John Linnell, R.A.

By descent in the artist’s family 

Reigate, The Town Hall, Samuel Palmer and John Linnell, 1963, no. 31 (Eel Pie Island), no. 32 (Study from nature)

Cambridge, Fitzwilliam & Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, John Linnell, A Centennial Exhibition, 1982-1983, nos. 1 & 2  

John Linnell, who would become one of the leading British painters of the 19^th century, was born in 1792 in Bloomsbury, then a run-down area of London. In 1804, showing early promise as a draughtsman, he went to live with and was apprenticed to John Varley (1778-1842), a leading watercolourist, a fashionable drawings master and a friend of William Blake (1757-1827). There, Linnell became friends with William Henry Hunt (1790-1864) and the slightly older William Mulready (1786-1863), and following Varley’s advice to always look to nature, the trio often went on sketching expeditions along the Thames and within the city itself.¹

The present two plein air studies date to 1806. The Willow has been compared to William Henry Hunt’s Study from Nature at Twickenham, which is now held at Tate Britain.²

1.     In his ‘Autobiographical Notes’ he writes ‘Hunt and I were always out, weather permitted, painting in oil on millboard from nature.’ See K. Crouan, John Linnell, A Centennial Exhibition, London 1982, p. 1

2.     Tate Britain, inv. 1154