Section

BIOGRAPHIES OF BRITISH ARTISTS

Edited by Mark Quinlan

  1. A
  2. B
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  8. H
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  12. L
  13. M
  14. N
  15. O
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  17. Q
  18. R
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  24. X
  25. Y
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CALCOTT, SIR AUGUSTUS WALL

Augustus Wall Callcott was born on 20 February 1779. His father was a builder and his brother Dr John Wall Callcott, would become a noted composer. Augustus initially trained as a musician and was a chorister at Westminster Abbey for six years under Dr Cooke. However, he chose not to follow the musical career mapped [...]

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CALDERON, FRANK

William Frank Calderon was born in 1865. He was the third son of the painter Philip Hermogenes Calderon, Keeper of the Royal Academy. Frank was educated at the University College School, and at the age of 14, obtained the Trevelyan Goodall Scholarship. He later obtained the Slade Scholarship and studied there under Professor Alphonse Legros. [...]

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CALDERON, PHILIP HERMOGENES

Philip Hermogenes Calderon was born at Poitiers, France on 3 May 1833. His mother was French and his father Juan Calderon was a professor of Spanish literature at King’s College, London and a former Roman Catholic priest, who had converted to Anglicanism. The young Calderon initially planned to study engineering, but became so interested in [...]

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CALMAN, MEL

Melville Calman was born on 19 May 1931 at Stamford Hill, London. He was the youngest of the three children of Clement Calman, a Russian-Jewish timber merchant, and his Lithuanian wife Anna. As a child, Mel was sent to Cambridge to avoid the Blitz during the Second World War and was educated there at the [...]

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CAMERON, SIR DAVID YOUNG

David Young Cameron was born on 28 June 1865 at Glasgow in Scotland. He was the son of a clergyman. Destined for a commercial career, he began studying at evening classes at the Glasgow School of Art and in 1885 at the age of 20, entered the Royal Institution, Edinburgh, as a full-time student. He [...]

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CAREW, JOHN EDWARD

John Edward Carew is believed to have been born in 1782 at Tramore in County Waterford, Ireland. He was son of a stone-cutter named John Carew. He is believed to have trained in Dublin and was certainly in London by 1809, where he obtained the position of assistant to the sculptor Sir Richard Westmacott. From [...]

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CARLINE, HILDA

Hilda Carline was born in north London in 1889 and her family moved to Oxford when she was three. Her brothers Richard and Sydney all became artists and Hilda was left to potter about Oxford, until, at the age of 24, her father let her go to an art school in Hampstead run by Percyval [...]

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CARLINE, NANCY

Nancy Mona Higgins was born on 30 November 1909 in London. Her family were shopkeepers (owners of the store Jones & Higgins in Peckham Rye, which closed in 1980). Her father Douglas Higgins was killed in the Great War. Her mother, Mona Higgins was an Australian, with a fervent belief in the importance of education, [...]

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CARR, HENRY MARVELL

Henry Marvell Carr was born in Leeds on 16 August 1884. His parents were Matthew Marvell Carr and Clara Martha Carr. Henry was educated at Leeds Modern School, progressing to the Leeds School of Art, later moving to London to train under William Rothenstein at the RCA. His early career was interrupted by the Great [...]

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CARR, TOMMY

Thomas James Carr was born into an affluent Belfast family on 21 September 1909. His father was a stockbroker and his parents represented the union between the Carr and Workman dynasties, with interests in stockbroking, banking, linen manufacture and shipping. His father, also Tom, and his mother, Mary Workman, of the Workman and Clark shipyard owners, encouraged him [...]

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CARRICK, ALEXANDER

Alexander Carrick was born in 1882 in Musselburgh, Scotland. His father was a blacksmith. In 1897 he enrolled as a student at Edinburgh College of Art and was apprenticed as a stone mason working in the yard of William Birnie Rhind. He won the Queen’s Prize permitting him to study for two years at South [...]

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CARRINGTON, DORA

Dora de Houghton Carrington was born on 29 March 1893 at Hereford. She was the daughter of a Liverpool merchant and was brought up in Bedford. She attended a girls’ high school which placed a strong emphasis on art and her parents paid for her to take lessons in drawing. She won a scholarship to [...]

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CARTER, B A R

Bernard Arthur Ruston Carter was born at Kenilworth, Warwickshire on 15 October 1909. His father, who became a schools inspector and history textbook writer, wanted him to enter the diplomatic service. So Carter lived with a family in France and perfected French, before gaining a good degree in the languages tripos at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, [...]

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CATTERMOLE, GEORGE

George Cattermole was born on 10 August 1800 at Dickleburgh, near Diss, Norfolk. From the age of 14 Cattermole worked with his brother Richard for the antiquarian John Britton, producing architectural drawings. That training equipped him with a repertoire of accurate architectural backgrounds. Britton’s English Cathedrals, 1832-1836 contained much of his work. He contributed illustrations [...]

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CAULFIELD, PATRICK

Patrick Caulfield was born in London on 30 January 1936. He spent his wartime childhood in Lancashire. Before undertaking National Service, he worked for an advertising company and began night-school art classes, whilst serving in the Royal Air Force. He won a place to study as a commercial painter at the Chelsea School of Art [...]

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CHADWICK, HELEN

Helen Chadwick was born in Croydon on 18 May 1953. She studied at the Croydon College of Art, Brighton Polytechnic (1973-76) and the Chelsea School of Art (1976-77). Her early works included Viral Landscapes, a series of photographs from the late 1980s where blotches (actually magnified images of cells from her body) are superimposed over [...]

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CHADWICK, LYNN

Lynn Chadwick was born on 24 November 1914 at Barnes in Surrey. After leaving Merchant Taylors’ School, he went, in the late 1930s, to work as an architectural draughtsman at various design practices. At one of these, he met Rodney Thomas, who was fully abreast of recent developments in contemporary European architecture and design. Chadwick [...]

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CHALON, ALFRED

 
Alfred Edward Chalon was born in Geneva, Switzerland on 15 February 1781. The Chalon family were French Protestants who had fled religious persecution in France. Odd as it may seem to the modern mind, at the end of the 18th century, the notion of training officers to command troops of the British Army was an [...]

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CHANTREY, SIR FRANCIS

Francis Legatt Chantrey was born at Norton near Sheffield on 7 April 1782, the son of a carpenter. Aged 15 he was on the verge of being apprenticed to a grocer in Sheffield, when having seen some wood-carving in a shop-window, he announced his wish to become a carver and was placed with Mr Ramsey, [...]

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CHARNLEY, BRYAN

Bryan Charnley was born on 20 September 1949 at Stockton on Tees.  With his twin brother, he grew up in London, Chiselhurst and Cranfield, where his father was a senior lecturer. In 1967, at the age of 17, Bryan suffered a nervous breakdown, but took up a place at the Leicester School of Art in [...]

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CHEERE, SIR HENRY

Henry Cheere was born in London in 1703 and was of French descent. He was apprenticed in 1718 to the mason Robert Harsthorne and by 1726 had established his own sculptor’s yard near St Margaret’s, Westminster, working in marble, bronze, stone and lead. He worked initially with Henry Scheemakers (d. 1748) on the vast Monument [...]

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CHINNERY, GEORGE

George Chinnery was born in London on 7 January 1774. He was the son of the writing master and amateur painter William Chinnery, Jr. His grandfather, the calligrapher William Chinnery, Sr, was the author of Writing and Drawing Made Easy, Amusing and Instructive. In his early youth George demonstrated a precocious artistic talent for art. [...]

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CHUBB, RALPH

Ralph Nicholas Chubb was born at Harpemden in Hertfordshire on 8 February 1892. Chubb attended St Albans School and Selwyn College, Cambridge, before serving as an officer in the army in the Great War. He developed neurasthenia and was invalided out in 1918. From 1919 to 1922 he studied at the Slade. It was there [...]

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CIPRIANI, GIOVANNI BATISTA

Giovanni Batista Cipriani was born at Florence, Italy in 1727. His first lessons were given him by a Florentine of English descent, Ignatius Hugford, and he then studied under Anton Domenico Gabbiani. He was in Rome in the period 1750-53, where he became acquainted with Sir William Chambers, the architect, and Joseph Wilton, the sculptor, [...]

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CLAPPERTON, THOMAS

Thomas John Clapperton was born in Bridge Street, Galashiels, Scotland on 14 September 1879. He was the son of the pioneering Scottish Borders photographer Robert Clapperton. Thomas was educated at the Galashiels Mechanics Institute, where he secured a scholarship to Glasgow School of Art in 1899. He attended the Kennington School of Art and the RA [...]

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CLARK, PHILIP LINDSEY

Philip Lindsey Clark was born in London in 1889. He was the son of the distinguished sculptor Robert Lindsey Clark. He was educated at Douglas House School, Cheltenham 1905-10 and at the City and Guilds School, Kensington 1910-14. In common with many of his contemporaries, upon the outbreak of the Great War, Lindsey Clark enlisted [...]

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CLAUSEN, SIR GEORGE

George Clausen was born in London on 18 April 1852. He was the son of a Danish interior decorator. At 14 George was apprenticed to the drawing office of Messrs Trollope, a London firm of decorators. While working there, he attended evening classes at the National Art Training School, South Kensington, but his first important [...]

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CLAXTON, MARSHALL

Marshall Claxton was born at Bolton, Lancashire on 12 May 1811. He was the son of the Wesleyan Methodist minister, the Reverend Marshall Claxton and his wife Diana. As a child, Marshall displayed a particular aptitude for drawing and at the age of 17, became a pupil of John Jackson, RA. He entered the Royal [...]

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CLOUGH, PRUNELLA

Cara Clough-Taylor was born in Knightsbridge, London on 11 November 1919. She was educated privately by her father, the Board of Trade official and poet Eric Taylor, before enrolling at the Chelsea School of Art in 1937. Her maternal forbears were artistic, but her mother did not encourage her as a painter, perhaps because her [...]

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COATES, GEORGE

George James Coates was born on 9 August 1869 at Emerald Hill, Melbourne, Australia. He was the son of John Coates, bookbinder, and his Irish-born wife Elizabeth Irwin. He attended St James’s Grammar School and at 15 was apprenticed to the stained-glass firm, Ferguson and Urie. He first studied art under W Dellit at the [...]

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COLDSTREAM, SIR WILLIAM

William Menzies Coldstream was born at Belford, Northumberland on 28 February 1908. He was the son of a doctor and grew up in north London. He left school at the age of twelve owing to illness and was privately educated. He attended the Slade School 1926-29 and formed friendships with Claude Rogers and Rodrigo Moynihan. [...]

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COLE, THOMAS

Thomas Cole was born at Bolton in Lancashire on 1 February 1801. In his youth he was trained as an engraver of woodblocks used for printing calico. Because he had no formal art education, his aesthetic ideas derived from poetry and literature, influences that were strongly to mark his paintings. The Cole family migrated to [...]

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COLLIER, THE HON JOHN

The Honourable John Maler Collier was born on 27 January 1850. He was the son of a talented and successful family. His grandfather, John Collier, was a Quaker merchant who became an MP. His father, who was an MP and Attorney General, was created the first Lord Monkswell. In due course, Collier became an integral [...]

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COLLINGWOOD, WILLIAM

William Gershom Collingwood was born on 6 August 1854 at Liverpool. He was introduced to the Lake District at an early age, accompanying his father on sketching tours. After a brilliant academic career at Oxford, where he was a pupil of John Ruskin, he married and settled at Gillhead, Windermere. During the summer of 1873 [...]

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COLLINS, CECIL

Cecil Collins was born in Plymouth, Devon on 23 March 1908. He came from an impoverished family background. He was apprenticed to an engineering firm as a mechanic in Plymouth Docks for a year, before winning scholarships to Plymouth School of Art (1924-27) and the Royal College of Art in London (1927-31). At the RCA [...]

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COLLINSON, JAMES

James Collinson was born in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire on 9 May 1825. He was the son of a bookseller and printer. Collinson was living in London by 1846, when he exhibited a study of a head at the Society of British Artists. He would have met Millais, Rossetti and Hunt as fellow students at the Royal [...]

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COLQUHOUN, ROBERT

Robert Colquhoun was born in Kilmarnock on 20 December 1914. He was educated at Kilmarnock Academy and won a scholarship to the Glasgow School of Art, where he met Robert MacBryde. They formed an intimate and lifelong friendship of such mutual devotion it caused them to be known as ‘The Two Roberts’. Colquhoun joined MacBryde [...]

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COLTON, ROBERT

William Robert Colton was born on 25 December 1867 in Paris. He studied sculpture under William Silver Frith (1850-1924), pupil and successor to Aimeé-Jules Dalou at the Lambeth School of Art. Colton entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1889, where he trained under Boehm and also studied in Paris. At the age of 20, he [...]

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CONDER, CHARLES

Charles Edward Conder was born on 24 October 1868 in London He was the third child of James Conder and his first wife, Ann Ayre. In 1870 Charles was taken to India where his father had been appointed executive railway engineer, but after his mother’s death in 1873, was sent to England to be educated [...]

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CONNARD, PHILIP

Philip Connard was born at Southport in Lancashire on 24 March 1875. He was the son of David Connard and was given a minimum of state schooling, before joining the building trade as a house-painter. He attended evening classes in art, won a scholarship to the National Art Training School, South Kensington in 1896 and [...]

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CONSTABLE, JOHN

John Constable was born at East Bergholt, Suffolk on 11 June 1776. He was the son of a wealthy corn merchant. He spent several years working in the family business, before obtaining permission to study painting full-time. Prior to entering the RA Schools in 1799, he spent time with the local plumber and artist, John [...]

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COOK, BERYL

Eleanor Beryl Cook was born at Egham in Surrey on 10 September 1926. She was one of four sisters. She never knew her father and was brought up by her mother and grandfather. Moving to London in 1943, she became a showgirl in a touring production of The Gypsy Princess. She also worked in the [...]

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COOKE, JEAN

Jean Esme Oregon Cooke was born on 18 February 1927 in London. She spent the first years of her life in her father’s grocery and hardware shop at Blackheath in Kent. Her mother didn’t believe in schools and her daughter hid under the shop counter until she was seven, listening to the exchanges with the [...]

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COOPER, ABRAHAM

Abraham Cooper was born in Red Lion Street, London on 8 September 1787. He was the son of a tobacconist, who later kept an inn, first at Holloway and then at Edmonton. At the age of 13, Abraham became an employee of Astley’s Amphitheatre, managed by his uncle. Astley’s was a great 19th-century attraction and [...]

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COOPER, ALFRED EGERTON

Alfred Egerton Cooper was born at Tettenhall, near Wolverhampton in 1883. He attended Bilston School of Art and the Royal College of Art, London, from which he graduated in 1911. While still a student, Cooper entered a competition for which John Singer Sargent was one of the judges. Impressed by Cooper’s work, Sargent invited the [...]

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COOPER, THOMAS SIDNEY

Thomas Sidney Cooper was born at Canterbury, Kent on 26 September 1803. At the age of five, his father deserted the family. As a child, Thomas demonstrated strong artistic inclinations, but the circumstances of his family did not allow him to receive training. By the time he was twelve years old, he had found work [...]

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COPE, CHARLES WEST

Charles West Cope was born in Leeds on 28 July 1811. He was the son of a painter. On the recommendation of Henry Sass, he entered the Royal Academy Schools as a student in 1828 and is known to have studied in Paris. He then spent two years residence in Italy, where he studied fresco [...]

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COPE, SIR ARTHUR

Arthur Stockdale Cope was born in London on 2 November 1857. He was one of the ten children of Charles West Cope (1811-90), the successful history and genre painter. Queen Victoria used to visit the Cope studio occasionally and once asked to see his children, among them, Arthur, who remembered the incident distinctly. Cope trained [...]

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COPLEY, JOHN SINGLETON

John Singleton Copley was born in Boston, Massachusetts on 3 July 1737. He was the son of Richard and Mary Singleton Copley, who were both Irish. His mother kept a tobacco shop on Long Wharf. Nothing is known of John’s schooling and he is commonly believed to have been self-taught as an artist, but he [...]

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COPNALL, BAINBRIDGE

Edward Bainbridge Copnall was born in 1903 at Cape Town, South Africa. He was the son of the Edward White Copnall and nephew of the celebrated Liverpudlian portraitist Frank Thomas Copnall (1870-1948). Edward was raised at Horsham in Sussex and was educated at the Liverpool Institute and Skinners School, then trained at Goldsmiths’ College in [...]

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CORBOULD, EDWARD HENRY

Edward Henry Corbould was born on 5 December 1815 at Great Coram Street, Russell Square, London. He was descended from a distinguished family of artists and was son of the artist Henry Corbould (1787-1844) and Mary Pickles. Edward was educated at Palace School, Enfield, then became a pupil of Henry Sass (1788-1844), who ran an [...]

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CORBOULD, HENRY

Henry Corbould was born in the parish of St Andrew, Holborn on 11 August 1787. He studied painting with his father Richard Corbould (1757-1831) and was at an early age admitted a student of the RA under Henry Fuseli, where he obtained a silver medal for a study from the life. While at the RA, [...]

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COSWAY, RICHARD

Richard Cosway was born in Devon in 1742, the son of a Tiverton schoolmaster. In 1754 he won a prize for drawing in the ‘under 14 category’ from the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, founded that same year. ‘Encouragement’ included cash prizes to boys and girls for the art of drawing, [...]

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COTES, FRANCIS

Francis Cotes was born in London on 20 May 1726. He was the eldest son of Robert Cotes and Elizabeth Lynn. His father was an apothecary, who originally hailed from Galway in Ireland, while his younger brother Samuel (1734-1818) was also destined to become an artist, specialising in miniatures. Francis trained under the portrait painter [...]

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COTMAN, JOHN SELL

John Sell Cotman was born in Norwich on 16 May 1782. He was the eldest son of a haberdasher. He moved to London at the age of 16 and was based there for the rest of his life, although he travelled and painted extensively in Yorkshire. The summer of 1799, he spent with Dr Thomas [...]

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COWPER, FRANK CADOGAN

Frank Cadogan Cowper was born at Wicken Rectory in Northamptonshire on 16 October 1877. His father was Frank Cowper, author of several works on cruising and romantic tales, who had married Edith, daughter of the Reverend E Cadogan. From Cranleigh School, Frank was raised in the strict faith of the Plymouth Brethren and went to [...]

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COX, DAVID

David Cox was born on 29 April 1783 at Deritend, Birmingham. His father was a worker in iron. His mother, who believed her son too fragile to undertake smithing, apprenticed him to a brooch and locket painter. There, he adorned small items of jewellery with miniature designs. He soon gained employment as a colour grinder [...]

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COXON, RAYMOND

Raymond Coxon was born at Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent on 18 August 1896. He was the second child of five girls and two boys born to James and Georgina Coxon, who had herself had some art training. Educated locally at Leek High School, Raymond impressed his teachers with his drawing capability. During the Great War, he served [...]

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COZENS, JOHN ROBERT

John Robert Cozens was born in London in 1752. He was the son of the Russian-born Eton drawing master and watercolourist Alexander Cozens. His father is an important figure in the history of English landscape, as he is probably the first British painter to embark on a systematic analysis of the subject and he identified [...]

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CRANE, WALTER

Walter Crane was born in Liverpool on 15 August 1845. He was the second son of the painter Thomas Crane. Walter was apprenticed for three years (1859-62) to the wood-engraver William James Linton. In that role, he had abundant opportunity for the study of the work that passed through his hands, including that of Rossetti, [...]

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CRESWICK, THOMAS

Thomas Creswick was born at Sheffield on 5 February 1811. He was the son of Thomas Creswick and Mary Epworth and was educated at Hazelwood, near Birmingham. There, he first began to paint, being trained under the landscape painter John Vincent Barber. His earliest appearance as an exhibitor was in 1827, at the Society of [...]

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CRISTALL, JOSHUA

Joshua Cristall was born at Camborne in Cornwall in 1767. His father was a sailmaker by trade, from Monifeith near Dundee and his mother was from Penzance. The family moved to the busy dockyards of Rotherhithe (then  located in Surrey, rather than London) in 1768 and the young Joshua is recorded as having been baptised [...]

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CROME, JOHN

John Crome was born at a small ale-house named ‘The King and the Miller’ at Castle Ditches in Norwich on 22 December 1768. He was the son of a journeyman weaver. John began his working life as errand boy to the physician Dr Rigby. At the age of 15, he was apprenticed to a coach [...]

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CROSSE, RICHARD

Richard Crosse was born in 1742 at Knowle in Devon.  His father was a lawyer and his family were members of the landed gentry. The family residence being an old thatched manor house. Richard was like one of his sisters, completely deaf and never able to speak. He had at least six siblings.  Nothing is known of [...]

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CROTCH, DR WILLIAM

William Crotch was born at Greens Lane in Norwich on 5 July 1775. He was the son of a master carpenter. The boy was a precocious child prodigy and learned to play a miniature piano built by his father. At the age of three and a half, he was taken to London by his ambitious [...]

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CROWE, EYRE

Eyre Crowe was born at 141 Sloane Street, London on 3 October 1824. He was son of the journalist Eyre Evans Crowe and Margaret Archer. In 1826 his father moved the family to France, where the living was cheaper. Soon after, Eyre Evans Crowe secured employment as Paris correspondent for the Morning Chronicle. His newspaper [...]

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CRUIKSHANK, GEORGE

George Cruikshank was born in London on 27 September 1792. He was the son of the Scots painter and caricaturist Isaac Cruikshank (1756-1811). After a brief education at an elementary school in Edgeware, Cruikshank set himself up in business as a caricaturist. One of his earliest influences was James Gillray, Britain’s leading caricaturist of the [...]

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CUNDALL, CHARLES

 
Charles Ernest Cundall was born at Stretford, Lancashire on 6 September 1890. He spent much of his early childhood at Manila in the Philippines and in Australia. Returning to England, he was educated at Ackworth Quaker School,Yorkshire and Sale Grammar School, Lancashire. He entered the world of work as an apprentice designer for Pilkington’s Pottery [...]

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CUNEO, TERENCE

Terence Tenison Cuneo was born in London on 1 November 1907. He was the son of Cyrus and Nell Cuneo, artists who had met while studying with James McNeill Whistler in Paris. Cuneo studied at the Chelsea Polytechnic (1924-27) and the Slade, before, like his father, working as an illustrator for magazines, books and periodicals. [...]