F. L. Tavaré

Frederick Lawrence Tavaré (13 December 1846January 1930) was an English landscape painter and antiquarian.

He typically signed his work as F. L. Tavaré, Frederick L. Tavaré, or Fred Tavaré to distinguish himself from his father, Frederick Tavaré, who was also an artist. He was born deaf.

Early life Frederick Lawrence Tavaré was born on 13 December 1846 in Cheetham Hill, to Frederick and Ann Tavaré. His father was a watercolour landscape painter and professor of art; though he was never a successful artist outside of Victorian Manchester, he was nonetheless a relatively significant and well-connected figure within the city's artistic community—including being a founding member of the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts in 1859.

The Tavaré family produced a number of intellectual and artistic figures during this era, most notably the poet Charles Swain. Frederick's third son, Charles Edward Tavaré, also became a painter and art teacher.

Tavaré was his parents' second son, but the first to survive to adulthood.

Career Artist Like his father, Tavaré's preferred medium was watercolours, though he also occasionally painted in oils too. He described himself as "a follower of" John Ralston, a contemporary of his grandfather who captured many of Manchester's medieval and early modern buildings before they were demolished and replaced during the city's industrialisation. Many of Tavaré's watercolours similarly capture buildings in Manchester which were considered prominent or noteworthy at the time of their demolition—such as The Sun Inn, also known as Poets' Corner, a pub which was an important meeting place for the city's artists and writers.

Tavaré's work was first exhibited at the Royal Manchester Institution in 1867, and his work was shown there repeatedly over the following years. Some of his research either focused on the history of the Tavarés or was derived from the family's personal records—for example, a letter to Notes and Queries in December 1889 detailed how industrial-scale "turkey-red dyeing" was introduced to England by a small group of French immigrant entrepreneurs that included his grandfather, Charles Tavaré. His family's position within Manchester's artistic community also meant that he was aware of relatively obscure biographical information, such as Henry Liverseege taking on work as an inn sign painter while struggling to sell more "prestigious" works. He illustrated some of these contributions with his own woodcuts. After Crossley's death in 1883, Stocks House continued to act as a meeting house for intellectual and cultural figures from both Lancashire and the wider country.

Personal life

On 2 August 1879 Tavaré was convicted of assaulting his mother, Ann, and sentenced to three months of hard labour in Belle Vue Gaol.