Thomas Rowlandson
Drawimgs
How to Vault in the Saddle
Cat Like Courtship
Distress
A Musical Family
A Man Driving a Team of Six Girls
Comfort in the Gout
The Corsican Spider in his Web
Standing Nude Man Supporting Fainting Female. Ludovisi Gaul in the Uffizi
A Little Tighter
Beauties
Odd-Characters
Comfort in the Gout Doctor Gallipot placing his Fortune at the feet of his Mistress
Dr. Botherum, the Mountebank
Old Maids at a Sale of Curiosities
A French Dentist Shewing a Specimen of His Artificial Teeth and False Palates
Portsmouth Point
A View on the Banks of the Thames
None But the Brave Deserve the Fair
Road to Ruin
Six Stages of Marring a Face
The Cobbler's Cure for a Scolding Wife
Glow Worms, Muck Worms
The Downfall of Monopoly
A visit to my Uncle's
The Fall of Achilles
Chelsea Reach
One Tree Hill, Greenwich Park
Quaker in Love
Christmas Gambols
The Modern Babel, or Giants Crushed by a Weight of Evidence
Diana and Her Nymphs Bathing
The Fall of Phaeton
Paris Diligence
Twelfth Night Characters
The Harmonic Society
The Peep Show
The Dull Husband
Grog on Board
A Flat between Two Sharps
General Cheathem's Marvellous Return from His Exhibition of Fire Works
Hunt The Slippers
Doctor
Pray Remember the Blind
Here's Your Potatoes, Four Full Pounds for Two Pence
The Champion of the People
An Eating House
Comparative Anatomy Study
The Pit of Acheron or The Birth of the Plagues of England
The Inspection
Death looking at vanity
The Rustic Choir
Witches in a Hay Loft
Archimedes
Genius Crumpled
Tight Lacing
Doctors differ----
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Thomas Rowlandson (/ˈroʊləndsən/; 13 July 1756 – 21 April 1827)[1] was an English artist and caricaturist.
Biography
Rowlandson was born in Old Jewry, in the City of London. He was baptised on 23 July 1757 at St Mary Colechurch, London to William and Mary Rowlandson. His father, William, had been a weaver, but had moved into trading supplies for the textile industry and after overextending himself was declared bankrupt in 1759. Life became difficult for him in London and, in late 1759, he moved his family to Richmond, North Yorkshire. Thomas' uncle James died in 1764, and his widow Jane probably provided both the funds and accommodation which allowed Thomas to attend school in London.[2]
Rowlandson was educated at the school of Dr Barvis in Soho Square, then "an academy of some celebrity," where one of his classmates was Richard Burke, son of the politician Edmund Burke. As a schoolboy, Rowlandson "drew humourous characters of his master and many of his scholars before he was ten years old," covering the margins of his schoolbooks with his artwork.[3]
In 1765 or 1766 he started at the Soho Academy.[2] There is no documentary evidence that Rowlandson took drawing classes at the mainly business-oriented school, but it seems likely, as on leaving school in 1772, he became a student at the Royal Academy.[4] According to his obituary of 22 April 1827 in The Gentlemen's Magazine, Rowlandson was sent to Paris at the age of 16 (1772), and spent two years studying in a "drawing academy."[3] there. In Paris he studied drawing "the human figure" and continued developing his youthful skill in caricature.[3] It was on his return to London that he took classes at the Royal Academy, then based at Somerset House.[3]
Rowlandson spent six years studying at the Royal Academy, but about a third of this time was spent in Paris where he may have studied under Jean-Baptiste Pigalle.[5] He later made frequent tours to the Continent, enriching his portfolios with numerous sketches of life and character. In 1775 he exhibited a drawing of Dalilah Payeth Sampson a Visit while in Prison at Gaza at the Royal Academy and two years later received a silver medal for a bas-relief figure. He was spoken of as a promising student. On the death of his aunt, he inherited £7,000 with which he plunged into the dissipations of the town and was known to sit at the gaming-table for 36 hours at a stretch.
Discomforts of an Epicure, a self-portrait from 1787, showed that he could aim his caricatures at himself
In time poverty overtook him; and the friendship and examples of James Gillray and Henry William Bunbury seem to have suggested caricature as a means of earning a living. His drawing of Vauxhall, shown in the Royal Academy exhibition of 1784, had been engraved by Pollard, and the print was a success. Rowlandson was largely employed by Rudolph Ackermann, the art publisher, who in 1809—issued in his Poetical Magazine The Schoolmaster's Tour—a series of plates with illustrative verses by Dr. William Combe. They were the most popular of the artist's works. Again engraved by Rowlandson himself in 1812, and issued under the title of the Tour of Dr Syntax in Search of the Picturesque, they had attained a fifth edition by 1813, and were followed in 1820 by Dr Syntax in Search of Consolation, and in 1821 by the Third Tour of Dr Syntax in Search of a Wife. He also produced a body of erotic prints and woodcuts.
The same collaboration of designer, author and publisher appeared in the English Dance of Death, issued in 1814–16 and in the Dance of Life, 1817. Rowlandson also illustrated Smollett, Goldsmith and Sterne, and his designs will be found in The Spirit of the Public Journals (1825), The English Spy (1825), and The Humorist (1831).
Vauxhall Gardens (1785). The two women in the centre are Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and her sister Lady Duncannon. The man seated at the table on the left is Samuel Johnson, with James Boswell to his left and Oliver Goldsmith to his right. To the right the actress and author Mary Darby Robinson stands next to the Prince of Wales, later George IV
Rowlandson's designs were usually done in outline with the reed-pen, and delicately washed with colour. They were then etched by the artist on the copper, and afterwards aquatinted—usually by a professional engraver, the impressions being finally coloured by hand. As a designer he was characterised by his facility and ease of draughtsmanship. He dealt less frequently with politics than his fierce contemporary, Gillray, but commonly touching, in a rather gentle spirit, the various aspects and incidents of social life. His most artistic work is to be found among the more careful drawings of his earlier period; but even among the exaggerated caricature of his later time we find hints that this master of the humorous might have attained to the beautiful had he so willed.
His work included a personification of the United Kingdom named John Bull who was developed from about 1790 in conjunction with other British satirical artists such as Gillray and George Cruikshank.
His patron and friend Matthew Michell collected hundreds of his paintings which Michell displayed at his country residence, Grove House in Enfield, Middlesex. After Michell's death his nephew, Sir Henry Onslow, sold the contents of Grove House at an eight-day sale in November 1818. One of the most well-known of Rowlandson's paintings is "Hengar House the seat of Matthw Mitchell [sic] Esqr., Cornwall" (1812) which was sold at the Sir Richard Onslow sale, Sotheby's, 15 July 1959. Another of Rowlandson's paintings is "Glorious Defeat of the Dutch Navy Octr 10 1797, by Admirals Lord Duncan and Sir Richard Onslow, with a View Drawn on the Spot of the Six Dutch Line of Battle Ships Captured and Brought into Yarmouth" (1797). Rowlandson also painted early scenes of Brighton where Michell's sister, Lady Anne Onslow, lived after the death of her husband Sir Richard Onslow, 1st Baronet. Rowlandson's painting "Mr Michell's Picture Gallery at Grove House, Enfield" was sold by Sotheby's, London, on 4 July 2002.
Rowlandson died at his lodgings at 1 James Street, Adelphi, London, after a prolonged illness, on 21 April 1827. He was buried at St Paul's in Covent Garden on 28 April 1827 aged 72 years.
Notes
"The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography". 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/24221.
Payne and Payne. pp.8–14
Rowlandson obituary in Sylvanus Urban, The Gentleman's Magazine, and Historical Chronicle, Volume 97, Part 1, Jan–June 1827 (London: J B Nichols, 1827), page 564
Payne and Payne. p.15
Payne and Payne. p.26
References
Falk, Bernard (1952). Thomas Rowlandson: His Life and Art. Beechhurst Press.
Payne, Matthew and Payne, James (2010), Regarding Thomas Rowlandson 1757–1827, His Life, Art & Acquaintance, Hogarth Arts. ISBN 978-0-9554063-5-5
Sources
British Museum, London
Thomas Rowlandson at the Victoria and Albert Museum
Lewis Walpole Collection Yale
Chris Beetles
University of Liege
Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, Mary Dorothy George. Vol VI 1938, Vol VII, 1942 VOL VIII 1947, VOL IX 1949
Dictionary of British Cartoonists and caricaturists 1730–1980 Bryant and Heneage, Scolar Press 1994
Rudolph Ackermann (1808), Microcosm of London, Illustrated by Augustus Charles Pugin and Thomas Rowlandson. 1904 reprint + Illustrations
Artist
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