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John Hoppner

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John Hoppner
Self-portrait, c. 1780
Born
Whitechapel, London
Baptised(1758-04-04)4 April 1758
Died23 January 1810(1810-01-23) (aged 51)
London, England
Known forPortrait painting

John Hoppner RA (4 April 1758 – 23 January 1810[1]) was an English painter, very largely of portraits. He was much influenced by Joshua Reynolds, and was regarded as a fine colourist. He had a successful career painting the high society of his native London, including the Prince Regent.

Early life

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The Frankland Sisters, 1795
Miss Mary Linwood, about 1800, John Hoppner V&A Museum no. 1439-1874

Hoppner was born in Whitechapel, London, the son of German parents – his mother was one of the German attendants at the royal palace.[2] George III showed a fatherly interest and patronage of the young boy that gave rise to rumours, quite unfounded,[2] that he may have been his illegitimate son.

Hoppner became a chorister at the royal chapel, but, showing strong inclination for art, in 1775 he entered the Royal Academy. In 1778, he took a silver medal for drawing from life, and in 1782 the Academy's highest award, the gold medal for historical painting, his subject being King Lear.[2]

Career

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Hoppner first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1780. His earliest love was for landscape, but necessity obliged him to turn to the more lucrative business of portrait painting. At once successful, he had throughout life the most fashionable and wealthy sitters, and was the greatest rival to the growing attraction of Thomas Lawrence, with whom he shared an assistant between 1803 and 1809, Samuel Lane, much to Lawrence's annoyance.[3] He rarely attempted subjects from history painting or mythology, though a Sleeping Venus, Belisarius, Jupiter and Io, a Bacchante and Cupid and Psyche are recorded among his works. The Prince of Wales visited him especially often, and many of his finest portraits were hung in the state apartments at St James's Palace, notably those of the prince himself, the Duke and Duchess of York, Lord Rodney and Lord Nelson. His other sitters included Sir Walter Scott, the Duke of Wellington, Henry Bartle Frere and Sir George Beaumont.[2]

Sleeping Nymph and Cupid, 1806, now at Petworth House. The model for the nymph was said at the time to be Georgiana Leicester, Baroness de Tabley.[4]

According to the 1911 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica:[2]

Competent judges have deemed his most successful works to be his portraits of women and children... He was confessedly an imitator of Reynolds. When first painted, his works were much admired for the brilliancy and harmony of their colouring, but the injury due to destructive mediums and lapse of time which many of them suffered caused a great depreciation in his reputation. The appearance, however, of some of his pictures in good condition has shown that his fame as a brilliant colourist was well-founded. His drawing is faulty, but his touch has qualities of breadth and freedom that give to his paintings a faint reflection of the charm of Reynolds.

In 1803, he published A Series of Portraits of Ladies,[2] engraved after his paintings by Charles Wilkin,[5] and in 1805 a volume of translations of Eastern tales into English verse.[2]

Unusually Hoppner painted the background and perhaps more of a full-length portrait of Charlotte, Countess Talbot by Thomas Gainsborough in 1788, the year in which Gainsborough died. It is now in the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.

Personal life

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He married Phoebe Wright, the daughter of American-born sculptor Patience Wright. They had five children, although little is known about the youngest:

Death

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In his later years Hoppner suffered from a chronic disease of the liver. He died on 23 January 1810.[2]

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References

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  1. ↑ "Artist Info". www.nga.gov via www.ngabiographies.org. Retrieved 23 December 2025.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Encyclopædia Britannica 1911
  3. ↑ Farington, Joseph (1902). Greig, James (ed.). The Farington Diary. Vol. I–VIII. London: Hutchinson.
  4. ↑ Smith, John Chaloner (1884). British mezzotinto portraits : being a descriptive catalogue of these engravings from the introduction of the art to the early part of the present century : arranged according to the engravers, the inscriptions given at full length, and the variations of state precisely set forth : accompanied by biographical notes, and appendix of a selection of the prices produced at public sales by some of the specimens, down to the present time. University of California Libraries. London : H. Sotheran.
  5. ↑ First Proofs of the Universal Catalogue of Books on Art, Volume 1. London: Chapman and Hall. 1870. p. 868.
  6. ↑ The Gentleman's Magazine. 1834. p. 445.

Further reading

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