Section

BIOGRAPHIES OF BRITISH ARTISTS

Edited by Mark Quinlan

  1. A
  2. B
  3. C
  4. D
  5. E
  6. F
  7. G
  8. H
  9. I
  10. J
  11. K
  12. L
  13. M
  14. N
  15. O
  16. P
  17. Q
  18. R
  19. S
  20. T
  21. U
  22. V
  23. W
  24. X
  25. Y
  26. Z
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VALETTE, ADOLPHE

Pierre Adolphe Valette was born in 1876 in St Etienne, a small manufacturing town, 36 miles south of Lyon. Little is known of his family and early life, except that his parents were poor and that he studied at the local art school in St Etienne. His second wife Andree, believed that he started working [...]

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VANDERBANK THE YOUNGER, JOHN

Johan van der Banck was born in London on 9 Sept 1694 and baptised in the church of St Giles in the Fields. He was the son of Johan van der Banck the Elder, Chief Arras Maker to the Wardrobe and head of the Soho Tapestry Manufactory. Although originally from the Netherlands, the van der [...]

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VAN DYCK, SIR ANTHONY

Anthonis van Dyck was born at Antwerp on 22 March 1599. He was the seventh child of a family of twelve, being the son of Frans van Dyck, a silk merchant. While still a boy, he was placed on the advice of Jan Brueghel, as a pupil in the studio of Hendrick van Balen, who [...]

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VARLEY, JOHN

John Varley was born at the ‘Old Blue Post Tavern’ at Hackney on 17 August 1778. He was the eldest of five children. His father, Richard Varley, was born at Epworth in Lincolnshire and had settled in London, after the death of his first wife. For a brief time, John was employed by a portrait painter in [...]

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VAUGHAN, KEITH

John Keith Vaughan was born at Selsey Bill in Sussex on 23 August 1912. His family moved to London shortly after his birth. Although Vaughan had no formal art training, he gained a good grounding in Italian Renaissance art while at Christ’s Hospital School, then worked in the Lintas advertising agency, then owned by Unilever, [...]

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VELLACOTT, ELISABETH

Elisabeth Jessie Vellacott, was born at Grays in Essex on 28 January 1905. Her father was an accountant, who would later be ordained a Presbyterian minister. One of her three younger brothers, Philip, became a noted classical scholar. Moving between London and Cambridge homes and boarding school in Lincolnshire, Elisabeth decided at the age of [...]

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VERRIO, ANTONIO

Antonio Verrio was born at Lecce, in the Kingdom of Naples in 1639. His initial training for his profession is unknown, but his first patrons were the Jesuits, for whom he worked in both Lecce and Naples. He then spent some years travelling through Italy and France. He settled in Toulouse, where he painted an altarpiece [...]

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VERTUE, GEORGE

George Vertue was born in 1684 at St Martin’s-in-the-Fields, London. At the age of 13, he was apprenticed for seven years to a heraldic engraver of French origin, whose business failed three or four years into Vertue’s articles. He then studied drawing at home, later becoming an engraver for seven years under Michael Vandergucht. In [...]

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VON HERKOMER, SIR HUBERT

Hubert von Herkomer was born at Waal in the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1849. His father, a talented woodcarver, moved the family to England in 1857 and settled in Southampton. Von Herkomer studied at the Southampton School of Art, the Munich Academy and the South Kensington School of Art, where, like his fellow student Luke Fildes, [...]