James Sillett was an English painter, born in Norwich where he spent much of his career.
The son of James Sillett of Eye, Suffolk, James Sillett (also known as Sillet or Silleth), was born in Norwich in about 1764. He worked there for a time as an heraldic painter, and so his artistic career began rather as with his contemporaries John Crome and John Ninham. He then moved to London, where he was employed as a copyist by the Polygraphic Society, set up in 1784 by Joseph Booth and which held annual exhibitions of reproduction paintings. Sillett claimed to have studied in the schools of the Royal Academy from 1787 to 1790, although his name is not included in any of the Academy's published lists of entrants.
He became a good miniaturist, and painted game, fruit and flowers with considerable skill. He exhibited at the Royal Academy for over forty years, between 1796 and 1837. Whilst in London it is thought that he was involved in painting scenery at Drury Lane and Covent Garden, along with the Norwich artist William Capon. His address was given as 12, Mansfield Place, St. Georges Fields, London, in 1796, and 16, Charles Street, Covent Garden, in 1798. After this his address is given as Norwich or King's Lynn, sometimes with alternative London addresses provided. For most of his working life Sillett taught drawing in King's Lynn and in about 1804 he published the illustrations for William Richards's History of Lynn, published in 1812. The art historian Derek Clifford, writing in the 1960s, reserved his praise for Sillett's still life works, noting that only one landscape painting, The Old Oak at Winfarthing, has a similar delicacy of touch.
In 1810 he moved back to Norwich, where he lived for the rest of his life. An hononary member of the Norwich Society of Artists before he moved to Norwich, he became President of the Society in 1815, He was one of those who seceded from the Society the following year to form a new group known as the Norfolk and Norwich Society of Artists, along with Robert Ladbrooke and John Thirtle. Members of the group held their own exhibitions for three years before finally disbanding.
Sillett died at Norwich on 6 May 1840, by which time he had ceased to have any influence on any of the more forward-looking members of the Norwich School of painters. He was buried in the Rosary Cemetery in Norwich.
His work now sell in his home country and in the United States for high prices: with his oil painting Auricula Primrose fetching £32,200 at auction in 1996.
Sillett illustrated Richard's History of Lynn, and published A Grammar to Flower Painting in 1826.
His Views of the Churches, Chapels and Other Public Edifices in the City of Norwich, a set of 59 lithographs published in 1828, was one of the few lithographic major projects produced by the Norwich School after the use of the new medium spread rapidly during the 1820s. His original intention was for his engravings to be made by the aquatint process. Sillett's engravings accurately depicted the important buildings of Norwich. The engravings, though not of outstanding artistic quality, are important for modern historians, as the appearance of many buildings Sillett drew has altered substantially since the 1820s, and other buildings have since been demolished. Clifford, who considered Sillett as being multi-talented, has described the etchings as having a "pleasantly sensistive simplicity".
In 1801 he married Ann Banyard of East Dereham, through whom he became possessed of some property. Their daughter Emma Sillett (born in about 1803), who became well known as a flower-painter, and their son James Banyard Sillett (born in 1809), who did not follow his father's profession but became a languages teacher, lived together in Norfolk. Emma died unmarried in 1880: her brother James Banyard died unmarried aged ninety.
Norwich Stagecoach at King's Lynn (undated), Norfolk Museums Collections
Pockthorpe, Norwich (undated), Yale Center for British Art
The Corn Exchange, Norwich (1828), Norfolk Museums Collections
 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Sillett, James". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900. 

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