(1735-1786) was a portrait painter and the first English painter to work in India. He was born in London, the son of a coach painter, in a family that had been members of the Brewers' Company of freemen for five generations. He studied drawing with William Shipley in the Strand and first entered professional portraiture in the 1750s. Kettle's first series of portraits appeared in the 1760s. His first surviving painting is a self-portrait from 1760, with his first exhibit at the Society of Artists in 1761. In 1762, he worked at restoring Robert Streater's ceiling fresco in the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, and painted Francis Yarborough, a doctor of Brasenose College, Oxford in 1763. He painted many members of the family of William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth. In 1764-5, he was active in London and continued exhibiting at the Society of Artists. In 1768, Kettle sailed to India with the British East India Company, landing at Madras (now Chennai), where he remained for two years. There, he painted Lord Pigot and Muhammad Ali Kahn twice (once alone and once with five of his sons). He also painted non-portraits, including Dancing Girls (Blacks) in 1772 and a suttee scene in 1776 entitled, The ceremony of a gentoo woman taking leave of her relations and distributing her jewels prior to ascending the funeral pyre of her deceased husband. In 1770 Kettle painted a half-length portrait of 'Sir' Levett Hanson, a peripatetic writer on European knighthood and chivalry originally from Yorkshire. (The portrait is now in the collection of the Bury St Edmunds Manor House Museum.) Kettle moved on to Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1771 and painted Shuja ud-Daula and Dancing-Girl Holding the Stem of a Hookah. In 1775,he painted George Bogle, Warren Hastings' emissary to Tibet, in Tibetan dress, presenting a ceremonial white scarf to Lobsang Yeshe the 5th Panchen Lama.He also took an Indian mistress and had two daughters by her.  Related Paintings of Tilly Kettle :. | Brownlow North (1741-1820), future bishop of Winchester | Dancing Girl or An Indian Dancing Girl with a Hookah | future bishop of Winchester | Portrait of Mrs Yates as Mandane in The Orphan of China | The Orphan of China |
Related Artists:
Arnoldus Bloemers
born at Amsterdam in 1792, painted flowers, fruit, and animals. He was instructed by Antonie Piera, but principally imitated Van Huijsum. He died at the Hague in 1844. The Rotterdam Gallery has a flower-piece by him.
CODAZZI, Viviano
Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1604-1670 Italian painter. He arrived in Naples about 1634, having almost certainly trained in Rome. He was a specialist in the realistic architectural VEDUTA, and his interest in this theme may have been stimulated in Rome by the quadratura frescoes of Agostino Tassi and by the urban views of Claude Lorrain and Herman van Swanevelt.
Gunnar Berg
(21 May 1863 - 23 December 1893) was a Norwegian painter, known for his paintings of his native Lofoten. He principally painted memorable scenes of the everyday life of the local fishermen. Gunnar Berg was born on Svinøya in Svolvær on Lofoten, Nordland County, Norway. He was the oldest of 12 siblings born to a landlord and merchant, Lars Thodal Walnum Berg (1830-1903) and Lovise Johnsen (1842-1921). From 1875-81, he attended Cathedral School in Trondheim, and also took private lessons in drawing and painting by the artist H. J. Johannessen. He later attended a trade school in Bergen. He was first employed as a merchant. He later studied to became an artist.