JAMES WILLIAM BOOTH RCA 1867 – 1953
Booth was born in Middleton near Manchester where he studied at the School of Art under Elias Bancroft. He was the son of a wealthy businessman who was involved in the spinning and dyeing trades. A regular exhibitor at the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts from 1895 he met Fred Jackson through that institution and joined him and Bancroft in painting in the Staithes area. He lodged at Brown’s Terrace in Hinderwell and shared a studio with Laura and Harold Knight in Staithes. He was elected a member of both the Manchester and the Cambrian Academies and was offered the Presidency of the latter, which he turned down on account of his increasing deafness. He spent his later years in Scalby near Scarborough where he settled in 1901 and remained for the rest of his life. He was elected a member of the Staithes Art Club in1902.
He was a keen cricketer, as were many of the group, and also enjoyed playing
billiards. He visited slaughter houses to study animal anatomy and, like Atkinson, was a great painter of horses and cows. He worked in both oils and watercolours regularly and his work is equally good in both media. Some of his early work at Staithes and Runswick shows the working lives of the villagers with great realism and sensitivity without becoming over-concerned with irrelevant detail. The horses he chooses to paint are usually at work too.
His still lives of flowers are a great contrast to this work, being carefully composed and having an elegance of design.
He has works in public collections in Manchester, Nottingham, Rochdale, Salford and Whitby.
In addition to Manchester and the Royal Cambrian Academy, Booth exhibited at Birmingham City Art Gallery, the Walker Gallery Liverpool, the Staithes Art Club and the Yorkshire Union of Artists.
Bibliography:
Staithes Group Centenary Exhibition, Rosamund Jordan 2003
The Staithes Group, Peter Phillips, Phillips and Sons, Marlow1993
The Yorkshire Union of Artists 1888 – 1922, Dennis Child, Leeds Philosophical and
Literary Society Ltd, Leeds 2001
The Dictionary of British Artists 1880 – 1940, J. Johnson & A. Greutzner, Antique
Collectors’ Club, Woodbridge 1976
© Rosamund Jordan 2003
