Self-portrait, 1762
Tilly Kettle (1735–1786) was a portrait painter and the first prominent English portrait painter to operate in India.
Tilly Kettle (1735–1786) was a portrait painter and the first prominent English portrait painter to operate in India.
He was born in London, the son of a coach painter, in a family that had been members of the Brewers' Company of freemen for five generations. He studied drawing with William Shipley in the Strand and first entered professional portraiture in the 1750s.
Kettle's first series of portraits appeared in the 1760s. His first surviving painting is a self-portrait from 1760, with his first exhibit with (A. Graves, 1907) the Free Society of Artists in 1761. In 1762, he worked at restoring Robert Streater's ceiling paintings in the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, and painted Francis Yarborough, a doctor of Brasenose College, Oxford in 1763. He painted many members of the family of William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth. In 1764–5, he was active in London and continued exhibiting at the Society of Artists.
In 1768, Kettle sailed to India with the British East India Company, landing at Madras (now Chennai), where he remained for two years. There, he painted Lord Pigot and Muhammad Ali Khan twice (once alone and once with five of his sons). He also painted non-portraits, including Dancing Girls (Blacks) in 1772 and a suttee scene in 1776 entitled, The ceremony of a gentoo woman taking leave of her relations and distributing her jewels prior to ascending the funeral pyre of her deceased husband. In 1770 Kettle painted a half-length portrait of 'Sir' Levett Hanson, a peripatetic writer on European knighthood and chivalry originally from Yorkshire. (The portrait is now in the collection of the Bury St Edmunds Manor House Museum. [1] ) In 1768, Kettle also painted a group portrait of Sir Samuel Cornish, 1st Baronet, Richard Kempenfelt and Thomas Parry. [2] In Autumn 2022, the painting went on permanent display at Queen's House in Greenwich, having been acquired by the National Maritime Museum, with assistance from the Society for Nautical Research. [2]
Kettle moved on to Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1771 and painted Shuja ud-Daula and Dancing-Girl Holding the Stem of a Hookah. In 1775, he painted George Bogle, Warren Hastings' emissary to Tibet, in Tibetan dress, presenting a ceremonial white scarf to Lobsang Palden Yeshe the 6th Panchen Lama. He also took an Indian bibi or mistress (whose name isn't recorded) and had two daughters by her, Ann (baptised 22 February 1773 in Calcutta) and Elizabeth (30 April 1774 in Calcutta). [3]
He left India in 1776 for London, traveling on the ship Talbot. On his return, he swiftly married Mary "Polly" Paine (1753–1798) on 23 February 1777. [3] Mary was the younger daughter of the architect James Paine and half sister of the sculptor James Paine. She brought a dowry of £5,000, while Kettle put up £3,000 toward a trust fund, set up in a pre-nuptial settlement, dated 22 February 1777, the day before their wedding, [3] so both parties were well established. The couple had two children, a daughter, Mary, and a son, James (November 1782 – 1819) who joined the Madras Army in 1810, became a captain, took an Indian bibi, had a daughter in 1814 and died in 1819. [4]
Contemporaries indicated that Kettle may have been manipulated into the marriage for financial reasons. At the same time, he switched his exhibitors to the Royal Academy of Art. He had fewer clients in England than he had before his departure, and contemporaries claimed his wife was financially imprudent. He fell into debt, and spent some time in Ireland to escape his financial problems. [3]
On 9 June 1786 Kettle made his will, giving his address as Brussels, rather than London, possibly to confuse his creditors. In 1786 he set out for a return to India. He attempted the voyage overland through Asia. His last portrait, The Turkish Janissary of the English Factory, Aleppo, was painted in Aleppo, and he died some time later, although where and when is unclear, possibly in the desert on his way to Basrah before the end of 1786. His will was registered at the British cancellaria in Aleppo on 5 July 1787. [3]
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.
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.
Sir Elijah Impey was a British judge, the first chief justice of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William in Bengal, Chief Justice of the Sadr Diwani Adalat and MP for New Romney.
Rear-Admiral Richard Kempenfelt was a British rear admiral who gained a reputation as a naval innovator. He is best known for his victory against the French at the Second Battle of Ushant and for his death when HMS Royal George accidentally sank at Portsmouth the following year.
John Shore, 1st Baron Teignmouth was a British official of the East India Company who served as Governor-General of Bengal from 1793 to 1798. In 1798 he was created Baron Teignmouth in the Peerage of Ireland. Shore was the first president of the British and Foreign Bible Society. A close friend of the orientalist Sir William Jones (1746–1794), Shore edited a memoir of Jones's life in 1804, containing many of Jones's letters.
James Paine (1717–1789) was an English architect.
Francis Wheatley RA was an English portrait and landscape painter.
George Chinnery was an English painter who spent most of his life in Asia, especially India and southern China.
Rosa Winifred Nicholson was a British painter. She was married to the painter Ben Nicholson, and was thus the daughter-in-law of the painter William Nicholson and his wife, the painter Mabel Pryde. She was the mother of the painter Kate Nicholson.
Johan Joseph Zoffany was a German neoclassical painter who was active mainly in England, Italy and India. His works appear in many prominent British collections, including the National Gallery, the Tate Gallery and the Royal Collection, as well as institutions in continental Europe, India, the United States and Australia. His name is sometimes spelled Zoffani or Zauffelij.
Thomas Hickey (1741–1824) was an Irish painter.
Company style, also known as Company painting or Patna painting is a term for a hybrid Indo-European style of paintings made in India by Indian artists, many of whom worked for European patrons in the East India Company or other foreign Companies in the 18th and 19th centuries. The style blended traditional elements from Rajput and Mughal painting with a more Western treatment of perspective, volume and recession. Most paintings were small, reflecting the Indian miniature tradition, but the natural history paintings of plants and birds were usually life size.
Sir Samuel Cornish, 1st Baronet was a British naval commander who fought in the Seven Years' War and conquered Manila on 6 October 1762.
Robert Home (1752–1834) was a British oil portrait painter who travelled to the Indian subcontinent in 1791. During his travels he also painted historic scenes and landscapes.
Robert Streater (1621–1679), was an English landscape, history, still-life and portrait artist, architectural painter, and etcher. He was Serjeant Painter to King Charles II, and decorated the ceiling of Christopher Wren's Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford.
Frederick Richard Say was a notable society portrait painter in London between c. 1830 and c.1860, undertaking commissions for portraits of figures such as Earl Grey, Sir Robert Peel, the Duke of Wellington and the Royal family.
Spiridione Roma, also known as Spiridon or Spyridon Romas, was a Greek painter from Corfu. He was a prominent member of the Heptanese School. His contemporary was Spyridon Sperantzas. He was another painter from Corfu. He also painted all over Italy and settled in Triste. Romas painted on the Ionian Islands, Sicily, and Livorno before settling in England. He was one of the few Greek painters to travel to a foreign country outside of the Greek or Italian world. The other two were El Greco and Efstathios Altinis. He was also a British painter during the last decades of his life. He was active in the region from 1770 to 1786. According to the Hellenic Institute, over twenty-five of his works survived. He was the British El Greco. His most popular work is a painting entitled The East Offering its Riches to Britannia.
Charles Shirreff was a deaf Scottish painter, specializing in portrait miniatures.
Sir Walter Stuart James Willson was an Dublin-born business man and banker in British India who became a member of the Legislative Assembly of India.
Mary Ramsden, née Symonds, was an English watercolour painter. In 1801, she travelled with her sister, Elizabeth Gwillim, and her sister's husband, Sir Henry Gwillim, to Madras, India. She resided in Madras until 1808, and during this time she produced a series of watercolours of local landscapes as well as a series of watercolours of Indian fish. Her letters are noteworthy for the insight they offer about life in early nineteenth-century Madras.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
