R.T. Pritchett

Pritchett, a gun maker and artist, was the son of Richard Ellis Pritchett, the head of the firm of Enfield gun makers which supplied arms to the East India Company and the Board of Ordnance. His early career was with spent at the gun makers where he invented a bullet that corrected the eccentricity of the Enfield rifle and won him fame as the "Father of the Enfield rifle". The company lost its principal customer with the abolition of the East India Company in 1858 and Pritchett embarked on a new career as an artist. He began to travel widely, and won the Queen Victoria's patronage in 1868. He was subsequently commissioned by the Queen to paint over 80 watercolors of her Jubilees and family events. A keen yachtsman, Pritchett was marine painter to the Royal Thames Yacht Club. He cruised the Pacific and tropics in the 1880s, and continued to produce his drawings, illustrations, and published works.