James Pearson (painter)

James Pearson (d.1838)^[1] was an Irish-born glass painter, active in London.

Life

Pearson's Brazen Serpent in the Wilderness, after a design by John Hamilton Mortimer, in the east window of Salisbury Cathedral.

Pearson was born in Dublin about the middle of the 18th century. He learnt his art in Bristol.^[2] In 1768^[3] he married Eglington Margaret Paterson, also a glass painter. She was the daughter of Samuel Paterson, a well-known book-auctioneer.^[2]

Pearson and his wife came to public attention through works shown at the Society of Artists of Great Britain in its exhibitions in 1775–77. Although the couple usually worked on separate pieces they occasionally collaborated, as on their stained glass copy after Carlo Maratti’s Salutation, shown in 1775. A later joint work was one after Guido Reni’s Aurora, shown in London in 1793.^[4] The Pearsons used a technique in which the image was painted in enamels on sheets of plain glass and then fired.^[5]

The Pearsons exhibited regularly throughout the 1780s and 1790s at their homes in London, first in Church Street, Westminster, and later in Great Newport Street, and also at the new Pantheon in Oxford Street. ^[4] It was there, in 1781, that Pearson showed his spectacular Brazen Serpent in the Wilderness, after a design by John Hamilton Mortimer, before its installation in the east window of Salisbury Cathedral, where it still remains.^[4] A critic in the Morning Chronicle admired the way in which "the lead and iron are intirely concealed, so as not to interrupt the outline either of the figures or drapery, by which the whole appears as one entire plate of glass, without joining or division".^[4]

His patrons included Horace Walpole, for whom he executed a window of a cobbler whistling to a bird in a cage for the refectory at Strawberry Hill, and William Beckford, for whom he made a portrait of Thomas Becket for Fonthill.^[4]

The catalogue of an exhibition held by the Pearsons in 1821 was entitled Celebrated Cartoons of Raphael, and Various Other Beautiful Specimens, by Mr. and Mrs. Pearson, Appointed Painters to Her Majesty, on Glass, in Vitrified Colours, at No. 112, Great Russell-Street, Bloomsbury.^[6] The paintings after Raphael were by his wife.^[4]

He also made windows for Brasenose College, Oxford and the church of St Botolph, Aldersgate in London. He painted some designs after James Barry.^[2]

He exhibited as late as 1821, and died in 1838,^[1] his wife having died in 1823.^[4]

References

1 2 Cust, L.H., rev. Sarah Baylis. "Pearson, James (c.1740–1838)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, year=2004. Retrieved 24 July 2015.
1 2 3 Bryan,1886-9
↑ "England, Middlesex, Westminster, Parish Registers, 1538-1912,". FamilySearch. Retrieved 21 July 2015. citing St Martin In The Fields, Middlesex, England, City of Westminster Archives Centre, London; FHL microfilm 561,156.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Cobb, Joanna. "From Parrots to Princes: Exhibitions of Contemporary Stained Glass in Late Eighteenth-century London". Vidimus.
↑ "Stained Glass by Mr. and Mrs. Pearson". Newton's London Journal of Arts and Sciences 2: 359. 1821.
↑ About This Book. Google Books. Retrieved 2 February 2013.

Sources

This article incorporates text from the article "PEARSON, James" in Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers by Michael Bryan, edited by Robert Edmund Graves and Sir Walter Armstrong, an 1886–1889 publication now in the public domain.

British and Irish stained glass

British and Irish stained glass (1811–1918)

History

Influences

Artistic movements	Aesthetic Movement Art Nouveau Arts and Crafts Movement Biblia pauperum Cambridge Camden Society Classicism Early Renaissance Exoticism Gothic Revival Oxford Movement Romanticism

Organisations	The Glass House Hogarth Club Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

People

Architectural	John Loughborough Pearson Augustus Pugin George Gilbert Scott Alexander Thomson

Artists	Edward Liddall Armitage Hugh Arnold Alfred E. Child Margaret Chilton Harry Clarke Walter Francis Clokey Charles Edmund Clutterbuck Trena Cox Louis Davis works Rachel de Montmorency Alfred Drury Mabel Esplin Moira Forsyth Wilhelmina Geddes Jane Gray Reginald Hallward works Herbert Hendrie James Humphries Hogan Evie Hone Joan Howson works Marjorie Kemp Charles Eamer Kempe Mary Lowndes William Morris Catherine Amelia O’Brien Karl Parsons works Henry Payne works Lilian Josephine Pocock Patrick Pollen Sarah Purser Ethel Rhind Arnold Wathen Robinson works Arild Rosenkrantz Francis Skeat works Caroline Townshend works Christopher Webb Christopher Whall works Veronica Whall works Thomas Willement William Wilson Paul Woodroffe works Edward Woore works British stained-glass artists Irish stained-glass artists

Critics	John Ruskin

Manufacturers	An Túr Gloine Burlison and Grylls Harry Clarke Clayton and Bell Walter Francis Clokey Daniel Cottier John Hardman & Co. Heaton, Butler and Bayne Hincks and Burnell Lavers, Barraud and Westlake Morris & Co. James Powell and Sons Shrigley and Hunt William Wailes William Warrington

Examples

Images

Terminology

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