John D. Batten

John Dickson Batten (8 October 1860 – 5 August 1932), born in Plymouth, Devon, was an English painter of figures in oils, tempera and fresco and a book illustrator and printmaker. He was an active member of the Society of Painters in Tempera, with his wife Mary Batten, a gilder.

Though some of his large paintings were successful, he spent much of his time on illustrations and small works on paper.

Career He was the third son of the barrister John Winterbotham Batten. He was educated at Amersham Hall, and matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1879, graduating B.A. in 1883, LL.B. 1884, and M.A. 1886. Meanwhile he had been admitted to the Inner Temple in 1881, and was called to the bar in 1884.

Batten then became a student at the Slade School of Fine Arts under Alphonse Legros. He also illustrated English versions of Tales from the Arabian Nights and Dante's Inferno.

Batten also wrote two books of poetry and a book on animal and human flight. Indian Fairy Tales, Edited by Joseph Jacobs, Illustrated by John D. Batten

At the end of the 1890s he turned to the painting technique of egg tempera and played an important part in its revival with Birmingham artists such as Arthur Gaskin. His Pandora in this medium was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1913 and presented to Reading University in 1918, where it has now been restored. Batten also served as a Secretary to the Society of Painters in Tempera and published in 1922 an article on The Practice of Tempera Painting. There is an article & bibliography in Studies 86 of the Imaginative Book Illustration Society https://bookillustration.org

Indian Fairy Tales, Edited by Joseph Jacobs, Illustrated by John D. Batten

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