Alfred Essex
Encyclopedia
Alfred Essex was an English enamel-painter, who worked with his brother William Essex
William Essex (painter)
William Essex , was an English enamel-painter. He was the chief mid-nineteenth-century exponent of enamel painting, an art which had been extended from portrait miniatures to larger enamel plaques by Henry Bone in the early nineteenth century.-Life:Little is known of the parentage and early life of...

 to popularise enamel painting in the nineteenth century.

Life

Little is known of the parentage and early life of Alfred Essex and his brother William. The brothers worked for and under Charles Muss, enamel painter to William IV
William IV of the United Kingdom
William IV was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of Hanover from 26 June 1830 until his death...

, trying to show to the public that works could be executed in enamel possessing the transparency, crispness, and texture of other methods of painting. Alfred Essex executed plates for Muss, notably a large plate depicting the Holy Family, after Parmigianino
Parmigianino
Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola , also known as Francesco Mazzola or more commonly as Parmigianino or sometimes "Parmigiano", was an Italian Mannerist painter and printmaker active in Florence, Rome, Bologna, and his native city of Parma...

, now in the royal collection. He prepared the plates and the colours for his brother's paintings. The Geological Museum
Geological Museum
The Geological Museum is one of the oldest single science museums in the world and now part of the Natural History Museum in London...

 holds a series of examples showing the colours prepared by him which had the quality of remaining the same after vitrification. He published a paper on the art of enamel painting in June 1837, and also published some drawing-slates. He later emigrated to South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

, where he left a daughter Harriet.
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