Ernest Crofts

Ernest Crofts RA (15 September 1847 – 19 March 1911) was a British painter of historical and military scenes.

Born in Leeds on 15 September 1847, Ernest was son of John Crofts, Esq. of Adal, near Leeds, a Justice of the Peace, and grandson of the Rev. W. Crofts, B.D., Vicar of North Grimston, near Malton, Yorkshire. One of his maternal uncles was the Rev. William Carr, B.D. of Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire. His mother was Ellen Wordsworth, the daughter of a Leeds industrialist. Ernest studied at Rugby School, for several years, and then headed to Berlin where he developed his interest in art and decided upon a career as a painter. His first acquaintance with war was made in 1864 when he accompanied a Prussian doctor in the Schleswig-Holstein War, and the operations around Düppel. His sister Ellen Wordsworth Crofts married Sir Francis Darwin and was the mother of poet Frances Cornford.

He returned to London and became a pupil under A. B. Clay, but was back in Germany a few years later, this time studying at the Düsseldorf school of painting in Europe, where he studied under the German military artist, Emil Hünten, himself an ex-pupil of Horace Vernet, and at the time military and historical painter to the Prussian emperor. Under Hünten, Crofts' talent as a military painter grew, and in 1874, he exhibited Retreat, representing an episode in the Franco-Prussian War during the Battle of Gravelotte, and in the same year, another scene from the same conflict, One touch of nature makes the whole world kin which won him the Crystal Palace prize medal. Both scenes were influenced by the artist's experience of witnessing some of the closing stages of the war, especially the battles of Weissenbourg, Wörth, and the siege of Strasbourg. While contributing regularly to the annual Royal Academy exhibition, he continued to live in Düsseldorf where he met his future wife.

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