Posts in Category: English
Frederick Catherwood
Frederick Catherwood, February 27, 1799–September 27, 1854, was an English artist, architect and explorer born in Hoxton, London. He trained with the architect Michael Meredith and attended classes at the Royal Academy, where he encountered the teaching of John Soane. He subsequently studied ancient architecture in Italy, Greece and Egypt and worked with Joseph Bonomi.
Catherwood traveled through Central America and Yucatan with the American writer John Lloyd Stephens in 1839–1840 and 1841–1842. His drawings of Maya architecture and sculpture supplied illustrations for Stephens’s travel books, published in 1841 and 1843. In 1844 he published Views of Ancient Monuments in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan, a folio of 25 lithographs based on his drawings.
In his later years Catherwood worked on railway projects in British Guiana, Panama and California. He died in the sinking of the steamship Arctic off Newfoundland in 1854. His surviving drawings are held by the Brooklyn Museum, Yale Center for British Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art; his published images remain records of Maya monuments before subsequent deterioration and restoration.
John Ruskin
John Ruskin, February 8, 1819–January 20, 1900, was an English writer, art critic, and artist. Born in London, he was educated at home and at Christ Church, Oxford. His father encouraged his early interests in drawing and poetry, and travel gave him subjects for studies of architecture, geology, and landscape.
Ruskin published Modern Painters, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, and The Stones of Venice. He supported J. M. W. Turner and the Pre-Raphaelite artists, and made drawings and watercolors to record natural and architectural detail. As Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford, he taught drawing and assembled a collection of works for his students.
Ruskin spent his final decades at Brantwood, near Coniston, where he died in 1900. His writing influenced debates about art, education, labor, and conservation. His drawings and papers are held by The Ruskin at Lancaster University, the Ashmolean Museum, and other collections.
Henry Fuseli
Henry Fuseli, February 7, 1741–April 17, 1825, was a Swiss painter, draughtsman and writer who worked chiefly in Britain. Born Johann Heinrich Füssli in Zürich, he received a classical and theological education before leaving Switzerland. In London, Joshua Reynolds encouraged him to pursue painting; he then spent several years studying art in Rome.
Fuseli returned to London in 1779. He made paintings for John Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery and exhibited a series of subjects from John Milton. He was elected to the Royal Academy and later served as its Professor of Painting and Keeper.
His work is held by the Detroit Institute of Arts, Tate, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Royal Academy of Arts and Kunsthaus Zürich, among other collections.
George Romney
George Romney, December 26, 1734–November 15, 1802, was an English painter best known for portraits. Born at Beckside near Dalton-in-Furness, Lancashire, he was apprenticed to the portrait painter Christopher Steele in Kendal before moving to London in 1762.
Romney won early recognition from the Society of Arts and studied in Italy from 1773 to 1775. After returning to London, he became one of the leading portraitists of his generation; Emma Hart, later Lady Hamilton, was his most celebrated model.
Although he was a contemporary and rival of Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, Romney never joined the Royal Academy. Ill health led him back to Kendal in 1799, where his wife Mary cared for him until his death in 1802.
John Crome
John Crome, December 22, 1768–April 22, 1821, was an English landscape painter and etcher born in Norwich. Apprenticed to the coach and sign painter Francis Whisler, he later worked as a drawing master and studied the work of Dutch landscape painters.
Crome and Robert Ladbrooke founded the Norwich Society of Artists in 1803. He served repeatedly as its president, taught artists including James Stark and Edward Thomas Daniell, and painted landscapes centered on Norwich and the Norfolk countryside.
Crome remained in Norwich until his death in 1821. His work is held by Tate, the Yale Center for British Art, the National Galleries of Scotland, Norfolk Museums Collections and other British and American collections, and he is regarded as a principal founder of the Norwich School of painters.
John White
John White, active 1577–1593, was an English artist, mapmaker, explorer, and colonial governor. His early life and artistic training are uncertain, although he may have belonged to London’s Painter-Stainers’ Company.
White may have accompanied Martin Frobisher’s 1577 Arctic voyage and served as artist and mapmaker on the 1585 expedition to Roanoke Island. Working with Thomas Harriot, he made watercolours recording Indigenous people, settlements, ceremonies, foodways, plants, and animals. Theodor de Bry later adapted many of these images as engravings.
White became governor of the Roanoke Colony in 1587. Delayed in England while seeking supplies, he returned in 1590 to find the settlement abandoned. He was last documented in 1593; the principal collection of his surviving watercolours is in the British Museum, London.
William Daniell
William Daniell was born in Kingston upon Thames in 1769 and trained under his uncle, Thomas Daniell. As a teenager he accompanied Thomas to India, where the pair traveled widely and recorded architecture, landscapes, and everyday life in drawings and paintings.
After returning to Britain in 1794, the Daniells transformed their Indian studies into Oriental Scenery, issued in six parts from 1795 to 1808. William became a highly accomplished aquatinter as well as a landscape and marine painter, combining topographical precision with dramatic atmosphere.
Daniell later traveled around the British coast for A Voyage Round Great Britain, published in eight volumes from 1814 to 1825 with 308 aquatints. Elected a Royal Academician in 1822, he continued exhibiting marine, Indian, and panoramic subjects until his death in London on August 16, 1837.
William Hodges
William Hodges, October 28, 1744 – March 6, 1797, was an English landscape painter and printmaker born in London. He trained at William Shipley’s drawing school and became a pupil and assistant of the landscape painter Richard Wilson.
Hodges accompanied Captain James Cook’s second Pacific voyage aboard Resolution from 1772 to 1775 as expedition artist. He later worked in India under the patronage of Warren Hastings, published Select Views in India, and was elected a Royal Academician in 1787.
After further travel in Europe, Hodges continued to exhibit at the Royal Academy until 1794 and retired from painting in 1795. He died at Brixham, Devon, in 1797; important holdings of his work are in the National Maritime Museum, British Museum, and Yale Center for British Art.
Tilly Kettle
Tilly Kettle, January 31, 1735 – July 1786, was an English portrait painter who worked in Britain and India. He trained at William Shipley’s drawing academy, St Martin’s Lane Academy, and the Duke of Richmond’s academy in London.
Kettle established himself as a portraitist in Oxford and the English Midlands before travelling to India in 1768. He worked in Madras, Calcutta, and at the court of Shuja al-Daula in Awadh, painting British East India Company officials and Indian rulers.
His works are held by the Yale Center for British Art, Tate Britain, National Portrait Gallery, National Army Museum, National Galleries of Scotland, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, and other public collections.
