JAMESONE, GEORGE, the first eminent painter produced by Britain, was born at Aberdeen towards the end of the 16th century. The year 1586 has been given as the precise era of his birth, but this we can disprove by an extract which has been furnished to us from the borough records of his native town, and which shows that the eldest child of his parents (a daughter) was born at such a period of this year, as rendered it impossible that he could have been born within some months of it. It is alone certain that the date of the painters birth was posterior to 1586. Of the private life of this distinguished man few particulars are known; and of these few a portion rest on rather doubtful authority...

Lely, Sir Peter, original name PIETER VAN DER FAES (b. Oct. 14, 1618, Soest, Westphalia [Germany]--d. Dec. 7, 1680, London, Eng.), Baroque portrait painter known for his Van Dyck-influenced likenesses of the mid-17th-century English aristocracy. The origin of the name Lely is uncertain.

Kneller, Sir Godfrey, BARONET, Isaac Newton, portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1689 Corbis-Bettmann original name GOTTFRIED KNILLER (b. Aug. 8, 1646/49, Lübeck [Germany]--d. Oct. 19, 1723, London), painter who became the leading portraitist in England during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Opposite: Wren.

Thornhill became the history painter and sergeant painter to George I and George II, master of the Painters' Company in 1720, fellow of the Royal Society in 1723, and member of Parliament from 1722 to 1734 and was knighted in 1720.

"Morning," oil painting, part of the "Marriage à la Mode" series by William Hogarth,. . . SuperStock (b. Nov. 10, 1697, London--d. Oct. 26, 1764, London), the first great English-born artist to attract admiration abroad.

Reynolds, Sir Joshua b. July 16, 1723, Plympton, Devon, Eng.--d. Feb. 23, 1792, London, portrait painter and aesthetician who dominated English artistic life in the middle and late 18th century.

Baptized May 14, 1727, Sudbury, Suffolk, Eng.--d. Aug. 2, 1788, London, portrait and landscape painter, the most versatile English painter of the 18th century. Some of his early portraits show the sitters grouped in a landscape ("Mr. and Mrs. Andrews," c. 1750).

West, Benjamin (b. Oct. 10, 1738, near Springfield, Pa., U.S.--d. March 11, 1820, London, Eng.), American-born painter of historical, religious, and mythological subjects who had a profound influence on the development of historical painting in Britain. He was historical painter to George III (1772-1801), a founder of the Royal Academy (1768), and in 1792 he succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as its president.

Barry, James (b. Oct. 11, 1741, Cork, County Cork, Ire.--d. Feb. 22, 1806, London, Eng.), Irish-born artist whose major work, "The Progress of Human Culture," is a series of six monumental paintings of historical and allegorical subjects done for the Great Room of the Royal Society of Arts, London.

(b. Nov. 28, 1757, London--d. Aug. 12, 1827, London), English poet, painter (see photograph), engraver, and visionary mystic whose hand-illustrated series of lyrical and epic poems, beginning with Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794), form one of the most strikingly original and independent bodies of work in the Western cultural tradition. Blake is now regarded as one of the earliest and greatest figures of Romanticism.

Blake Museum on the web

John Opie on the Internet (Art Cyclopedia)

Opie, John (b. May 1761, St. Agnes, Cornwall, Eng.--d. April 9, 1807, London), English portrait and historical painter popular in England during the late 18th century.
Opie received art instruction from John Wolcot ("Peter Pindar") in Truro from about 1775 and in 1781 was successfully launched in London as the "Cornish wonder," a self-taught genius.

Morland, George (b. June 26, 1763, London, Eng.--d. Oct. 29, 1804, London), English genre, landscape, and animal painter whose work was much imitated in England during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
At age 10, Morland exhibited sketches at the Royal Academy and was apprenticed from 1777 to 1784 to his father, Henry Robert Morland, a painter and picture restorer. In 1780 his first signed engraving was published, and in 1781 his first oil painting, "A Hovel With Asses," was exhibited at the Academy. He studied briefly at the Royal Academy schools and held his first one-man show of paintings on private premises. In July 1786 he married Anne Ward, sister to William Ward, the engraver. After settling in London, Morland soon abandoned portraiture for sentimental rustic genre, which, through Ward's engravings, satisfied a steady public demand for the picturesque.

Lawrence, Sir Thomas (b. April 13, 1769, Bristol, Gloucestershire, Eng.--d. Jan. 7, 1830, London), painter and draftsman who was the most fashionable English portrait painter of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Turner, J.M.W.,
"Rain, Steam, and Speed--the Great Western Railway," oil on canvas by J.M.W. Turner, 1844; in. . .
Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY in full JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER (b. April 23, 1775, London, Eng.--d. Dec. 19, 1851, London), English Romantic landscape painter whose expressionistic studies of light, colour, and atmosphere were unmatched in their range and sublimity.