Biography

English painter, part of a family of painters. He entered the Royal Academy Schools, London, in 1769 before becoming a pupil of Allan Ramsay, whom he assisted on various portraits of George III and Queen Charlotte and for whom he later worked as deputy. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1773 and showed largely portrait works until 1785, when he diversified into animal painting, producing such works as the watercolour Dead Pheasants (British Museum, London). From c. 1805 onwards landscapes were his dominant subject. He contributed several plates to Robert John Thornton's idiosyncratic Temple of Flora (London, 1798-1807), including those for the Blue Passion Flower and the Night Blowing Cereus, and provided drawings for the illustrations to William Taplin's Sportsman's Cabinet (London, 1803). His copies of landscapes and cattle pictures by such Dutch artists as Paulus Potter, Meindert Hobbema and Jacob van Ruisdael were often mistaken for originals.

He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1773 to 1827.