Matthew RIDLEY CORBET (1850-1902) ✿

Matthew Ridley Corbet (1850 -1902) was a Victorian neoclassical painter born at South Willingham, Lincolnshire, was son of the Rev. Andrew Corbet and Marianne Ridley. He was educated at Cheltenham College.

He attended classes at the Slade School of Art under Alexander Davis Cooper and later at the Royal Academy Schools under Frederic Leighton, President of the Academy. Corbet went to Italy in 1880 and met Giovanni Costa, one of Leighton's friends in Rome. For the next three years he stayed and painted with Costa, eventually becoming one of the leading figures of the Macchiaioli school.

In 1902, Matthew Ridley Corbet was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy and his works are held within several public collections. These include the Tate, the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution, Museums Sheffield, Usher Gallery (Lincolnshire), Plymouth Museum and Art Gallery, and Harris Museum and Art Gallery.
He concentrated on Italian landscapes and exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery, the New Gallery, the Royal Academy and the Paris Salon.
His Sunrise gained a bronze medal at the Paris Exhibition of 1889; and his Morning Glory (1894) and Val d'Arno Evening (1901), bought under the terms of the Chantrey Bequest, are now in the Tate Gallery.