Francis Wheatley
British, 1747 - 1801
English painter. He trained at William Shipley’s Academy in London. In 1762, 1763 and 1765 he won prizes for drawing from the Society of Artists, and in 1769 he enrolled in the newly established Royal Academy Schools. He is recorded as having studied under a Mr Wilson in 1762 (Royal Society of Arts, Minutes of Committees, 1763, p. 17); this may have been the portrait painter Benjamin Wilson or, less likely, the landscape painter Richard Wilson. Wheatley was abroad in 1763, probably in the Low Countries and France, and in 1766 he made his first trip to Ireland. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Artists in 1770 and became a director in 1774.
Wheatley’s early work consists mainly of small-scale, full-length portraits (e.g. Portrait of a Gentleman, traditionally called ‘George Basil Wood’, c. 1778–9; ex-Mellon col., sold London, Christie’s, 17 Nov 1989, lot 21) and conversation pieces (e.g. Family Group with a Black Servant, c. 1774–5; London, Tate) in the manner of Benjamin Wilson and Johan Zoffany, as well as a few landscapes. His friend John Hamilton Mortimer, with whom he collaborated on a number of works, including the ceiling of the saloon (1771–3) at Brocket Hall, Herts, was also an influence on him; it was probably from Mortimer that he derived the luscious application of paint in his rendering of fabrics. Wheatley’s small portraits and conversation pieces in outdoor settings display an appreciation of nature (his backgrounds are, however, rarely topographical) and reveal an eye for the placement of figures in landscape.
In 1779 Wheatley, with the wife of a fellow artist, fled to Dublin to escape his creditors. He continued his portrait practice there and made a name for himself by painting two large-scale subject pictures, each depicting a contemporary event: View of College Green with a Meeting of the Volunteers (Dublin, N.G.) and the Irish House of Commons (1780; Lotherton Hall, W. Yorks). Both are enlivened by the inclusion of innumerable portraits. In 1783 he returned to London where, having completed another large contemporary narrative picture, the Riot on Broad Street (destr. by fire at the engravers), he began working for the print publisher John Boydell. Although Wheatley continued to produce portraits, landscapes and even some history paintings (e.g. Theseus and Hippolyta Find the Lovers, New York, priv. col., see Webster, fig.) and pictures for Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery, it was those works that Boydell had engraved—illustrations for novels, other forms of literature and various genre subjects—that won for Wheatley his lasting reputation.
Many of the themes in engravings made after Wheatley are in the sentimental and moralizing vein popularized by Jean-Baptiste Greuze, but touched with a more refined sense of decorative prettiness (e.g. Love in a Mill, engr. 1787). The best-known series of engravings is the Cries of London (14 paintings exh. RA, 1792–5; e.g. Upton House, Warwicks, NT), which illustrate itinerant, usually female, merchants selling their wares . Published between 1793 and 1797, with captions in French and English (an indication of the strength of the market for them on the Continent), these engravings have never lost their popularity. Wheatley was elected RA in 1791, but his last years were plagued by gout and debts.
John Wilson. "Wheatley, Francis." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T091348 (accessed May 2, 2012).
Person TypeIndividual
