Joseph Milner Kite (1862-1946)

Joesph Milner-Kite was born in Taunton in 1862, the son of a pharmacist. He moved to London in 1881 and then to Antwerp where he met Roderic O’Conor at the Academie Royale. They became lifelong friends and painted together throughout their careers. In Brittany, they shared lodgings at the Hotel and shared evening meals at the Chat Blanc in Paris where O’Conor settled on his return from Brittany. Kite began his exhibiting career in London in 1884. His work was shown at the Paris Salon; the Royal Academy; the Royal Society of British Artists; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool and other leading venues. He showed work from France; Spain and Morocco and studies of children at play on the beach from his years in Newlyn. He was also a friend of John Lavery, with whom he made his first journey to Concarneau, where he spent most of his winter months up to 1938. While O’Conor became more of a modernist under the spell of Gauguin and Emile Bernard back in Pont-Aven, Lavery and Kite fell to the influence of Bastien-Lepage and painted harbour and market scenes of rustic realism in a post-impressionist manner.