John William Inchbold (1830 - 1888)

J. W. Inchbold was born in Leeds in 1830; son of a bookseller and former proprietor of the Leeds Intelligencer. He came to London around 1847 and may have trained as a lithographer. His first exhibited work was shown at the Society of British Artists in 1849, and he sent two more watercolours to the Royal Academy in 1851.

William Michael Rossetti noted in the 'Spectator' of 1852 that Inchbold's Royal Academy exhibit was proof that "in landscape art ... Pre-Raphaelitism is visibly making its way". He probably first made contact with the group on meeting Millais in 1854. John Ruskin, in his 'Academy Notes' (1855), praised Inchbold's meticulous attention to detail: "a single inch ... is well worth all the rest of the landscapes in this room". Inchbold was apparently Ruskin's guest in Switzerland in the early summer of 1856, where he was painting when John Brett met him.

However, like Brett, Inchbold was surprised and discouraged by Ruskin's impatience with a seeming lack of development from the minute Pre-Raphaelite landscape style. He travelled widely, to Italy, Switzerland (where he lived from 1879) and Spain, broadening his style by the late 1860s.

When Inchbold died of heart disease in Leeds in 1888, Woolner wrote to Stephens of "poor" Inchbold that "in truth he was rich, for his whole life was spent doing exactly what he liked".