Francis Cotes

Francis Cotes was born in London, May 20, 1726 and died in London, July 19, 1770.

Although Cotes is best known for his pastel portraits, in the early 1760s he began to work in oil as well. He learned both media from George Knapton, to whom he was apprenticed in 1741. His shift from a rococo style to greater realism in the late 1750s is ascribed to the influence of the Swiss pastelist Jean Étienne Liotard, who was in England between 1753 and 1756. Appointed a director of the Society of Artists in 1765, Cotes became one of the founding members of the Royal Academy three years later.