Joseph Farington
Encyclopedia
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
landscape painter and diarist.
Life and work
Born in LeighLeigh, Greater Manchester
Leigh is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, in Greater Manchester, England. It is southeast of Wigan, and west of Manchester. Leigh is situated on low lying land to the north west of Chat Moss....
, Lancashire
Lancashire
Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...
, Farington was the second of seven sons of William Farington and Esther Gilbody. His father was the rector of Warrington
Warrington
Warrington is a town, borough and unitary authority area of Cheshire, England. It stands on the banks of the River Mersey, which is tidal to the west of the weir at Howley. It lies 16 miles east of Liverpool, 19 miles west of Manchester and 8 miles south of St Helens...
and vicar of Leigh. Three of his brothers—William, Henry, and Richard—were "employed in the naval service of the East India Company". Edward died of yellow fever
Yellow fever
Yellow fever is an acute viral hemorrhagic disease. The virus is a 40 to 50 nm enveloped RNA virus with positive sense of the Flaviviridae family....
when he was 32. Robert attended Brasenose College and became vicar of St George in the East
St George in the East
St George in the East is an Anglican Church and one of six Hawksmoor churches in London, England, built from 1714 to 1729, with funding from the 1711 Act of Parliament...
, London (whose advowson
Advowson
Advowson is the right in English law of a patron to present or appoint a nominee to a vacant ecclesiastical benefice or church living, a process known as presentation. In effect this means the right to nominate a person to hold a church office in a parish...
was held by Brasenose). George Farrington became a painter, like Joseph himself.
After his early education in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, Farington went to study with Richard Wilson
Richard Wilson (painter)
Richard Wilson was a Welsh landscape painter, and one of the founder members of the Royal Academy in 1768. Wilson has been described as '...the most distinguished painter Wales has ever produced and the first to appreciate the aesthetic possibilities of his country.' He is considered to be the...
in London in 1763. In 1764, 1765, and 1766 he won "premiums" from the Society of Artists
Society of Artists
The Society of Artists of Great Britain was founded in London in May 1761 by an association of artists in order to provide a venue for the public exhibition of recent work by living artists, such as was having success in the long-established Paris salons....
for his landscape drawing; he became a member in 1765. He joined the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
when it was founded in 1769 and was elected an ARA in 1783 and an RA in 1785. Farington contributed works to the Academy's exhibitions every year until 1801, but only occasionally between 1801 and 1813. He was an active member of the Academy and sat on several important committees, including the one which determined where artworks would be hung during the exhibitions. He also acted as executor
Executor
An executor, in the broadest sense, is one who carries something out .-Overview:...
for the estate of fellow Academician, John Webber
John Webber
John Webber was an English artist best known for his images of early Alaska and Hawaii.Webber was born on 6 October 1751 in London, educated in Switzerland and studied painting at Paris....
. In 1793 he became a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries
Society of Antiquaries of London
The Society of Antiquaries of London is a learned society "charged by its Royal Charter of 1751 with 'the encouragement, advancement and furtherance of the study and knowledge of the antiquities and history of this and other countries'." It is based at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London , and is...
and helped establish the British Institution
British Institution
The British Institution was a private 19th-century society in London formed to exhibit the works of living and dead artists; it was also known as the Pall Mall Picture Galleries or the British Gallery...
. He assisted in the Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter.-Suffolk:Thomas Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, Suffolk. He was the youngest son of John Gainsborough, a weaver and maker of woolen goods. At the age of thirteen he impressed his father with his penciling skills so that he let...
, William Hogarth
William Hogarth
William Hogarth was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects"...
, and Richard Wilson exhibitions in 1806.
Farington took two trips in Europe, one to the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
in 1793 "to prepare illustrations for an official record of the siege of Valenciennes". During the Peace of Amiens in 1802, he traveled to Paris with the artists Benjamin West
Benjamin West
Benjamin West, RA was an Anglo-American painter of historical scenes around and after the time of the American War of Independence...
, John Hoppner
John Hoppner
John Hoppner was an English portrait painter, .-Early life:Hoppner was born in Whitechapel, London, the son of German parents - his mother was one of the German attendants at the royal palace. King George's fatherly interest and patronage of the young boy gave rise to rumours, quite unfounded,...
, and Johann Fuseli, among others. There he saw antique sculpture and Italian art; he also visited the studios of Jacques-Louis David
Jacques-Louis David
Jacques-Louis David was an influential French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era...
and François Gérard
François Gerard
François Pascal Simon, Baron Gérard was a French painter born in Rome, where his father occupied a post in the house of the French ambassador. His mother was Italian. As a baron of the Empire he is sometimes referred to as Baron Gérard.-Life:François Gérard was born in Rome, on 12 March 1770, to...
. After returning from this trip, he painted less and less.
Aquatint
Aquatint is an intaglio printmaking technique, a variant of etching.Intaglio printmaking makes marks on the matrix that are capable of holding ink. The inked plate is passed through a printing press together with a sheet of paper, resulting in a transfer of the ink to the paper...
s. In the early 19th century, he participated in T. Cadell and W. Davies' ongoing modernisation of the illustrated atlas Britannia depicta, which ran to six volumes of the projected whole; to it he contributed topographical Views in Cornwall (1814) and other views; for the unpublished seventh volume, depicting Devon, Farington's drawings were engraved but never published, and William Byrne's Magna Britannia., a project that became so costly that it was never completed. Farington edited the Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds, in six volumes, 1819.
Farington and Susan Mary Hamond, a relative of the Walpole
Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford
Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford was an English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician. He is now largely remembered for Strawberry Hill, the home he built in Twickenham, south-west London where he revived the Gothic style some decades before his Victorian successors,...
family, married on 19 March 1776; the couple had no children, but Farington was always interested in the lives of his brothers' children throughout his life. When his wife died in 1800, Farington collapsed and could neither draw nor paint. His family and friends, such as the painter Robert Smirke
Robert Smirke (painter)
Robert Smirke , was an English painter and illustrator.-Life and work:Smirke was born at Wigton near Carlisle, the son of a clever but eccentric travelling artist. In his thirteenth year he was apprenticed in London with an heraldic painter, and, at the age of twenty, began to study at the schools...
and his family, helped Farington recover.
Farington kept a daily diary from 13 July 1793 until his death, missing only a few days. This diary has proved invaluable to historians, particularly its references to the London art world. As Newby explains, "[w]ith its emphasis on biography and anecdote it is an invaluable source of information on artists of the period and of the internal workings of the Royal Academy." Farington knew the new industrialists in the Midlands, he understood the internal workings of the East India Company, his wife's family gave him access to information on government policy, he attended the major political trials of the day, such as Warren Hastings's
Warren Hastings
Warren Hastings PC was the first Governor-General of India, from 1773 to 1785. He was famously accused of corruption in an impeachment in 1787, but was acquitted in 1795. He was made a Privy Councillor in 1814.-Early life:...
failed impeachment
Impeachment of Warren Hastings
The Impeachment of Warren Hastings was a failed attempt to impeach the former Governor-General of India Warren Hastings in the Parliament of Great Britain between 1788 and 1795. Hastings was accused of misconduct during his time in Calcutta particularly relating to mismanagement and personal...
, and he followed William Wilberforce's
William Wilberforce
William Wilberforce was a British politician, a philanthropist and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780, eventually becoming the independent Member of Parliament for Yorkshire...
anti-slavery
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
campaign. The diary eventually constituted 16 volumes and were kept as a family heirloom until they were auctioned off in 1921 to the Morning Post
Morning Post
The Morning Post, as the paper was named on its masthead, was a conservative daily newspaper published in London from 1772 to 1937, when it was acquired by The Daily Telegraph.- History :...
. They were first published serially and they edited by James Greig and published in book form between 1922 and 1928. Another 16-volume edition was issued between 1978 and 1984.
Farington died on a visit to his brother Robert in Lancashire on 30 December 1821, after falling down a flight of stairs in a church.
Further reading
- Cave, Katherine (Ed.). The Diary of Joseph Farington - in 16 volumes (Yale University press, 1978–1984)
External links
- Joseph Farington online (ArtCyclopedia)