English, 1769-1825 English painter. The son of a bookseller, he was educated at the grammar school in Ludlow and was sent to London in 1786 to study under Charles Catton the elder (1728-98), coach painter to George III and founder-member of the Royal Academy. Owen's copy of a work by Reynolds, made soon after his arrival, attracted the latter's attention. He entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1791 and exhibited at the Royal Academy the following year. From then on he exhibited there every year, apart from 1823 and 1825, and was elected ARA in 1804 and RA in 1806. He painted a number of rural scenes but specialized in portrait painting. Although his reputation was eclipsed by that of Thomas Lawrence, he was sought after by many of the eminent figures of the day, producing portraits of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr William Howley (1813), and of the politician and essayist John Wilson Croker (exh. 1812; both London, N.P.G.); other of his sitters were William Pitt the younger and John Soane. In 1810 he was appointed portrait painter to the Prince of Wales (later George IV) and in 1813 principal portrait painter to the Prince when the latter became Prince Regent. The Prince Regent does not seem to have sat to him but nonetheless he offered Owen a knighthood, which the painter refused. From c. 1820 Owen's health deteriorated until a disease of the spine confined him to his room and finally rendered him incapable of painting. He died after accidentally taking a bottle of opium that had been wrongly labelled.  Related Paintings of Owen, William :. | Madame Cezanne | The Tooth-Drawer gh | A View of Matavai Bay in th Island of Otaheite Tahiti | Triptych of Jean Des Trompes | Statue of Liberty |
Related Artists:
William Blamire Young
English Australian artist . 1862-1935 known as Blamire Young, was an English Australian artist. Young was born at Londesborough, Yorkshire, the second son of a family of 12. His father, Colonel Young, came of prosperous yeoman stock. Blamire Young was educated at the Forest School, Walthamstow, where he received a classical training, and going on to Cambridge University specialized in mathematics. That he completed his course with no better than third-class honours was no doubt partly caused by his discovery of the print collection in the Fitzwilliam Museum, and his association with the Cambridge Fine Art Society. It had been intended that he should become a clergyman, but Young felt that he had no vocation for that work and obtained the position of mathematical master at Katoomba College, Katoomba, New South Wales, which had been founded by John Walter Fletcher in 1884. Young remained at the school for eight years. In his spare time he practised painting, and meeting Phil May received some instruction from him in painting in oil. In 1893, he returned to England and after working for a few months under Hubert von Herkomer, became associated with James Pryde and William Nicholson in poster work. In 1895 Young returned to Australia and with the Lindsay brothers and Harry Weston did some excellent posters. But the field was limited and many years of poverty followed, during which a certain amount of writing was done for the press. He began exhibiting at the Victorian Artists' Society, but sales were few and the one-man show was then unknown. During his visit to England he had married Mabel Sawyer, an expert wood-carver, and while the lean period lasted Mrs Young helped to keep the house going by executing commissions for Melbourne architects. It was not until 1911 that the appreciation of Young's art really began to be shown. In that year he held an exhibition at Melbourne of small pictures, some of which had similar qualities to the Japanese coloured wood-cuts of the eighteenth century. Sales were good, partly because the prices were low, and the artist was sufficiently encouraged to hold an exhibition at Adelaide. This was both an artistic and a financial success, other shows followed in Melbourne and Sydney, and at last, in his fiftieth year, Young's reputation as an artist was established. In 1912 he sailed for Europe and after a stay in Spain settled in England. Eighteen months later in August 1914 his first show, opened at the Bailey Galleries. All the arrangements had been made and the pictures hung when war broke out. Young had been a good marksman in his youth, and for three years worked as an instructor in musketry and machine-gunnery. Immediately after the war he took up his painting again and exhibited at the Academy and the Royal Society of British Artists. Back in Australia in 1923 Young established himself at Montrose in the hills about 20 miles east of Melbourne. He acted as art critic for the The Herald and held occasional one-man shows.
Thomas Phillips
(18 October 1770 - 20 April 1845) was a leading English portrait and subject painter. He painted many of the great men of the day including scientists, artists, writers, poets and explorers. Phillips was born at Dudley then in Worcestershire. Having acquired the art of glass-painting in Birmingham under Francis Eginton,[1] he visited London in 1790 with an introduction to Benjamin West, who found him employment on the painted-glass windows of St George's Chapel at Windsor. In 1791, he became a student of the Royal Academy, and exhibited there, in 1792, a view of Windsor Castle, followed in the next two years by the "Death of Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, at the Battle of Castillon," "Ruth and Naomi," "Elijah restoring the Widow's Son," "Cupid disarmed by Euphrosyne," and other pictures. After 1796, he mainly confined himself to portrait-painting. However, the field was very crowded with the likes of John Hoppner, William Owen, Thomas Lawrence and Martin Archer Shee competing for business; consequently, from 1796 to 1800, his exhibited works were chiefly portraits of gentlemen and ladies, often nameless in the catalogue and of no great importance historically-speaking.
Monamy, Peter
English Painter, 1681-1749 English painter. It seems likely that his family origins and name were French. The Painter-Stainers' Company records that he was apprenticed as a house painter to William Clarke from 1696, but by 1710 he had become a marine artist, filling the gap in the market left by the death of Willem van de Velde the younger in 1707. Most of his subsequent career was devoted to careful imitations of van de Velde's style (and, in some cases, of particular pictures), by which, according to Vertue, 'he distinguished himself and came into reputation'. He maintained his links with the Painter-Stainers, of which he had been made a freeman in 1703