JOHN

See also:

• JOHN LINNELL (1792—1882)

LINNELL (1792—1882)  , English painter, was born in London on the 16th of June 1792 . His father being a carver and gilder, Linnell was early brought into contact with artists, and when he was ten years old he was drawing and selling his portraits in chalk and pencil . His first artistic instruction was received from Benjamin West, and he spent a year in the house of John Varley the water-colour painter, where he had William Hunt and Mulready as fellow-pupils, and made the acquaintance of Shelley, Godwin and other men of mark . In 1805 he was admitted a student of the Royal Academy, where he obtained medals for drawing, modelling and sculpture . He was also trained as an engraver, and executed a transcript of Varley's " Burial of Saul." In after life he frequently occupied himself with the burin, publishing, in 1834, a series of outlines from Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistine chapel, and, in 1840, superintending the issue of a selection of plates from the pictures in Buckingham Palace, one of them, a Titian landscape, being mezzotinted by himself . At first he supported himself mainly by miniature painting, and by the execution of larger portraits, such as the likenesses of Mulready, Whately, Peel and Carlyle . Several of his portraits he engraved with his own hand in line and mezzotint . He also painted many subjects like the " St John Preaching," the " Covenant of Abraham," and the "Journey to Emmaus," in which, while the landscape is usually prominent the figures are yet of sufficient importance to supply the title of the work . But it is mainly in connexion with his paintings of pure landscape that his name is known . His works commonly deal with some scene of typical uneventful English landscape, which is made impressive by a gorgeous effect of sunrise or sunset . They are full of true poetic feeling, and are rich and glowing in colour . Linnell was able to command very large prices for his pictures, and about r85o he purchased a property at Redhill, Surrey, where he resided till his death on the loth of January 1882, painting with unabated power till within the last few years of his life .

His leisure was greatly occupied with a study of the Scriptures in the

original, and he published several pamphlets and larger treatises of Biblical criticism . Linnell was one of the best friends and kindest patrons of William Blake . He gave him the two largest commissions he ever received for single series of designs—Lr5o for drawings and engravings of The Inventions to the Book of Job, and a like sum for those illustrative of Dante .