The J L Petit Series of Lichfield
Introduction by The Bishop of Lichfield
“John Petit of Lichfield was a remarkable man of many parts: architect, scholar, writer, priest - and artist. These pictures invite us into a vision that goes beyond a factual statement to show the majesty, the power, the solemnity, and the mystery of divine creation and human construction...
...Petit opens and expands our sight to point to the spiritual realities that surround and infuse the small West Midlands city that he loved and served so well. Wherever we are, sharing a vision like that can only serve to enrich the reality and the wonder of our everyday life.”
Dr Michael Ipgrave, Bishop of Lichfield, August 2023
“...the difference between great and mean art lies, not in definable methods of handling, or in styles of representation, or choices of subjects, but wholly in the nobleness of the end to which the effort of the painter is addressed.” John Ruskin
Reverse: Image 1. J L Petit, Lichfield from Greenhill, 27 x 37 cm, 26th January 1857.
“And on looking at the edifice [Lichfield Cathedral] from different points of view, the sense of fine proportion is not lost; it may be felt more in some points than others, but it never wholly leaves us. Even when… the outline of one of the steeples is lost, the charm continues; we feel that we are looking at a finely proportioned structure.”
J L Petit
Reverse: Image 2. J L Petit, Lichfield Cathedral from Redcourt (Petit’s house on Tamworth St), 27 x 37 cm, 9th April 1857.
“I cannot help thinking therefore that there is some actual standard, which, however, it is impossible to enunciate and explain, that guides the eye and mind to the perception of good proportions. That, nevertheless, both the eye and mind require a certain training to render them capable of this perception.”
J L Petit
Reverse: Image 3. J L Petit, Lichfield Cathedral from the North, near Bishop’s Walk, 27 x 37 cm, 27th April 1868.
“...in every country the temples devoted to worship are the richest, the most durable, and the most beautiful, among the structures remaining to us.” J L Petit
Reverse: Image 4. J L Petit, Lichfield from the City Centre, 27 x 37 cm, 4th October 1859.
“...it is possible that such means may be singular, and then it will be said that his style is strange; but it is not a style at all, it is the saying of a particular thing in the only way in which it possibly can be said.”
John Ruskin
Reverse: Image 5. J L Petit, Lichfield Cathedral from Stowe Pool, 27 x 37 cm, 31st March 1857. This picture shows the excavation of the Stowe Pool we see today.
“...there is a manifest propriety, a careful adjustment, and a remarkable gracefulness of composition, which pervades the whole [of church architecture from the tenth to sixteenth centuries]” J L Petit
Reverse: Image 6. J L Petit, Lichfield Cathedral West Front, 37 x 27 cm, 23rd August 1860.
“‘[the imagination] may be very sufficiently addressed by the stain left by an ink bottle thrown at the wall. The thrower has little credit… The duty of an artist is not only to address and awaken, but to guide the imagination...” John Ruskin
Reverse: Image 7. J L Petit, Lichfield from the South-East, 27 x 37 cm, circa 1849.
“Hence, false taste may be known by its fastidiousness, by its demands of pomp, splendour, and unusual combination, by its enjoyment only of particular styles and modes of things, and by its pride also... its eye is always upon itself, and it tests all things round it by the way they fit it.
But true taste is forever growing, learning, reading, worshipping...”
John Ruskin
Reverse: Image 8. J L Petit, Lichfield from Grange Lane, with what is now Windmill House, 27 x 37 cm, 2nd May 1864. © The Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum
“[Gothic architecture’s] great charm and value consist in its being the expression of the spirit and character of an age which cannot be surpassed in interest and of which no circumstance can cause the recurrence. It is the poetry of that age, the language in which it speaks to us more than by words, or by any other branch of art.” J L Petit
Reverse: Image 9. J L Petit, Lichfield from the West, 27 x 37 cm, 12th August 1867. A sister of Petit is shown sketching in the foreground.
“[Great artists] have no rules… The moment any man begins to talk about rules, in whatsoever art, you may know him for a second-rate man; and, if he talks about them much, he is third-rate, or not an artist at all.
To this rule there is no exception in any art...” John Ruskin
Reverse: Image 10. J L Petit, Lichfield from the East, 27 x 37 cm, 16th November 1868. Petit died on 2nd December. This may be the last picture he completed.
© Staffordshire Museums Service
“Grandeur is not intended to be Lichfield’s characteristic so much as beauty of outline. No feature is made prominent at the expense of another. The spires, though elegant are none of them excessively tall or tapering. All three are sufficiently similar to give the impression of belonging to one design, though enough varied to prevent the eye from being fatigued by monotony...
...We can neither say that the nave is too long for the steeples which bound it, nor the steeples too tall for the nave. The cathedral is not a large one, and perhaps the excellence of its proportions may make it appear smaller than it really is. I have rarely seen a satisfactory drawing of this cathedral, and I believe it to be a very difficult subject for the artist.”
“John Petit’s views of Lichfield Cathedral are surely the most remarkable series of images of any British cathedral by an individual artist.”
Professor Robin Simon FSA DLitt, Editor, The British Art Journal
