English painter and engraver John Linnell (1792-1882) created portraits, religious works and sweeping views of the English countryside. Today he is remembered particularly for his association with William Blake and The Ancients at Shoreham and an artistic rivalry with John Constable.
However, an exhibition taking place at Guy Peppiatt Fine Art from October 2-11 highlights some of Linnell’s earliest works which record fragments of old London.
Linnell was 13 when he was apprenticed to John Varley, the watercolourist who urged his pupils to ‘go to nature for everything’. Linnell and his fellow students took to London’s streets and riverbanks to draw, creating plein air sketches in white or black chalk on coloured paper which provide a record of the capital as it looked in the early years of the 19th century.