Albert Chevallier Tayler

Albert Chevallier Tayler was born on 5 April 1862 in Leytonstone, then in Essex, on the edge of London, the son of William Moseley Tayler, a lawyer, and Elizabeth Sarah Warren. He was educated at Bloxham School in Oxfordshire before moving into formal art training, studying at Heatherley's School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools in London, and winning a scholarship to the Slade School of Fine Art in 1879. He also trained in Paris, attending Jean-Paul Laurens' atelier and reportedly studying under Carolus-Duran, in the pattern common to many artists associated with the Newlyn School.

Tayler joined the Newlyn School's colony of plein-air painters in Cornwall, arriving in September 1884 and remaining associated with the colony for about eleven years before leaving for good in 1895, a longer and more settled period than some later reference sources, which have understated it as only two years. He exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy over several decades, but was never elected an Associate or full Academician. He also showed with the New English Art Club, the Royal Society of British Artists, and the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, and in 1891 received a medal at the Paris Salon. Later in his career he moved toward society and portrait subjects, continuing to exhibit widely.

Tayler died on 20 December 1925 in London, at the age of 63, according to a contemporaneous notice reproduced by Brave Fine Art, which also records his interment at St. Mary's Cemetery, Kensal Green.

Tayler's reputation rests less on sustained critical commentary than on institutional placement: regular Royal Academy exhibition, membership in the Royal Society of British Artists, participation in the New English Art Club and the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, and a 1891 Paris Salon medal all mark him as a solidly professional, if not top-tier, figure of his generation. Penlee House Gallery and Museum, which frames him within the Newlyn School, notes that despite exhibiting at the Royal Academy "regularly," he was never elected to Associate or full Membership there, a detail that situates him just outside the first rank of his contemporaries. Some auction catalogues have rendered his professional affiliations inconsistently, for example listing him under the non-standard designation "R.B.C." rather than the documented NEA, RBA, and ROI initials used in dealer and reference sources, a minor but recurring inconsistency collectors should be aware of.

Tayler's auction market is thin and dominated by a single headline result. Wikipedia and auction-market aggregators identify a large cricket painting, Kent v Lancashire at Canterbury, long held by Kent County Cricket Club, sold at Sotheby's, London, in June 2006 for GBP 680,000, as his all-time auction high; Wikipedia describes it as "a record price for a cricket painting." The exact day of sale is not confirmed in available sources. Beyond this result, his auction activity consists of smaller, irregular sales of portraits and genre pictures through UK regional auction houses and dealers, with no evidence of a subsequent sale approaching the 2006 result as of mid-2026.

Tayler's market is small, and his best-known result, the GBP 680,000 sale of Kent v Lancashire at Canterbury in 2006, appears to reflect the strong appeal of cricket subject matter to a specialist buyer pool as much as broad demand for his oeuvre generally. There is no catalogue raisonne and no evidence of an active estate or dedicated representing gallery as of mid-2026; his work circulates through UK regional auction houses and dealers such as Brave Fine Art rather than through a single authoritative market channel. Collectors should treat provenance and prior museum or exhibition history as the primary tools for vetting a work, given the absence of a centralized authentication body, and should weigh the 2006 cricket-painting result as an outlier rather than a representative benchmark for his broader market.