Frederick North, 2nd Earl of Guilford, better known by his courtesy title Lord North, which he used from 1752 to 1790, was Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1770 to 1782. He led Great Britain through most of the American War of Independence. He also held a number of other cabinet posts, including Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Pompeo Girolamo Batoni was an Italian painter who displayed a solid technical knowledge in his portrait work and in his numerous allegorical and mythological pictures. The high number of foreign visitors travelling throughout Italy and reaching Rome during their "Grand Tour" led the artist to specialize in portraits.
Sir George Hayter was an English painter, specialising in portraits and large works involving sometimes several hundred individual portraits. Queen Victoria appreciated his merits and appointed Hayter her Principal Painter in Ordinary and also awarded him a Knighthood in 1841.
Events from the year 1758 in art.
Gavin Hamilton was a Scottish neoclassical history painter, who is more widely remembered for his searches for antiquities in the neighbourhood of Rome. These roles in combination made him an arbiter of neoclassical taste.
Events from the year 1756 in art.
James Byres of Tonley FRSE FSAScot FSA was a Scottish architect, antiquary and dealer in Old Master paintings and antiquities.
Grand manner refers to an idealized aesthetic style derived from classicism and the art of the High Renaissance. In the eighteenth century, British artists and connoisseurs used the term to describe paintings that incorporated visual metaphors in order to suggest noble qualities. It was Sir Joshua Reynolds who gave currency to the term through his Discourses on Art, a series of lectures presented at the Royal Academy from 1769 to 1790, in which he contended that painters should perceive their subjects through generalization and idealization, rather than by the careful copy of nature. Reynolds never actually uses the phrase, referring instead to the "great style" or "grand style", in reference to history painting:
Lyde Browne was an 18th-century English antiquary and banker, who owned one of the largest antiquities collections of the time. This now forms the nucleus of the classical sculpture collections of the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg and the Pavlovsk Palace in the city's suburbs. The Hermitage Museum website calls him John Lyde-Brown, as does The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome.
The Westmorland or Westmoreland was a 26-gun British privateer frigate, operating in the Mediterranean Sea against French shipping in retaliation for France's opposition to Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War.
Philippe Mercier was an artist of French Huguenot descent from the German realm of Brandenburg-Prussia, usually defined to French school. Active in England for most of his working life, Mercier is considered one of the first practitioners of the Rococo style, and is credited with influencing a new generation of 18th-century English artists.
Sir Peter Beckford was a British writer, planter, art collector and politician who was the patron of classical composer and pianist Muzio Clementi. A prominent member in the English fox hunting community, he owned a pack of hunting dogs and wrote the work Thoughts upon Hunting (1781) which served as a guide to the practise.
Thomas Patch was an English painter, printmaker in etching, physiognomist and art historian. He made a living from painting views of Florence and Tivoli and appears to have sold a number of painted caricature groups to members of the Anglo-Florentine community and to young British men on the Grand Tour. The largest collection of his paintings and prints is in the Lewis Walpole Library in Farmington, Connecticut.
Events from the year 1764 in Scotland.
Louisa Petty, Marchioness of Lansdowne, known as the Countess of Shelburne from 1779–84, was an Anglo-Irish aristocrat from the Mac Giolla Phádraig dynasty. She was the wife of Prime Minister William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne.
Mary Fox, Baroness Holland, known as Lady Mary Fox from 1766–74, was an Anglo-Irish aristocrat from the Mac Giolla Phádraig dynasty and Fox family. She is best known for being the portrait subject of several notable 18th-century artists, including Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Christopher M. S. Johns was an American art historian, and the Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Professor of History of Art at Vanderbilt University, who specialized in eighteenth-century Italian art, decorative art, material culture, and architecture. He was a leading scholar of early modern Italian art and culture, especially the relationship between art, politics, and religion in eighteenth-century Rome.
Portrait of the Duke of Grafton is a 1762 portrait painting by the Italian artist Pompeo Batoni of the English aristocrat Augustus FitzRoy, 3rd Duke of Grafton, a future prime minister of Great Britain.
The Reform Banquet is a history painting by the English artist Benjamin Robert Haydon. Completed and first exhibited in 1834 it represents a scene on 11 July 1832 when supporters of the recent Reform Act including the Prime Minister Earl Grey and other government ministers met for a celebratory dinner at the Guildhall in the City of London. Comparisons have been drawn between this work and George Hayter's The House of Commons, 1833 which were both large-scale depictions related to the recent Reform Act.
Portrait of the Duke of York is a 1764 portrait painting by the Italian artist Pompeo Batoni depicting Prince Edward, Duke of York and Albany. York was the younger brother of George III and had been heir presumptive to the throne from 1760 until the birth of his nephew George, Prince of Wales in 1762. From 1763 to 1764 following the end of the Seven Years War, York went on a Grand Tour around Continental Europe. While in Rome he sat for Batoni, a leading portraitist who specialised in painting visiting Britons. York is shown in the uniform of a Flag officer of the Royal Navy and the Order of the Garter, with the Colosseum visible behind him.
