Identity:

Frank Huddlestone Potter was a genre painter. His father was a solicitor and his uncle Cipriano Potter was a well known composer and for a time President of the Royal Academy of Music.

Life:

Potter studied at Heatherley's and at the Royal Academy Schools. He went to Antwerp but returned to London within a few months. His works included Girl Resting at a Piano (Tate Gallery, London) and Quiet Corner (exh. 1887 Grosvenor Gallery). He exhibited between 1870 and 1887 in London at the Royal Academy, Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Grosvenor Gallery and Society of British Artists, as well as at the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts and Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.

In 1879 he was elected a member of the Society of British Artists, a society that appointed JW its President in 1886. In the winter of 1887 a memorial exhibition of Potter's work was held at the society, which had gained a royal charter under JW (#05303). Potter had died rather suddenly earlier this year. Many of his paintings were bought by Samuel Butler, a fellow student at Heatherley's.

Bibliography:

Bénézit, E., Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs, 8 vols, Paris, 1956-61; Wood, Christopher, The Dictionary of Victorian Painters, Woodbridge, 1871; Johnson, J., and A. Gruetzner, The Dictionary of British Artists 1880-1940, Woodbridge, 1880.