The Schoolmistress is the name of two paintings [1] from 1784 by the British artist John Opie. Both versions show the schoolmistress with five boys and a cat, are oil on canvas, approximately 40 inches by 50 inches, and were painted while Opie was living in London at No 63 Great Queen Street. [2]
One, originally titled A School but sometimes also known as The Schoolmistress, was exhibited at the Royal Academy (No 162) in 1784. This version, once owned by Lord Overstone, was sold in 1823 for George Watson-Taylor MP for 90 Guineas, and in 1875 was sold by Jesse Watts-Russell MP of Ilam Park in Staffordshire for 750 Guineas, said to be the highest price ever paid for an Opie picture at the time. [3] In 1785 it was engraved in mezzotint by Valentine Green, an indication of its popularity. [4]
Another version, also The Schoolmistress, was owned by the Earl of Stamford, George Harry Grey. It was exhibited at the Manchester Exhibition of Art Treasures in 1857 as No 133. [5] One or other of these versions was exhibited at the Grafton Gallery Exhibition of Fair Children in 1895, and the Guildhall Exhibition of French and English Painters of the Eighteenth Century in 1902. [6]
One version, lighter, with the cat shown on the right, was bought by a Dr Earl Wood in 1930 from art dealers Spink and Son, at a cost of $7,500. Wood took it back to the US. In 1969 it was stolen from the Wood residence in Newark, New Jersey, likely by members of the mafia. [7] It was recovered in 2024 in St. George, Utah. [8] [9]
The other version - darker, with the cat on the left - was for many years part of the Loyd Collection of paintings and drawings at Lockinge near Wantage, Berkshire. Accepted in lieu of Inheritance Tax by HM Government, it was allocated to Tate Britain in 2020. [4] [10]
Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. Along with his rival Sir Joshua Reynolds, he is considered one of the most important British artists of the second half of the 18th century. He painted quickly, and the works of his maturity are characterised by a light palette and easy strokes. Despite being a prolific portrait painter, Gainsborough gained greater satisfaction from his landscapes. He is credited as the originator of the 18th-century British landscape school. Gainsborough was a founding member of the Royal Academy.
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Joseph Mallord William Turner, known in his time as William Turner, was an English Romantic painter, printmaker and watercolourist. He is known for his expressive colouring, imaginative landscapes and turbulent, often violent marine paintings. He left behind more than 550 oil paintings, 2,000 watercolours, and 30,000 works on paper. He was championed by the leading English art critic John Ruskin from 1840, and is today regarded as having elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting.
John Sell Cotman was an English marine and landscape painter, etcher, illustrator, and a leading member of the Norwich School of painters.
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John Opie was an English historical and portrait painter. He painted many great men and women of his day, including members of the British Royal Family, and others who were notable in the artistic and literary professions.
William Etty was an English artist best known for his history paintings containing nude figures. He was the first significant British painter of nudes and still lifes. Born in York, he left school at the age of 12 to become an apprentice printer in Hull. He completed his apprenticeship seven years later and moved to London, where in 1807 he joined the Royal Academy Schools. There he studied under Thomas Lawrence and trained by copying works by other artists. Etty earned respect at the Royal Academy of Arts for his ability to paint realistic flesh tones, but had little commercial or critical success in his first few years in London.
Sarah Biffen, also known as Sarah Biffin, Sarah Beffin, or by her married name Mrs E. M. Wright, was an English painter born with no arms and only vestigial legs. She was born in 1784 in Somerset. Despite her disability she learned to read and write, and to paint using her mouth. She was apprenticed to a man named Emmanuel Dukes, who exhibited her as an attraction throughout England. In the St. Bartholomew's Fair of 1808, she came to the attention of George Douglas, the Earl of Morton, who went on to sponsor her to receive lessons from a Royal Academy of Arts painter, William Craig. The Society of Arts awarded her a medal in 1821 for a historical miniature and the Royal Academy accepted her paintings. The Royal Family commissioned her to paint miniature portraits of them. When the Earl of Morton died in 1827, Biffen was left without a noble sponsor and she ran into financial trouble. Queen Victoria awarded her a Civil List pension and she retired to a private life in Liverpool. She died on 2 October 1850 at the age of 66.
Patrick Heron was a British abstract and figurative artist, critic, writer, and polemicist, who lived in Zennor, Cornwall.
Henry Bone was an English enamel painter. By c. 1800 he had attracted royal patronage for his portrait miniatures This patronage continued throughout the reigns of three monarchs; George III, George IV and William IV. In his early career he worked as a porcelain and jewellery painter. He was elected a Royal Academician and produced the largest enamel paintings ever seen up to that time.
Sir Cedric Lockwood Morris, 9th Baronet was a British artist, art teacher and plantsman. He was born in Swansea in South Wales, but worked mainly in East Anglia. As an artist he is best known for his portraits, flower paintings and landscapes.
The British Institution was a private 19th-century society in London formed to exhibit the works of living and dead artists; it was also known as the Pall Mall Picture Galleries or the British Gallery. Unlike the Royal Academy it admitted only connoisseurs, dominated by the nobility, rather than practising artists to its membership, which along with its conservative taste led to tensions with the British artists it was intended to encourage and support. In its gallery in Pall Mall the Institution held the world's first regular temporary exhibitions of Old Master paintings, which alternated with sale exhibitions of the work of living artists; both quickly established themselves as popular parts of the London social and artistic calendar. From 1807 prizes were given to artists and surplus funds were used to buy paintings for the nation. Although it continued to attract members and visitors, in 1867, when the lease on its quarters expired, instead of renewing the society wrapped up its affairs.
Henry Singleton was an English painter and miniaturist.
The Death of Major Peirson, 6 January 1781 is a large oil painting executed in 1783 by the Anglo-American artist John Singleton Copley. It depicts the death of Major Francis Peirson at the Battle of Jersey on 6 January 1781, part of the Anglo-French War (1778–1783).
The Death of Chatterton is an oil painting on canvas, by the English Pre-Raphaelite painter Henry Wallis (1830–1916), now in Tate Britain, London. Two smaller versions, sketches or replicas, are possessed by the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art. The Tate painting measures 62.2 centimetres (24.5 in) by 93.3 centimetres (36.7 in), and was completed during 1856.
The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16th October, 1834 is the title of two oil on canvas paintings by J. M. W. Turner, depicting different views of the fire that broke out at the Houses of Parliament on the evening of 16 October 1834. They are now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Cleveland Museum of Art.
The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum is a large 1822 painting by English artist John Martin of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. It follows the pattern set by his previous successful painting, Belshazzar's Feast, which was another depiction of a dramatic scene from history delivered from an esoteric point of view. The work appeared to be lost from the Tate Gallery storerooms soon after it was damaged by the 1928 Thames flood. However, it was rediscovered in 1973 and subsequently restored in 2011.
Musidora: The Bather 'At the Doubtful Breeze Alarmed', also known as The Bather, is a name given to four nearly identical oil paintings on canvas by English artist William Etty. The paintings illustrate a scene from James Thomson's 1727 poem Summer in which a young man accidentally sees a young woman bathing naked and is torn between his desire to look and his knowledge that he ought to look away. The scene was popular with English artists as it was one of the few legitimate pretexts to paint nudes at a time when the display and distribution of nude imagery was suppressed.
The World Before the Flood is an oil-on-canvas painting by the English artist William Etty, first exhibited in 1828 and currently in the Southampton City Art Gallery. It depicts a scene from John Milton's Paradise Lost in which, among a series of visions of the future shown to Adam, he sees the world immediately before the Great Flood. The painting illustrates the stages of courtship as described by Milton: a group of men select wives from a group of dancing women, drag their chosen woman from the group, and settle down to married life. Behind the courting group, an oncoming storm looms, foreshadowing the destruction which the dancers and lovers are about to bring upon themselves.
Britomart Redeems Faire Amoret is an oil painting on canvas by English artist William Etty, first exhibited in 1833 and now in Tate Britain. Intended to illustrate the virtues of honour and chastity, it depicts a scene from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene in which the female warrior Britomart slays the evil magician Busirane and frees his captive, the beautiful Amoret. In Spenser's original poem Amoret has been tortured and mutilated by the time of her rescue, but Etty disliked the depiction of violence and portrayed her as unharmed.