwards<\/p>\n
A number of the Mallory\u2019s most famous works were painted in the Outreau area and were as prized as much as his Deal and Walmer paintings at the time of completion<\/p>\n
Although celebrated during his long life after his death in 1879 his reputation waned and today Mallory is chiefly remembered for the oddity of his signature or to be more specific that of his daughter Chistobel<\/p>\n
Cristobel Mallory was born in 1850 and from a very young age was remembered as always being in her father\u2019s studio which faced the sea front at Deal<\/p>\n
It is said that in the autumn of 1853 that the young Cristobel touched one of her father\u2019s drying oil paintings with her left thumb and this was not noticed by the artist until the work was completely dry<\/p>\n
But far from being angry at his daughter for touching his work Mallory requested that she apply her left thumb print to all his paintings as a form of signature<\/p>\n
From that day onwards Mallory never again signed a painting<\/p>\n
When painting abroad he would take his daughter with him so that she could apply her strange signature as soon as the work was nearing completion<\/p>\n
Cristobel is recorded as visiting the Holy Land on no less than five occasions between 1853 and 1865 and she often served as a model for some of the lesser biblical characters represented<\/p>\n
In 1870 Mallory lost both his wife Jane and his closest friend Punney within months of each other<\/p>\n
This caused a shift in his work and a number of his seascapes from this period were darker and quite often showed violent storms and shipwreck<\/p>\n
Due to his failing health Mallory did not travel abroad after 1875 but frequently painted the Holy Land from memory and was often to be found on clear days painting the nearby coast of France from the Deal aspect<\/p>\n
Cristobel, although a talented artist and a minor poet of some repute never married and lived with Mallory in the sea front house at Deal<\/p>\n
Funded by her father she ran two very successful lace-making businesses in both Deal and Walmer<\/p>\n
On the 22nd<\/sup> of July 1879 Mallory was found dead at his easel on the beach between Deal and Walmer whilst adding the finishing touches to his final painting Storm Clouds over the Goodwin Sands<\/i><\/p>\n His daughter who was visiting a cousin in Kettering at the time did not apply her famous signature to this work and Storm Clouds over the Goodwin Sands<\/i> remains the only work by Mallory from 1853 onwards that did not bear his daughters thumbprint<\/p>\n It was thought lost after the bombing of Deal during World War Two but came up for auction in 1960 and is currently owned by the Museum of Kent<\/p>\n On hearing of her father\u2019s death Cristobel wrote in her diary her most remembered line of poetry which is often quoted in anthologies and in books about Deal and the surrounding area<\/p>\n Oh death bringing breeze <\/i><\/p>\n Why did you not cancel <\/i><\/p>\n Your appointment with my dear father<\/i><\/p>\n For just a week and a day?<\/i><\/p>\n Cristobel inherited the whole of her father\u2019s substantial estate and for the next seventy three years lived in her childhood home on the sea front at Deal where she became known in her later years as La Dentelliere de Kent <\/i><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" William Joseph Mallory was one of the lesser known members of the East Kent School of Artists He is mainly associated with seascapes painted in and around his home town of Deal but he also completed a large number of religious works and illustrated a number of books of poetry by his close friend and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}