(1735-1786) was a portrait painter and the first English painter to work in India. He was born in London, the son of a coach painter, in a family that had been members of the Brewers' Company of freemen for five generations. He studied drawing with William Shipley in the Strand and first entered professional portraiture in the 1750s. Kettle's first series of portraits appeared in the 1760s. His first surviving painting is a self-portrait from 1760, with his first exhibit at the Society of Artists in 1761. In 1762, he worked at restoring Robert Streater's ceiling fresco in the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, and painted Francis Yarborough, a doctor of Brasenose College, Oxford in 1763. He painted many members of the family of William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth. In 1764-5, he was active in London and continued exhibiting at the Society of Artists. In 1768, Kettle sailed to India with the British East India Company, landing at Madras (now Chennai), where he remained for two years. There, he painted Lord Pigot and Muhammad Ali Kahn twice (once alone and once with five of his sons). He also painted non-portraits, including Dancing Girls (Blacks) in 1772 and a suttee scene in 1776 entitled, The ceremony of a gentoo woman taking leave of her relations and distributing her jewels prior to ascending the funeral pyre of her deceased husband. In 1770 Kettle painted a half-length portrait of 'Sir' Levett Hanson, a peripatetic writer on European knighthood and chivalry originally from Yorkshire. (The portrait is now in the collection of the Bury St Edmunds Manor House Museum.) Kettle moved on to Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1771 and painted Shuja ud-Daula and Dancing-Girl Holding the Stem of a Hookah. In 1775,he painted George Bogle, Warren Hastings' emissary to Tibet, in Tibetan dress, presenting a ceremonial white scarf to Lobsang Yeshe the 5th Panchen Lama.He also took an Indian mistress and had two daughters by her.  Related Paintings of Tilly Kettle :. | Brownlow North (1741-1820), future bishop of Winchester | Portrait of Mrs Yates as Mandane in The Orphan of China | The Orphan of China | future bishop of Winchester | Dancing Girl or An Indian Dancing Girl with a Hookah |
Related Artists:
Lodovico Mazzolino
Italian High Renaissance Painter, 1480-1528
Andreas Achenbach
(September 29, 1815 - April 1, 1910) was a German landscape painter. Born at Kassel, he began his art education in 1827 in Desseldorf under Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow at the Desseldorf Academy of Painting. He studied at St Petersburg and travelled in Italy, Holland and Scandinavia.In his early work he followed the pseudo-idealism of the German romantic school, but on removing to Munich in 1835, the stronger influence of Louis Gurlitt turned his talent into new channels, and he became the founder of the German realistic school. Although his landscapes evince too much of his aim at picture-making and lack personal temperament, he is a master of technique, and is historically important as a reformer. The Chambers Biographical Dictionary says of him that "he was regarded as the father of 19th century German landscape painting." A number of his finest works are to be found at the Berlin National Gallery, the New Pinakothek in Munich, and the galleries at Dresden, Darmstadt, Cologne, Desseldorf, Leipzig and Hamburg. He died in Desseldorf. His brother, Oswald Achenbach (1827-1905), was also a painter.
Thomas Whitcombe
British 1760-1824 British 1760-1824 was a British maritime painter Thomas Whitcombe was born in London between 1752 and 19 May 1763, with the latter date frequently cited. Little is known of his background or training, although speculation based on the locations depicted in his paintings may provide some clues. It is known that he was in Bristol in 1787 and later travelled to the South Coast; there are few ports or harbours from this region that do not feature in his work. In 1789 he toured Wales and in 1813 he travelled to Devon, painting scenes around Plymouth harbour. During his career he also painted scenes showing the Cape of Good Hope, Madeira, Cuba and Cape Horn. Between 1783 and 1824 he lived in London. His date of death, like that of his birth is uncertain; it was not before 1824, and possibly as late as 1834.