[1] William Hogarth (1697-1764) was an engraver and pictorial satirist of morals. From humble beginnings, he was apprenticed to a silversmith, where he learnt engraving on silver and the rudiments of drawing. He moved on to drawing and engraving scenes for book illustrations. Under the patronage of Sir James Thornhill, painter to the king, he attempted portrait painting and large mural decorations. In 1757, Hogarth succeeded the son of Sir James Thornhill as sergeant-painter to the king.
[2] Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) was a historical and portrait painter. In 1768, he was unanimously elected President of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in London, and at the same time knighted by King George III. In 1784, he succeeded Allan Ramsay, as painter in ordinary to the king. Burke dubbed him “the first Englishman who gave an added glory to his country by the exhibition of an elegant art”.
[3] Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) was a prodigious portrait and landscape painter: aged fourteen, and with no other training than a lonely study of nature, he had already proved a true talent for landscape painting. Despite rivalries with other prolific artists of his day, all recognised his immense talent in portrait and historical painting.
[4] George Romney (1734-1802) was a historical and portrait painter. He was ineligible to become a member of the Royal Academy, despite his success, as he had never exhibited there; the decided hostility shown him by Sir Joshua Reynolds was no doubt the cause.
[5] Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) was a portrait painter who showed a marked talent for drawing at an early age. Son of a pub landlord, he received very little formal education; instead he was encouraged by an old historical painter and member of the Academy named William Hoake. At seventeen, Lawrence carried off the Society of Arts prize and a year later was admitted as a student of the Royal Academy. He soon gained the public favour, and that of the Royal Family as well, being made First Painter to the King at the age of twenty-two. Made Academician in 1794, his fame increased daily, though this waned after his scandalous involvement with the Princess of Wales, Caroline of Brunswick. In 1815, Lawrence was knighted by the Regent and later on elected President of the Academy.
[6] Benjamin West (1738-1820), was an American-born portrait and historical painter from English stock, discovered at the age of nine for his pen-and-ink sketches and taken to Philadelphia to be tutored by Dr William Smith. When he was twenty-two years old, he travelled to Europe, spending four years in Rome, Bologna, and Florence, before going to London, where he arrived in the summer of 1763, and resolved to remain.
[7] John Singleton Copley (1738-1815), was an American-born historical and portrait painter, elected successively Associate and Member of the Royal Academy (1777, 1779). His best works are: Death of Lord Chatham, Death of Major Pierson, Charles I Ordering the Arrest of Five Members of the House of Commons, The Coronation of Jane Grey, and a Resurrection of Our Lord.
[8] Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), historical painter, was born at Zurich, Switzerland, where he studied at the college in his native town. He then came to England, where, encouraged by Reynolds, he devoted himself to painting. Amongst his works are titles which should be mentioned: Hubert and Prince Arthur, Caius Gracchus, The Grief of Mona, Death of Cardinal de Beaufort, and A Scene from Macbeth. The best work of this very feeble painter is his Titania and Bottom, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
[9] Sir David Wilkie (1785-1841) was a genre painter who, after the death of Sir Thomas Lawrence in 1830, was made Painter-in-Ordinary to the King, who knighted him in 1836. In 1840, he began a journey passing through Germany, Vienna, and Constantinople to Jerusalem, spending several months there. He then embarked for Alexandria, but died suddenly on board in sight of Gibraltar, in 1841.
[10] Richard Wilson (1714-1782), a landscape painter, was only known as a portrait painter until 1749, the time of his first journey to Italy. In Rome he met Joseph Vernet, who, seeing one of Wilson’s landscapes, exchanged it for one of his own pictures, and strongly advised the English artist to continue this art. It was not until 1760, the year when he exhibited his landscape Niobe, that Wilson became known. Neither artists nor the public cared for his talent. He was, however, one of the thirty-six members at the foundation of the Royal Academy in 1768, and later in 1776 he succeeded the historical painter, Francis Hayman, as Librarian to the Academy.
[11] John Crome (1768-1821), was a landscape painter, known as Old Crome, to distinguish him from his eldest son, John Bernay Crome. He worked his way up from painting signs, to picturesque scenes taken from the environs of Norwich, for which he found buyers. Although he was very poor, ignorant, and by no means good looking, his perseverance, and, to a great extent, his enlightened genius with regard to Nature, gained him many excellent friends. Inspired by Dutch and Flemish painting, it is true that this work shows a beautiful and true simplicity, and that it is carried out with the utmost sincerity, revealing himself by the astonishing faithfulness of the sky, overcast with light clouds, and by the intelligent composition of the foreground. He helped found the Norwich Society of Artists in 1805, with which he was an assiduous exhibitor. He rarely sent pictures to the Royal Academy in London, only about twelve between 1807 and 1818, and these are entirely landscapes, except The Interior of a Forge from 1809.
[12] John Constable (1776-1837), was a landscape painter, who commenced by painting views of the surroundings of his native place. In 1795, he went to London and in 1799 he was admitted as student at the Royal Academy School. At this time, Constable painted a few portraits, and made one or two attempts at historical pictures, but he gave this up almost immediately, and devoted himself to landscape. He was elected Associate of the Academy in 1819, after having exhibited an important picture, A View of the River Stour, but he did not become an Academician until 1829. Constable’s talent was by no means appreciated by the public. His pictures, with which his house was crowded, did not sell, yet he was already famous in France, and had received a gold medal at the Salon in 1824.
[13] Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851). Without counting the first years when Turner showed his talent in watercolour painting, his career may be divided into three periods, in which he painted in three distinct styles. In the foremost of these, up to the year 1805, when The Shipwreck was painted, he is unmistakably under the influence of Wilson and the Dutch masters. After this, and until his first journey to Italy in 1819, Claude Lorrain entirely guides his style. In this year, 1819, after his Italian journey, Turner’s style underwent a singular change. From this time he paints in full light, with no contrasting shade, employing all the colours of the rainbow, and working in brilliant tints and primary tones – purple, blue, and orange. During the last twenty years of his life Turner’s ever-increasing fiery love for effects in light and colour caused him to produce the most extraordinary works, in which every form is defined only by unsteady limitations of most subtle and effulgent colours proceeding from the iridescence of solar light.
[14] Arthur Hughes (1852-1915) does not, strictly speaking, belong to the early Pre-Raphaelite school, as he was born in 1832, he was, therefore, much too young to be a member. Nevertheless, the cultivation of his great talent, was undoubtedly the result of the Pre-Raphaelite principles, and no true member would refuse to acknowledge him as one of themselves. At the age of twenty he exhibited an Ophelia, painted with admirable feeling.
[15] Sir Joseph Noel Paton (1821-1901), who was elected Painter to the Queen of Scotland, in 1866, and knighted in the following year, was senior to the Pre-Raphaelites by about ten years, and had already gained a reputation in 1850. His two pictures of Oberon and Titania, (The Quarrel, and The Reconciliation), were painted before this date, but the extreme sympathy which he showed the new school, as well as his scrupulously detailed execution, have caused him to be regarded as a Pre-Raphaelite. The movement certainly had an influence on his later works, and to it he owes his admirable custom of faithfully following nature in the landscapes which form part of his splendid fairy works.