Thomas Lound was an English painter of landscapes and a member of the Norwich School of painters. Born into a wealthy brewing family, he had the finances available to be an amateur photographer during a time when photography was first being developed as a hobby.
Life and artistic career
show that Thomas Lound was born on 13 July 1801, the son of Thomas and Mary Lound, and was christened by his parents in Beeston St Andrew parish church on 9 August 1801. He married Harriot Wetherill in 1821 and there were several children. An amateur artist, he was involved with his family's brewing business in Norwich, Charles Tompson & Sons, which was the source of his wealth. He was later employed as an agent for the insurance companyCounty Fire and Provident Life Office. He lived in comfort, residing throughout his adult life on King Street, in the centre of Norwich. He used his yachtKathleen, which was adorned with a number of oil paintings, as a venue for entertaining his friends. According to the author William Dickes, Lound was a pupil of the artistJohn Sell Cotman. He exhibited in London from 1845 to 1859, and with the Norwich Society of Artists from 1820 to 1833, first exhibiting his painting St Benet's Abbey. A popular painter amongst his peers, he was a great friend of the amateur artist Robert Leman. John Middleton was in turn devoted to Lound. An artist with a prolific output, he specialised in producing views of his native county of Norfolk, but surviving sketchbooks show that he went to Wales and Yorkshire on sketching tours in 1845, 1853 and 1854. He was a competent copyist, reproducing works such as Cotman's St. Martin's Gate, Norwich and his Yarmouth Jetty, as well as paintings by John Crome and Robert Dixon. His artistic output was influenced by Edward Thomas Daniell's drypoint technique, whose etchings have a dark, rich quality. His works have at times been confused with those of John Sell Cotman, John Crome and John Thirtle. The local Norwich Mercury praised his powers as an amateur artist. He became a member of the Norwich Society of Artists at the age of 18. He exhibited in Norwich and London between 1842 and 1862, showing pictures at both the British Institution and the Royal Academy of Arts. Writing in the 1980s, the art historianAndrew Moore has praised his View of Norwich as "the most perfect example of Lound's original compositions". Lound helped to form the Norfolk and Norwich Art Union, and was a while its President. He was also a keen photographer who was wealthy enough to possess his own photographic equipment, and was a committee member of the Norwich Photographic Society. Little of his work as a photographer appears to have survived. He was a great admirer of the Norwich artist John Thirtle, and used his wealth to acquire seventy-five of Thirtle's paintings. Lound, who suffered from ill health all his life, died suddenly of apoplexy on 18 January 1861, whilst at his Norwich house in King Street. His wife Harriot had died two years' previously, in 1859, and his son Henry Edwin Lound also predeceased him, dying in 1860. His large collection was sold in March 1861, and included 39 sketches, 215 watercolours, 46 oil paintings, and 11 etchings.
