John Shackleton
Encyclopedia
Drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...
who produced history painting
History painting
History painting is a genre in painting defined by subject matter rather than an artistic style, depicting a moment in a narrative story, rather than a static subject such as a portrait...
s and portraits. His parents and origins are unknown.
Output
Henry Pelham
Henry Pelham was a British Whig statesman, who served as Prime Minister of Great Britain from 27 August 1743 until his death in 1754...
(National Portrait Gallery), William Windham
William Windham
William Windham PC, PC was a British Whig statesman.-Early life:Windham was a member of an ancient Norfolk family and a great-great-grandson of Sir John Wyndham. He was the son of William Windham, Sr. of Felbrigg Hall and his second wife, Sarah Lukin...
(1717–1761; now at Felbrigg Hall
Felbrigg Hall
Felbrigg Hall is a 17th-century country house located in Felbrigg, Norfolk, England. Part of a National Trust property, the unaltered 17th-century house is noted for its Jacobean architecture and fine Georgian interior...
, Norfolk), and of John Bristowe, steward to the first duke of Newcastle
Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and 1st Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne, KG, PC was a British Whig statesman, whose official life extended throughout the Whig supremacy of the 18th century. He is commonly known as the Duke of Newcastle.A protégé of Sir Robert Walpole, he served...
(now in the Reitlinger Museum of Fine Art, Maidenhead
Maidenhead
Maidenhead is a town and unparished area within the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, in Berkshire, England. It lies on the River Thames and is situated west of Charing Cross in London.-History:...
).
From 1749 he was Principal Painter in Ordinary
Principal Painter in Ordinary
The title of Principal Painter in Ordinary to the King or Queen of England or, later, Great Britain, was awarded to a number of artists, nearly all mainly portraitists. It was different to the role of Serjeant Painter, and similar to the earlier role of "King's Painter"...
to George II and George III. He continued to be paid for portraits of the king and queen up even during 1765–6, when their official portraits were being done by Allan Ramsay. Several examples of his and his studio's output of royal portraits survive - one of George II dated 1755 is in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery
Scottish National Portrait Gallery
The Scottish National Portrait Gallery is an art gallery on Queen Street, Edinburgh, Scotland. It holds the national collections of portraits, all of which are of, but not necessarily by, Scots. In addition it also holds the Scottish National Photography Collection...
, Edinburgh; another of George II in Room 2 of the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
, London (commissioned by the museum in 1759 - the Museum also holds engravings after his paintings), along with two more of George II in the Royal Collection and others in Fishmongers' Hall, London, and Maidenhead
Maidenhead
Maidenhead is a town and unparished area within the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, in Berkshire, England. It lies on the River Thames and is situated west of Charing Cross in London.-History:...
Museum.
Life
He was a member of the 1755 committee that drew up the first proposal for siting a royal academyRoyal 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 London. On 8 March 1758 he was elected to be a member of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, then in its infancy. He exhibited at the Free Society of Artists from 1763 to 1766.
Among the legatees of his will, dated 8 March 1767, were his ‘dear friend Mrs Sarah Rice’, ‘two marble heads said to be done by Bernini to my intimate friend Mr Robt [D?]ossie of Wardour Street
Wardour Street
Wardour Street is a street in Soho, London. It is a one-way street south to north from Leicester Square, up through Chinatown, across Shaftesbury Avenue to Oxford Street.-History:...
, Soho’, and ‘a half-length picture of a Lady by Vandyke
Anthony van Dyck
Sir Anthony van Dyck was a Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England. He is most famous for his portraits of Charles I of England and his family and court, painted with a relaxed elegance that was to be the dominant influence on English portrait-painting for the next...
and a small landscape by Gaspar Poussin to John Bristow Esqr Keeper of His Majesties Lions
Menagerie
A menagerie is/was a form of keeping common and exotic animals in captivity that preceded the modern zoological garden. The term was first used in seventeenth century France in reference to the management of household or domestic stock. Later, it came to be used primarily in reference to...
in the Tower
Tower of London
Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress, more commonly known as the Tower of London, is a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London, England. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, separated from the eastern edge of the City of London by the open space...
’.
Marriage and issue
On 25 October 1742 (as a parishioner of St George's, Hanover Square, London) he married Mary Ann Regnier.External links
.- Portraits by Shackleton at the National Portrait Gallery, London
Sources
- J. R. Fawcett-Thompson, ‘The elusive Mr. Shackleton: light on the principal painter in ordinary to King George II and George III’, The Connoisseur, 165 (1967), 232–9
- B. Stewart and M. Cutten, The dictionary of portrait painters in Britain up to 1920 (1997), 417 · Waterhouse, 18c painters, 341
- J. Kerslake, National Portrait Gallery: early Georgian portraits, 1 (1977), 91, 93, 101, 204, 208–9
- O. Millar, The Tudor, Stuart and early Georgian pictures in the collection of her majesty the queen, 2 vols. (1963), vol. 1, 26, 150; vol. 2, nos. 567–8
- O. Millar, The later Georgian pictures in the collection of her majesty the queen, 1 (1969), xiii n.15, xli
- Horace Walpole, Anecdotes of painting in England: with some account of the principal artists, ed. James DallawayJames Dallaway-Life:He was the only son of James Dallaway, banker of Stroud, Gloucestershire, by Martha, younger daughter of Richard Hopton of Worcester, and was born at Bristol on 20 February 1763. He received his early education at the grammar school of Cirencester, and became a scholar of Trinity College,...
, [rev. and enl. edn], 2 (1826), 711 - Samuel RedgraveSamuel Redgrave-Life:He was eldest son of William Redgrave, and brother of Richard Redgrave, and was born at 9 Upper Eaton Street, Pimlico, London, on 3 October 1802. When about 14 years old he obtained a clerkship at the Home Office, and in his leisure time studied French, German, and Spanish, and practised...
, Artists - John Chaloner SmithJohn Chaloner SmithJohn Chaloner Smith was an Irish civil engineer and writer on British mezzotints.-Life:He was born in Dublin. His father was a proctor of the ecclesiastical courts, and married a granddaughter of Travers Hartley, M.P. for Dublin in the Irish parliament. Chaloner Smith was admitted to Trinity...
, British Mezzotinto Portraits, 1 (1878), 317; 2 (1879), 677–8 - Engraved Brit. ports., 1.245; 2.298, 456; 3.437
- B. Nicholson, The treasures of the Foundling Hospital, with a catalogue raisonné based on a draft catalogue by John Kerslake (1972), 32, 34, 50, 78, no. 74
- will, PRO, PROB 11/928, fols. 48r–49r