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Two Views of St Mary’s, North Mimms, by John Claude Nattes (c. 1765-1839) (Article printed in November 2008 Parish Magazine) St Mary’s has recently restored two early nineteenth-century views of the church, given in 1935, and formerly hung in the North Aisle, where they had become badly affected by damp. Drawn in pencil reinforced with pen, and with ink wash added in places, they show St Mary’s from the south and south-west.
St Mary’s, North Mimms, from the south-west; 3.1 x 23.7 cm; inscribed; numbered 19.
The artist, Jean Claude Nattes, was one of the most prolific topographical draughtsmen of the period and significant collections of his work are held by the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Guildhall Library. Little is known about his life: it remains uncertain, for example, whether his name was the result of French ancestry or simply an affectation. After training under the Irish artist Hugh Primrose Dean, Nattes became in 1804 a founder member of the Society of Painters in Watercolours (the first professional association for watercolourists), but was expelled from the Society in 1807 on a charge of exhibiting drawings by other artists under his own name. Despite this setback he enjoyed a successful career, and exhibited work at the Royal Academy on many occasions before moving to France around 1820. His trade card advertises the wide range of his professional activities:
Nattes is best known today for sets of prints produced between 1804 and 1807 after his drawings of Scotland, Bath, Oxford, and Versailles, and for his collaborative publishing projects with the figure-specialist William Henry Pyne. Like most draughtsmen of his time much of his income probably came from teaching amateur artists, and he drew upon this experience in publishing several drawing instruction manuals.
Nattes lived in London, but during the summer months he often travelled around the country producing views of country estates for his wealthy patrons. The drawings of St Mary’s belong to such a series and the numbers in the upper right-hand corner of each sheet (the south-west view is numbered 19; the view from the south 21) probably record their original position in an album of views of the area. Two other drawings from the series - numbers 26 and 34 - were in the collection of the art historian Iolo Williams. Number 34, depicting the interior of a brewery at North Mimms Place, is illustrated in Williams’ Early English Watercolours (London, 1952; fig. 356). Number 26 shows a telescope in the garden at North Mimms Place and is annotated by Nattes with the date 13th July 1813. It is therefore probably safe to assume that our drawings were also executed in the summer of 1813. Since then St Mary’s has remained largely unchanged in external appearance from the south and west, with the exception of the spire shown in the drawings, of a type often referred to as a ‘Hertfordshire spike’, work on which was begun in 1806. It was dismantled in 1953. The drawings of St Mary’s show clearly Nattes’ skill in perspective and his attention to architectural detail. During his lifetime there developed a great interest in England’s architectural heritage, and in the gothic in particular. Nattes’ precise style of drawing was a response to this antiquarian interest. This fastidious approach does however lend his work a certain deadness of touch, which the use of ink-wash for the foliage, and the addition of a rustic figure, does not entirely dispel. Nonetheless both of our drawings are fine and characteristic examples of his draughtsmanship, and constitute an important record of St Mary’s in the early nineteenth-century. Richard Foster
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