John Linnell

John Linnell was born in London, June 16, 1792 and died in Redhill, Surrey, January 20, 1882.

Although his portraits and landscapes brought Linnell financial success, he was never elected a Royal Academician. The son of a framemaker, he entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1805 and studied under the landscape painter John Varley. Outdoor oil sketches painted along the Thames place him in the naturalist movement. Linnell was also an important figure in William Blake's circle, commissioning engravings for the Book of Job in 1823, and watercolors for Dante's Divine Comedy in 1824. His landscapes, on which he concentrated from the mid 1840s, appealed especially to the merchants and manufacturers of northern England.