James Northcote
{{Short description|English painter (1746–1831)}}
{{About|the painter|the actor|James Northcote (actor)|the Catholic priest|James Spencer Northcote}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2020}}
{{Infobox artist
| name = James Northcote
| honorific_suffix = RA
| image = James Northcote by James Northcote.jpg
| image_size = 220px
| caption = Self-portrait (1784; National Portrait Gallery, London).
| birth_name =
| birth_date = {{birth date|1746|10|22|df=y}}
| birth_place = Plymouth, Devon, England
| death_date = {{death date and age|1831|7|13|1746|10|22|df=y}}
| death_place = London, England
| nationality = English
| known_for =
| movement =
| notable_works =
}}
James Northcote {{Post-nominals|post-noms=RA}} (22 October 1746 – 13 July 1831) was a British painter.{{cite DNB|wstitle=Northcote, James|volume=41|pages=190–3}} He became a member of the Royal Academy in 1787, and a member of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands in 1809.
Life and work
File:Portrait of James Northcote - James Ramsay - 213 1999.jpg between 1823 and 1825, from the collection of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter.]]
Northcote was born in Plymouth, and was apprenticed to his father, Samuel Northcote, a watchmaker. In his spare time, he drew and painted. In 1769 he left his father's work and set up as a portrait painter. Four years later he went to London and was admitted as a pupil into the studio and house of Sir Joshua Reynolds. At the same time he attended the Royal Academy Schools.
In May 1776, he left Reynolds' studio, and about two years later, having made some money by portrait painting back in Devon, he went to study in Italy. On his return to England, three years later, he revisited his native county, then settled in London, where John Opie and Henry Fuseli were his rivals. He was elected associate of the Academy in 1786, and full academician in the following spring. The Young Princes Murdered in the Tower, his first important work on a historical subject, dates from 1786, and it was followed by the Burial of the Princes in the Tower. Both paintings, along with seven others, were intended for Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery. His enormous Death of Wat Tyler was exhibited in 1787; commissioned by a London alderman, it hung in the Guildhall until its destruction during the Second World War.{{cite book|last1=Peter|first1=Linebaugh|editor1-last=Chazelle|editor1-first=Celia|title=Why the Middle Ages matter medieval light on modern injustice|date=2012|publisher=Routledge|location=London|isbn=9781136636486|page=178|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wZKpAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA178|chapter=Why we need a Wat Tyler Day}}
Shortly afterwards Northcote began a set of ten subjects, entitled "The Modest Girl and the Wanton", which were completed and engraved in 1796. Among the productions of Northcote's later years are the Entombment and the Agony in the Garden, besides many portraits, and several animal subjects, such as Leopards, Dog and Heron, and Lion; these were more successful than the artist's attempts at more elevated subjects, as was indicated by Fuseli's caustic remark on examining the Angel opposing Balaam —"Northcote, you are an angel at an ass, but an ass at an angel." Northcote's works number about 2000, and he made a fortune of £40,000.
He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1787. He became a corresponding member, living abroad, of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands in 1809.{{cite web|url=https://www.dwc.knaw.nl/biografie/pmknaw/?pagetype=authorDetail&aId=PE00002115 |title=T.J. Northcote (1746–1831) |publisher=Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences |access-date=13 July 2020}} His Portrait of Marc Isambard Brunel was exhibited at the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition in 1814 and is now in the National Portrait Gallery. He sponsored the admission in 1829 of Thomas Sewell Robins to the Royal Academy Schools.
In 1841, a monument to Northcote by Francis Chantrey was erected in Exeter Cathedral.Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660-1851 by Rupert Gunnis
File:NorthcoteDevergondee.jpg|The Wanton Reveling with her companions, 1796
File:Northcote-MurderPrinces.jpg|One of Northcote's illustrations to Shakespeare's Richard III
File:Walter Stirling.jpg|A portrait of Walter Stirling by James Northcote
File:Memorial to James Northcote in Exeter Cathedral.jpg|Memorial in Exeter Cathedral by Francis Chantrey
File:Moses Hawker, 1808 - James Northcote - 46 1925 9.jpg|A portrait of Moses Hawkes by James Northcote
File:The Honourable Miss Fox - James Northcote - 274 1982.jpg|The Honourable Miss Fox - James Northcote, 1810
Writings
Northcote also sought fame as an author, and his first essays were contributions to the Artist, edited by Prince Hoare. In 1813 he embodied his recollections of his old master in a biography Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds. His Fables—the first series published in 1828, the second posthumously in 1833—were illustrated with woodcuts by Harvey from Northcote's own designs.Ledbury, Mark . Exhibition catalogue, YCBA. In the production of his Life of Titian, his last work, which appeared in 1830, he was assisted by William Hazlitt, who previously, in 1826, had given to the public in the New Monthly Magazine his recollections of Northcote's pungent and cynical "conversations", causing some problems for the painter and his friends.{{citation needed|date=January 2017}}
Gallery
File:Henry Fuseli by James Northcote.jpg|Henry Fuseli, 1778
File:Northcote, James - Sir Peter Francis Bourgeois - Google Art Project.jpg|Francis Bourgeois, c.1794
File:Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth by James Northcote.jpg|Edward Pellew, 1804
File:James Northcote (1746-1831) - William Henry West Betty (1791–1874), ‘Master Betty’, as ‘Young Norval’ - 608962 - National Trust.jpg|Master Betty, 1804
File:Francis Burdett (Northcote).png|Francis Burdett, 1810
File:Sir Marc Isambard Brunel by James Northcote.jpg|Portrait of Marc Isambard Brunel, 1813
File:James Northcote (1746-1831) - Edmund Kean - NPG 6088 - National Portrait Gallery.jpg|Edmund Kean, 1819
File:Ira Aldridge (1807-1867), in the character of Othello, Attributed to James Northcote (1746-1831).jpg|Ira Aldridge, 1826
Notes
{{Reflist}}
References
- Mark Ledbury (2014), James Northcote, History Painting, and the Fables, Yale Center for British Art in association with Yale University Press. {{ISBN|978-0-3002081-3-9}}
External links
{{wikiquote}}
{{commons}}
- {{Art UK bio}}
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20070930024027/http://www.nmm.ac.uk/mag/pages/mnuInDepth/Biography.cfm?biog=129 National Maritime Museum, London]
- [http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/person.asp?LinkID=mp03322&role=sit National Portrait Gallery, London] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070930180843/http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/person.asp?LinkID=mp03322&role=sit |date=30 September 2007 }}
- [http://britishart.yale.edu/exhibitions/northcote Yale Center for British Art, New Haven]
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Northcote, James}}
Category:Artists from Plymouth, Devon
Category:18th-century English painters
Category:English male painters
Category:19th-century English painters
Category:English portrait painters
Category:English history painters
Category:Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences