Sebastian Pether (london 1793 - 1844)

Sebastian PETHER (London 1793 - 1844)
Moonlight animated landscape
Oak panel oil, 23 x 30 cm

The ARTIST
Sebastian William Thomas Pether was born on November 24, 1793, the son of Abraham and
Elizabeth Pether, and was baptized at Saint Luke's Church, Chelsea, London, on August 31, 1794.
Eldest son, he was his father's pupil and followed in his father's footsteps, but led a difficult life. Pether married young and had a large family of nine children. He had few opportunities to create
commissioned works and his works were rarely exhibited, forcing him to work for
low-paid art dealers. He was highly educated and even claimed to have been the first to
propose the idea of stomach pumping to surgeon Andrew Jukes. In the last
years of his life, he lost three children to tuberculosis and, after his death, another to tetanus;

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his eldest son William became a mosaicist. Pether died in Battersea of an inflammatory attack on
March 14, 1844 at York Cottage, Battersea Fields, and a subscription was organized for his family.
A fundraiser was organized for his surviving daughter in a November 1876 issue of the London Times
, which said she was destitute after ruining her eyesight by working
as a seamstress.
Sebastian Pether, an English landscape painter specialized in painting moonlight,
sunset and firelight. His father Abraham Pether and brother Henry Pether
also specialized in moonlight paintings, and all three were known as
the Moonlight Pethers. Sebastian's works tended
to feature greenish tones. Most of his work was handled by
art dealers who helped him sell his paintings, but this brought in little
income to support his large family of eleven.
Pether's main works depicted bonfires, moonlight and
sunsets. In 1814, Pether sent the Royal Academy View from Chelsea Bridge of
the Destruction of Drury Lane Theatre and, in 1826, A Caravan overtaken
by a Whirlwind, a commission from John Fleming Leicester, who was his only patron. In
spring 1842, three paintings he sent to the Royal Academy with the help of a framer
were rejected. Sebastian Pether's paintings are often wrongly attributed to his brother Henry
Pether, and vice versa. However, Henry generally signed his paintings, which were more
realistic and refined.