John d batten 1892 5 - fairy tale illustration

John Dickson Batten was born in Plymouth, Devon, on 8 October 1860. The son of a QC, Batten studied law at Cambridge’s Trinity College and was invited into the Inner Temple in 1884. Having decided that he had chosen the wrong career, Batten relinquished law and began studying art at the Slade under the tutelage of the seminal French painter, etcher, and sculptor Alphonse Legros. John Dickson Batten was born in Plymouth, Devon, on 8 October 1860.

John Dickson Batten was born in Plymouth, Devon, on 8 October 1860. The son of a QC, Batten studied law at Cambridge’s Trinity College and was invited into the Inner Temple in 1884. Having decided that he had chosen the wrong career, Batten relinquished law and began studying art at the Slade under the tutelage of the seminal French painter, etcher, and sculptor Alphonse Legros. During this time Batten began displaying his work at the Royal Academy (1891-1922), the Grosvenor Gallery, the New Gallery, and the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society. His beautiful paintings frequently contained mythological and allegorical motifs that would pervade his life’s work and steer his career in a definite direction. Some of Batten’s most notable paintings from this period include: The Garden of Adonis: Amoretta and Time, Sleeping Beauty: The Princess Pricks Her Finger, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and Atalanta and Melanion.