Frederick Richard Lee

Frederick Richard Lee RA
late 1850s portrait
Born	10 June 1798 Barnstaple
Died	5 June 1879 (1879-06-06) (aged 80) South Africs
Known for	painter

Frederick Richard Lee RA (10 June 1798 in Barnstaple, Devon – 5 June 1879 in Vleesch Bank, South Africa) was an English artist.

Lee was the son of Thomas Lee of Barnstaple in north Devon and brother of Thomas Lee (Jnr), an architect.

Frederick enrolled as a student at the Royal Academy on 16 January 1818, aged nineteen. Although no dated paintings are recorded from this time, by the time of his election as an Associate of the Royal Academy (A.R.A.) on 3 November 1834, at least six dated paintings existed. One of F.R. Lee's paintings from this time is Bringing in the Stag, an oil, measuring 38 cm x 51 cm (1830) at the Tate Gallery in London).

Lee was elected to full membership of the Royal Academy on 10 February 1838. A further seven paintings have been documented as painted by Lee before this date, again as oils, mainly on canvas. The Tate Gallery has an example from this period of his career in Sea Coast Sunrise, which is also painted in oil and is 85 cm x 109 cm (1834). He is known to have produced a further forty dated paintings over the next thirty years. In addition to the dated paintings, fifty undated paintings exist, including Lake in a Park.

Lee had a house at Pilton, near Barnstaple, but being from early life devoted to the sea, he lived a great deal on board his yacht, in which he visited the coasts of France, Spain, and Italy. He exhibited for the last time in 1870, and became an honorary retired academician in the following year. Lee died at Vleesch Bank, Herman station, in the division of Malmsay, South Africa, where some of his family were living, on 5 June 1879.

Lee was a prolific artist, based on the number of oil paintings he is known to have produced, both on canvas and on board. His subject matter choices clearly shared influences with John Constable and other contemporaries. Some of his more notable paintings were done in collaboration with Thomas Sidney Cooper (between 1848 and 1856) and Sir Edwin Landseer, Lee painting the landscape and Cooper and Landseer adding the animals. Landscapes and pastoral scenes form the majority of his painting interest, with some exceptions, for example, Cover Side, The Campfire and Gypsy Tent.