Thomas Rowlandson

British

BiographyEnglish caricaturist and draughtsman. Rowlandson trained at the RA Schools (see under London), leaving in 1778 to practise as a watercolour painter specializing in attractive young women, in the manner of Wheatley, and grotesque subjects which owe a debt to Mortimer. The elegance of his style reveals the influence of both Gainsborough and French Rococo painters whose work he knew from engravings. In 1784 he made the first of several British tours making sketches which were intended for publication, exhibited the masterly Vauxhall (London, V&A), and received the patronage of the Prince of Wales who purchased The English Review and The French Review (1786; Windsor Castle, Royal Coll.) from the RA. His satires on Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, also done in 1784, are among his few political caricatures and lack the savagery of Gillray. In 1789 he received an inheritance which he had dissipated by 1793 when, despite great productivity, he was living in poverty. Fortunately in 1797 he was employed by the print dealer Rudolph Ackermann (1764–1834) who published, among other works, the Fish Market, Amsterdam from his watercolour of 1794 (Bolton, AG). Ackermann commissioned The Microcosm of London, a collaboration between Rowlandson and A. C. Pugin (1762–1832), in 1808 and published most of his later prints. The highly popular adventures of Dr Syntax, which satirize picturesque pretension, were issued as books from 1812 to 1821. In the early 1820s Rowlandson visited Italy and resumed his studies of the Antique. His vast output, including the erotica that damaged his later reputation, is uneven but works like The ‘Stare-case’, Somerset House (c. 1800; New Haven, Yale Center for British Art) reveal a masterly talent.

Rodgers, David. "Rowlandson, Thomas." In The Oxford Companion to Western Art, edited by Hugh Brigstocke. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/opr/t118/e2298 (accessed May 2, 2012).

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