1712-1787 English By 1728 he had left Preston, and the following year he was working in London for the Flemish topographical and sporting painter Peter Tillemans. There he specialized in landscape painting and copying various works in Tillemans studio after Marco Ricci, Giovanni Paolo Panini and Jan van Bloemen. Devis earliest known commission, Hoghton Towers from Duxon Hill, Lancashire (1735; priv. col., see 1983 exh. cat., no. 3), painted for Sir Henry Hoghton during a trip to Preston in 1734-5, shows Tillemans influence in its attention to detail and the use of thin, transparent paint. Thomas Lister with his Family (c. 1738; Chicago, IL, A. Inst.) demonstrates a similar interest in landscape, featuring the family group in Gisburn Park, Lancs. Devis had returned to London by 1742 and established himself as a painter of conversation pieces, with a studio in Great Queen Street. Roger Hesketh with his Family is typical of his work at this time; it shows how Devis transformed the intimacy of a Dutch 17th-century genre scene into an elegant interior with the group of sitters connected by formal, schematic gestures. Roger Hesketh stands apart, in a tastefully contrived pose, his legs crossed and right arm thrust inside his waistcoat. His son, Fleetwood, stands with his hand resting on a dog next to his wife, who is seated with an infant on her lap. The adjacent telescope, globe and marine paintings are intended to advertise Hesketh interest in astronomy and travel.  Related Paintings of Arthur Devis :. | Philip Howard Seated before a panorama of the river Eden at Corby Castle | Gentleman and Lady in a Landscape | Edward Robert Hughes as a Child | Probably Dorothy Savile,Countess of Burlington,seated in the Orange tree garden at Chiswick | Mrs Edward Travers in a landscape garden |
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John Constable
1776-1837 British John Constable Locations 1837). English painter and draughtsman. His range and aspirations were less extensive than those of his contemporary J. M. W. Turner, but these two artists have traditionally been linked as the giants of early 19th-century British landscape painting and isolated from the many other artists practising landscape at a time when it was unprecedentedly popular. Constable has often been defined as the great naturalist and deliberately presented himself thus in his correspondence, although his stylistic variety indicates an instability in his perception of what constituted nature. He has also been characterized as having painted only the places he knew intimately, which other artists tended to pass by. While the exclusivity of Constable approach is indisputable, his concern with local scenery was not unique, being shared by the contemporary Norwich artists. By beginning to sketch in oil from nature seriously in 1808, he also conformed with the practice of artists such as Thomas Christopher Hofland (1777-1843), William Alfred Delamotte, Turner and, particularly, the pupils of John Linnell. Turner shared his commitment to establishing landscape as the equal of history painting, despite widespread disbelief in this notion. Nevertheless, although Constable was less singular than he might have liked people to believe, his single-mindedness in portraying so limited a range of sites was unique, and the brilliance of his oil sketching unprecedented, while none of his contemporaries was producing pictures resembling The Haywain (1821; London, N.G.) or the Leaping Horse (1825; London, RA). This very singularity was characteristic of British artists at a time when members of most occupations were stressing their individuality in the context of a rapidly developing capitalist economy
Marlow, William
English, 1740-1813 English painter. From c. 1756 to 1761 he was a pupil of Samuel Scott, the topographical and marine painter; he also studied at the St Martin's Lane Academy, London. Throughout his career Marlow made oils and watercolours of London views, for example Near Westminster Bridge, Evening (London, Guildhall A.G.), which shows his balanced, classical sense of composition, sensitivity to lighting effects and smooth handling of oil paint. Between 1765 and 1766 Marlow travelled in France and Italy, making numerous drawings of ruins, which provided the subjects for many paintings finished on his return to London. An Oxcart in the Grotto of Posillipo (c. 1770; New Haven, CT, Yale Cent. Brit. A.) exemplifies his bold, blue-toned watercolour style, with washes applied in loose blotches to emphasize the picturesque roughness of masonry and terrain. The handling has much in common with Canaletto, whom Marlow copied; a letter of 1771 from Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann (see 1956 exh. cat., p. 3) records that two views of Verona by Marlow were mistakenly sold as Canalettos. Marlow specialized in souvenirs of the Grand Tour, portraits of country houses, seascapes and river scenes. He visited many parts of Britain and Ireland in search of subjects, such as Powys Castle, Montgomeryshire (U. Manchester, Whitworth A.G.).