Still life of Smoked Fish on a Plate ~ Joseph Milner Kite

Artist Biography

Joseph Kite was born in Taunton, Devon in 1862, the son of a chemist. He moved to London in 1881, then to Antwerp, where he was a student at the Academie Royale, 1881–83. He spent four seasons in the ‘Antiek’ class.

In 1883, he moved to Paris, studying at the Academie Julian in the atelier of Bouguereau and Laurens. He also met Sir John Lavery there.

After visiting Normandy and Pont Aven with the Irish painter Roderic O’Conor, he returned in 1891 to the Academie Julian to study with Lefebvre and Benjamin Constant.

In 1889, Kite settled permanently in Paris, living in Montparnasse. During the late eighties, he exhibited in England, and at the Paris Salon, and was an exhibitor at the Salon National in the nineties. In the USA, like a number of Cornish painters, he exhibited at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania (1905).

Museum Collections: Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter

Gallery note: The canvas is stamped with the makers mark Paul Foinet Fils who traded at 21 rue Bréa, Paris from1905-1933.Major British and American artists including John Singer Sergeant used Foinet canvases when they worked abroad. source: N.P.G