George Clint
Encyclopedia
George Clint was an English portrait painter and engraver, especially notable for his many theatrical subjects.
, Covent Garden
, London
, the son of Michael Clint, a hairdresser in Lombard Street
. He was schooled in Yorkshire
, then apprenticed to a fishmonger
, but left after a violent dispute with his employer. He found alternative employment in an attorney's office, but took exception to the work and became a house-painter instead - one of his jobs was painting the stones of the arches in the nave of Westminster Abbey
. He also decorated the exterior of a house built by Sir Christopher Wren
in Cheapside
, and was afterwards employed by Thomas Tegg
, the bookseller.
He married the daughter of a small farmer in Berkshire; by her he had five sons and four daughters. Mrs. Clint died a fortnight after giving birth to her son Alfred, the artist.
Clint now took to Portrait miniature
painting; His studio was in Leadenhall Street
, and he became acquainted with John Bell
, the publisher, whose nephew, Edward Bell, the mezzotint engraver, taught Clint the art of engraving. His first attempt in oil colours was his wife's portrait. At this period Samuel Reynolds
, the engraver, advised Clint to undertake watercolour portraits. Commissions now being scarce, he made copies, in colours, from prints after George Morland
and Teniers
; he reproduced Morland's "The Enraged Bull" and "The Horse struck by Lightning" several times.
About 1816, his studio at 83 Gower Street
, was a meeting place of the leading actors and actresses of the day. This popularity arose from a series of dramatic scenes which he painted, such as "William Farren
, Farley, and Jones as Lord Ogleby, Canton, and Brush" in the comedy of 'The Clandestine Marriage
'".
Clint was elected an associate of the Royal Academy
in 1821, a position he resigned in 1836, after repeated disappointments in not obtaining the full honours of the Academy. He subsequently took a house in Peckham
, but moved to Pembroke Square
, where he died on 10 May 1864.
One of his students of engraving was Thomas Goff Lupton
.
; ′The Entombment,′ after Dietrich
; ′The Death of Nelson,′ after Samuel Drummond
, and a set of the Raphael
cartoons in outline. The following portraits are by Clint: Lord Suffield and his family, Lord Egremont, Lord Essex, Lord Spencer, General Wyndham, and many others. He executed several theatrical portraits for a Mrs. Griffiths of Norwood, some of which were destroyed by fire. ′Falstaff and Mistress Ford′ is in the Tate Gallery
.
Among his mezzotint engravings were: ′The Trial of Queen Caroline,′ after G. H. Harlow
; portrait of the Right Hon. W. Pitt, after John Hoppner
; portrait of Margaret, Lady Dundas, after Thomas Lawrence
; portrait of Miss Siddons, again after Lawrence; portrait of Sir Joshua Reynolds, after himself etc. There are also portraits of George Cook, engraver; John Bell, publisher; actors Edmund Kean
, Charles Young
(as Hamlet), William Dowton
and John Liston
(the latter as Paul Pry
); actresses Lucia Elizabeth Vestris
and Julia Glover
.
, was a notable medallist and seal engraver. Of his other sons Raphael Clint (1797–1849) was an engraver and Alfred Clint
(1807–1833) a marine painter.
Life
Clint was born in Brownlow Street, Drury LaneDrury Lane
Drury Lane is a street on the eastern boundary of the Covent Garden area of London, running between Aldwych and High Holborn. The northern part is in the borough of Camden and the southern part in the City of Westminster....
, Covent Garden
Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, the son of Michael Clint, a hairdresser in Lombard Street
Lombard Street
There are several famous Lombard Streets:* Lombard Street , famed for its twists and turns* Lombard Street, London, leading from the Bank of England to Gracechurch Street...
. He was schooled in Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
, then apprenticed to a fishmonger
Fishmonger
A fishmonger is someone who sells fish and seafood...
, but left after a violent dispute with his employer. He found alternative employment in an attorney's office, but took exception to the work and became a house-painter instead - one of his jobs was painting the stones of the arches in the nave of Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey
The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English,...
. He also decorated the exterior of a house built by Sir Christopher Wren
Christopher Wren
Sir Christopher Wren FRS is one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history.He used to be accorded responsibility for rebuilding 51 churches in the City of London after the Great Fire in 1666, including his masterpiece, St. Paul's Cathedral, on Ludgate Hill, completed in 1710...
in Cheapside
Cheapside
Cheapside is a street in the City of London that links Newgate Street with the junction of Queen Victoria Street and Mansion House Street. To the east is Mansion House, the Bank of England, and the major road junction above Bank tube station. To the west is St. Paul's Cathedral, St...
, and was afterwards employed by Thomas Tegg
Thomas Tegg
-Early life:He was the son of a grocer, born at Wimbledon, Surrey, on 4 March 1776, and was left an orphan at the age of five. He was sent to a boarding school at Galashiels in Selkirkshire. In 1785 he was bound apprentice to Alexander Meggett, a book-seller at Dalkeith. He ran away, sold chapbook...
, the bookseller.
He married the daughter of a small farmer in Berkshire; by her he had five sons and four daughters. Mrs. Clint died a fortnight after giving birth to her son Alfred, the artist.
Clint now took to Portrait miniature
Portrait miniature
A portrait miniature is a miniature portrait painting, usually executed in gouache, watercolour, or enamel.Portrait miniatures began to flourish in 16th century Europe and the art was practiced during the 17th century and 18th century...
painting; His studio was in Leadenhall Street
Leadenhall Street
Leadenhall Street is a street in the City of London, formerly part of the A11. It runs east from Cornhill to Aldgate, and west vice-versa. Aldgate Pump is at the junction with Aldgate...
, and he became acquainted with John Bell
John Bell (publisher)
John Bell was an English publisher. The Dictionary of National Biography has Charles Knight calling Bell a "mischievous spirit, the very Puck of booksellers." His 109-volume, literature-for-the-masses Poets of Great Britain Complete from Chaucer to Churchill, which rivaled Samuel Johnson's Lives...
, the publisher, whose nephew, Edward Bell, the mezzotint engraver, taught Clint the art of engraving. His first attempt in oil colours was his wife's portrait. At this period Samuel Reynolds
Samuel William Reynolds
Samuel William Reynolds was a mezzotint engraver, landscape painter and landscape gardener. Reynolds was a popular engraver in both Britain and France and there are over 400 examples of his work in the National Portrait Gallery in London.- Biography :Reynolds was born on 4 July 1773...
, the engraver, advised Clint to undertake watercolour portraits. Commissions now being scarce, he made copies, in colours, from prints after George Morland
George Morland
George Morland was an English painter of animals and rustic scenes.-Life:Morland was born in London, the 3rd son of Henry Robert Morland , artist, engraver and picture restorer...
and Teniers
David Teniers
David Teniers may refer to three Flemish artists, father, son, and grandson:*David Teniers the Elder , turned from large religious paintings to landscapes and genre scenes...
; he reproduced Morland's "The Enraged Bull" and "The Horse struck by Lightning" several times.
About 1816, his studio at 83 Gower Street
Gower Street (London)
Gower Street is a street in Bloomsbury, Central London, England, running between Euston Road to the north and Montague Place to the south.North Gower Street is a separate street running north of the Euston Road...
, was a meeting place of the leading actors and actresses of the day. This popularity arose from a series of dramatic scenes which he painted, such as "William Farren
William Farren
William Farren , English actor, was born the son of an actor of the same name, who played leading roles from 1784 to 1795 at Theatre Royal, Covent Garden.-Life:...
, Farley, and Jones as Lord Ogleby, Canton, and Brush" in the comedy of 'The Clandestine Marriage
The Clandestine Marriage
The Clandestine Marriage is a comedy by George Colman the Elder and David Garrick, first performed in 1766 at Drury Lane. The idea came from one of William Hogarth's engravings.-Plot summary:...
'".
Clint was elected an associate of the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
in 1821, a position he resigned in 1836, after repeated disappointments in not obtaining the full honours of the Academy. He subsequently took a house in Peckham
Peckham
Peckham is a district in south London, England, located in the London Borough of Southwark. It is situated south-east of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London...
, but moved to Pembroke Square
Pembroke Square, London
Pembroke Square is located in the Kensington area of southwest central London, England . 38 Pembroke Square was the house used as the surgery of Dr Hirsh in the movie Sunday Bloody Sunday.-Transport:...
, where he died on 10 May 1864.
One of his students of engraving was Thomas Goff Lupton
Thomas Goff Lupton
Thomas Goff Lupton was an English mezzotint engraver and artist, who engraved many works by Turner and other notable British painters of the 19th century. He also produced some pastels, exhibited at the Royal Academy...
.
Works
Among his early copper-plate engravings are: ′The Frightened Horse,′ after George StubbsGeorge Stubbs
George Stubbs was an English painter, best known for his paintings of horses.-Biography:Stubbs was born in Liverpool, the son of a currier and leather merchant. Information on his life up to age thirty-five is sparse, relying almost entirely on notes made by fellow artist Ozias Humphry towards the...
; ′The Entombment,′ after Dietrich
Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich
Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich was a German painter and art administrator. In his own works, he was adept at imitating many earlier artists, but never developed a style of his own.-Biography:...
; ′The Death of Nelson,′ after Samuel Drummond
Samuel Drummond
Samuel Drummond was a British painter, especially prolific in portraying and marine genre. His works are displayed particularly in the National Portrait Gallery, National Maritime Museum and the Walker Art Gallery.-Life:Drummond was born to Jane Bicknell and James Drummond, a London baker...
, and a set of the Raphael
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...
cartoons in outline. The following portraits are by Clint: Lord Suffield and his family, Lord Egremont, Lord Essex, Lord Spencer, General Wyndham, and many others. He executed several theatrical portraits for a Mrs. Griffiths of Norwood, some of which were destroyed by fire. ′Falstaff and Mistress Ford′ is in the Tate Gallery
Tate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
.
Among his mezzotint engravings were: ′The Trial of Queen Caroline,′ after G. H. Harlow
George Henry Harlow
George Henry Harlow , was a highly-regarded English portrait painter.- Life :Harlow was born in St. James's Street, London, the posthumous son of a China merchant, who after some years' residence in the East had died about five months before his son's birth, leaving a widow with five infant daughters...
; portrait of the Right Hon. W. Pitt, after John Hoppner
John Hoppner
John Hoppner was an English portrait painter, .-Early life:Hoppner was born in Whitechapel, London, the son of German parents - his mother was one of the German attendants at the royal palace. King George's fatherly interest and patronage of the young boy gave rise to rumours, quite unfounded,...
; portrait of Margaret, Lady Dundas, after Thomas Lawrence
Thomas Lawrence
Thomas Lawrence may refer to:*Sir Thomas Lawrence, British artist, President of Royal Academy*Thomas Lawrence , mayor of colonial Philadelphia*T. E. Lawrence, "Lawrence of Arabia"*Thomas Lawrence , U.S. politician...
; portrait of Miss Siddons, again after Lawrence; portrait of Sir Joshua Reynolds, after himself etc. There are also portraits of George Cook, engraver; John Bell, publisher; actors Edmund Kean
Edmund Kean
Edmund Kean was an English actor, regarded in his time as the greatest ever.-Early life:Kean was born in London. His father was probably Edmund Kean, an architect’s clerk, and his mother was an actress, Anne Carey, daughter of the 18th century composer and playwright Henry Carey...
, Charles Young
Charles Young
Charles Young was the third African American graduate of West Point, the first black U.S. national park superintendent, first black military attaché, first black to achieve the rank of colonel, and highest-ranking black officer in the United States Army until his death in 1922.-Early life and...
(as Hamlet), William Dowton
William Dowton
William Dowton was a British actor.- Early life :Dowton, the son of an innkeeper and grocer at Exeter, was born in that city on April 25, 1764. At an early age he worked with a marble cutter, but in 1780 was articled to an architect...
and John Liston
John Liston
John Liston , English comedian, was born in London.He made his public debut on the stage at Weymouth as Lord Duberley in The Heir-at-law...
(the latter as Paul Pry
Paul Pry (play)
Paul Pry , a farce in three acts, was the most notable play written by 19th century English playwright John Poole. It premiered in London on 13 September 1825 at the Haymarket Theatre and ran 114 performances...
); actresses Lucia Elizabeth Vestris
Lucia Elizabeth Vestris
Lucia Elizabeth Vestris was an English actress and a contralto opera singer, appearing in Mozart and Rossini works. While popular in her time, she was more notable as a theatre producer and manager...
and Julia Glover
Julia Glover
Julia Betterton Glover was an Irish-born stage actress well known for her comic roles in the late 18th and 19th centuries.-Biography:...
.
Family
One of Clint's sons, Scipio ClintScipio Clint
Scipio Clint , medallist and seal-engraver, born in 1805, was the son of George Clint, A.R.A., the portrait-painter and engraver. He gained a medal at the Society of Arts in 1824. He exhibited at the Academy for the first time in 1825, and in 1830 exhibited there his dies for a medal of Sir Thomas...
, was a notable medallist and seal engraver. Of his other sons Raphael Clint (1797–1849) was an engraver and Alfred Clint
Alfred Clint
Alfred Clint , was an English marine painter.Clint was the fifth and youngest son by his first marriage of George Clint, A.R.A. He was born in Alfred Place, Bedford Square, London, on 22 March 1807, and acquired the technical knowledge of painting from his father, while he studied from the life at...
(1807–1833) a marine painter.
Further reading
- Bryan, Michael. Bryan's dictionary of painters and engravers, volume 1 (New York: Macmillan, 1903), p303.
External links
- George Clint online (ArtCyclopedia)
- George Clint on Artnet
- Works by George Clint (National Portrait gallery, London)
- Engravings by Clint ("Grosvenor Prints")
- Portrait of a gentleman (Oil on canvas - Christie'sChristie'sChristie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766...
- Portrait of Colonel John Edmund Harvey (oil on canvas, 1844)