FRANCIS

See also:

• FRANCIS WHEATLEY (1747–1801)

WHEATLEY (1747–1801)  , English Portrait and landscape painter, was born in 1747 at Wild Court, Covent Garden, London . He studied at Shipley's drawing-school and the Royal Academy, and won several prizes from the Society of Arts . He assisted in the decoration of Vauxhall, and aided Mortimer in painting a ceiling for Lord Melbourne at Brocket Hall (Hertfordshire) . In youth his life was irregular and dissipated . He eloped to Ireland with the wife of Gresse, a brother artist, and established himself in Dublin as a portrait-painter, executing, among other works, an interior of the Irish House of Commons . His scene from the London Riots of 178o was admirably engraved by Heath . He painted several subjects for Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, designed illustrations to Bell's edition of the poets, and practised to some small extent as an etcher and mezzotint-engraver . It is, however, as a painter, in both oil and water-colour, of landscapes and rustic subjects that Wheatley is best remembered . He was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1790, and an academician in the following year . He died on the 28th of June 18o1 . His wife, afterwards Mrs Pope, was known as a painter of flowers and portraits .