Lemuel Francis Abbott

Lemuel Francis Abbott

Lemuel Francis Abbott (* 1760 or 1761, probably in the county of Leicestershire ( England ), † December 5, 1802 in London ) was an English portrait painter .

Life

Lemuel Francis Abbott was probably the son of the cleric and poet Lemuel Abbott († April 1776), who was particularly active in the county of Leicestershire in central England, and his wife Mary. He received his first artistic training as early as 1775 in the British capital from the painter Francis Hayman , but was unable to complete it because his teacher died before that (February 2, 1776). So he returned to his parents, but should have completed further portrait studies with Joseph Wright of Derby.

Abbott moved to the British metropolis around 1780, where he lived for many years on Caroline Street in Bloomsbury in central London. From his marriage, which he concluded on November 16, 1786 with Anna Maria Magdalen Tracey , a son Edward Francis Abbott (born December 20, 1787) was born.

Abbott was commissioned to portray her by numerous high-ranking personalities in England, especially from the political and Admiralty. He painted the sea hero Horatio Nelson several times. But he also created representations of scientists and artist colleagues. The much sought-after portraitist exhibited a total of 15 portraits of important men at the Royal Academy of Arts in London between 1788 and 1800. Due to his stingy disposition, he should not have employed any employees and as a result could not have fulfilled many of his assignments. But at least it has been proven that in 1791 he accepted the hunting painter Ben Marshall as a pupil.

In July 1798 Abbott was declared insane. Even so, his exhibitions at the Royal Academy of London continued for two years. His mental illness has been attributed to alleged marital disputes. But he called his life partner in his will of October 1800 as a "beloved wife" and appointed her as heir. He died a good two years later in his house on Penton Street in the Islington district just north of central London .

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Above all, Abbott was characterized by his very realistic depiction of the heads of his models, while the illustrations of the rest of the body and the landscape background are artistically much less successful. Only portraits of men are known of him, but no images of women. In many of his works, the sitter's body is parallel to the plane of the picture, but his head is shown in three-quarter profile, as if he had just been distracted. Some of Abbott's paintings were apparently completed by other painters. Engravings from his numerous portraits were made by Valentine Green , Joseph Skelton , William Walker, W. Barnard, JF Smith and C. Turner , among others . Valentine Green engraved Abbott's self-portrait in 1805.

William Herschel (1785)

George Macartney, 1st Earl Macartney and Sir George Staunton, 1st Baronet (1785)

Rear Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson (1800)

Abbott's most successful portraits are his portrait by the British sculptor Joseph Nollekens, created around 1797, and his depictions of Nelson, which he executed in various variations. The National Maritime Museum , which is dedicated to the history of the sea in Greenwich , east London, houses several works by Abbott, including a half-length portrait of Nelson (1797/98), a full-length portrait of Admiral Sir Peter Parker (1794–99) and a portrait of the Vice Admiral Sir Robert Calder (1798). Abbott's portrait of the British poet William Cowper (1792) and the German-British astronomer Wilhelm Herschel (1785) are exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery in London , where there are also other portraits of Abbott, including the aforementioned painting by Nollekens and another by Nelson ( around 1795). In the City Museum and Art Gallery in Birmingham Abbotts depends to 1802's painting of the English engineer and entrepreneur Matthew Boulton .

England's Pride and Glory - in this 1894 painting by Thomas Davidson , a young cadet builds on Abbott's portrait of Horatio Nelsons, which was then still hanging in the Painted Hall of the Royal Naval College .

literature

• A. Nisbet: Abbott, Lemuel Francis . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , 2004, Vol. 1, pp. 50f.
• G. Ch. Rump: Abbott, Lemuel Francis . In: General Artist Lexicon . Vol. 1 (1983), p. 67.

Web links

Commons : Lemuel Francis Abbott  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files