Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Davies, John Scarlett
DAVIES or DAVIS, JOHN SCARLETT (fl. 1841), painter, was the son of a shoemaker at Hereford. He went early to France, studied in the Louvre, and was of great promise. In 1825 he made his first contribution to the Royal Academy, ‘My Den.’ In 1830 he sent ‘Interior of a Library.’ He then returned to the continent. In 1834 he painted an interior from the gallery at Florence, as well as a successful interior from the Louvre. In 1841 he was at Amsterdam, and sent to the academy ‘Jack, after a successful Cruise, visiting his old Comrades at Greenwich.’ He lithographed and published twelve heads from studies by Rubens; and in 1832 some views of Bolton Abbey, drawn from nature on the stone. In 1831 he had a commission from Lord Farnborough to paint an interior of the Vatican and of the Escurial. He last exhibited in London in 1844. ‘He married,’ Redgrave says, ‘early in life, became drunken, and of demoralised habits, got into prison, and died before the age of thirty.’ The last statement is impossible, since he is known to have been exhibiting in London for nineteen years. When he first exhibited, in 1825, he seems to have appeared in the catalogues of the Academy and Suffolk Street as ‘J. S. Davis.’ In later years he appears in the catalogues of the Academy, of the British Instution, and of Suffolk Street as ‘John Scarlett Davies.’ A water-colour drawing of Porte St. Martin, Paris, is at the South Kensington Museum.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Graves's Dict. of Artists; Arnold's Library of the Fine Arts, i. 211.]