William Teulon Blandford Fletcher
William Teulon Blandford Fletcher was one of a generation of distinctive British and Irish naturalist painters active in the 1880’s. Born to a solidly middle-class family in Hampstead, London, Fletcher battled parental opposition to train as an artist, enrolling in the South Kensington School of Art at the age of 16. During his four years there, he made a trip to Brittany where many artists such as Stanhope Forbes had rejected the British studio painting tradition in favour of European plein air realism. Inspired by his Breton experiences Fletcher enrolled at Varlat’s Academie Royal des Beaux Arts in Antwerp where he met and became a close friend of fellow student Walter Osborne. www.whytes.ie
