Richard Earlom

A Blacksmith's Shop (1771), after a painting by Joseph Wright.
The Academicians of the Royal Academy (1773), after mezzotint by Johan Joseph Zoffany

Richard Earlom (baptised 14 May 1743 – 9 October 1822) was an English mezzotinter.[1]

Biography

Earlom was born and died in London. His natural faculty for art appears to have been first called into exercise by his admiration for the lord mayor's state coach, which had just been decorated by Giovanni Battista Cipriani. He tried to copy the paintings, and was sent to study under Cipriani. He displayed great skill as a draughtsman, and at the same time acquired without assistance the art of mezzotint.[2]

In 1765, Earlom was employed by Alderman Boydell, a publisher and promoter of the fine arts, to make a series of drawings from the pictures at Houghton Hall; and these he engraved in mezzotint. His best works are perhaps the fruit and flower pieces after the Dutch artists Van Os and Jan van Huysum. Among his historical and figure subjects are Agrippina, after Benjamin West; Love in Bondage, after Guido Reni; the Royal Academy, the Embassy of Hyderbeck to meet Lord Cornwallis, Colonel Mordant's Cock Fight and a Tiger Hunt, all after Johan Zoffany, and Lord Heathfield, after Sir Joshua Reynolds.[2]

Earlom also executed a series of 200 facsimiles of the drawings and sketches of Claude Lorraine, which was published in three folio volumes under the title of Liber veritatis (1777–1819).[2]

Notes

  1. RAAC staff for the full dates of birth and death.
  2. 1 2 3 Chisholm 1911, p. 797.

References

Attribution

Further reading

Wikisource has the text of the 1885–1900 Dictionary of National Biography's article about Earlom, Richard.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Richard Earlom.
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