1.
Norwich
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Norwich is a city on the River Wensum in East Anglia and lies about 100 miles north-east of London. It is the administrative centre for East Anglia and county town of Norfolk. During the 11th century, Norwich was the largest city in England after London and it remained the capital of the most populous English county until the Industrial Revolution. The urban area of Norwich had a population of 213,166 according to the 2011 Census, the parliamentary seats cross over into adjacent local-government districts. A total of 132,512 people live in the City of Norwich, Norwich is the fourth most densely populated local-government district in the East of England, with 3,480 people per square kilometre. In May 2012, Norwich was designated Englands first UNESCO City of Literature, the capital of the Iceni tribe was a settlement located near to the village of Caistor St. Edmund on the River Tas approximately 8 kilometres to the south of modern-day Norwich. Following an uprising led by Boudica around AD60 the Caistor area became the Roman capital of East Anglia named Venta Icenorum, literally the market place of the Iceni. According to a rhyme, the demise of Venta Icenorum led to the development of Norwich, Caistor was a city when Norwich was none. There are two suggested models of development for Norwich, the ancient city was a thriving centre for trade and commerce in East Anglia in 1004 AD when it was raided and burnt by Swein Forkbeard the Viking king of Denmark. Mercian coins and shards of pottery from the Rhineland dating from the 8th century suggest that trade was happening long before this. Between 924 and 939, Norwich became fully established as a town, the word Norvic appears on coins across Europe minted during this period, in the reign of King Athelstan. The Vikings were a cultural influence in Norwich for 40–50 years at the end of the 9th century. At the time of the Norman Conquest the city was one of the largest in England, the Domesday Book states that it had approximately 25 churches and a population of between 5, 000–10,000. It also records the site of an Anglo-Saxon church in Tombland, the site of the Saxon market place and the later Norman cathedral. Norwich continued to be a centre for trade, the River Wensum being a convenient export route to the River Yare and Great Yarmouth. Quern stones and other artefacts from Scandinavia and the Rhineland have been found during excavations in Norwich city centre and these date from the 11th century onwards. Norwich Castle was founded soon after the Norman Conquest, the Domesday Book records that 98 Saxon homes were demolished to make way for the castle. In 1096, Herbert de Losinga, Bishop of Thetford, began construction of Norwich Cathedral, the chief building material for the Cathedral was limestone, imported from Caen in Normandy
2.
Norwich School (independent school)
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Norwich School is a selective English independent day school in the close of Norwich Cathedral, Norwich. Among the oldest schools in the United Kingdom, it has a history to 1096 as an episcopal grammar school established by Herbert de Losinga. In the 16th century the school came under the control of the city of Norwich, the school was refounded in 1547 in a royal charter granted by Edward VI and moved to its current site beside the cathedral in 1551. In the 19th century it became independent of the city and its curriculum was broadened in response to the declining demand for classical education following the Industrial Revolution. Early statutes declared the school was to instruct 90 sons of Norwich citizens, for most of its history it was a boys school, before becoming co-educational in the sixth form in 1994 and in every year group in 2010. The school educates the choristers of the cathedral, with which the school has a close relationship, in league tables of British schools it is consistently ranked first in Norfolk and Suffolk and amongst the highest in the United Kingdom. Former pupils are referred to as Old Norvicensians or ONs, the school has maintained a strong academic tradition and has educated a number of notable figures including Lord Nelson, Sir Edward Coke and 17 Fellows of the Royal Society among many others. Several members of the Norwich School of painters, the first provincial art movement in England, were educated at the school, Norwich School traces its origins to the founding of an episcopal grammar school in 1096 by Herbert de Losinga, first Bishop of Norwich. The continuity of the current Norwich School with the 1096 school would make it one of the oldest surviving schools in the United Kingdom, the newly established school occupied a site on Holmstrete in the parish of St Matthew between the close of Norwich Cathedral and the River Wensum. Until the English Reformation the bishop would appoint the headteacher, though on occasions this role had been fulfilled by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The earliest known headteacher is Vincent of Scarning, who is mentioned in 1240 regarding a dispute with a school in Rudham. Following repairs, the moved to the former friary in 1541, occupying part of the south-west cloister, where it educated 20 boys under a master. The school was refounded as King Edward VI Grammar School in a charter granted by Edward VI dated 7 May 1547. Issued four months into the kings accession, the charter expressly implemented an arrangement designed by Henry VIII and was confirmed by Edward Seymour, unusually for a cathedral city Norwich did not receive a cathedral school following the Reformation, but an endowed city grammar school. Norwich Cathedral was the first of the eight cathedral priories to surrender to the Crown, formally being re-established as a cathedral with a dean. Consequently, negotiations over the charter were between the city, rather than the cathedral, and the Crown. These plans were never realised, however, as the Great Hospital was partially stripped for building materials, the school temporarily occupied St Lukes House, a building north-west of the cathedral. The school moved to the site in the summer of 1551, the chapel was used as the main schoolroom while the other buildings were used to provide a library and accommodation for the master and boarding pupils
3.
Thomas Monro
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Thomas Monro was a British art collector and patron. He was Principal Physician of the Bethlem Royal Hospital and one-time consulting physician to George III, Thomas Monro was born 1759, in London, youngest son of Dr John Monro and Elizabeth Culling Smith. He was educated at Harrow under Samuel Parr and attended Oriel College, admitted as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1791, and acted as Censor on three separate occasions. He delivered the Harveian Oration in 1799, in 1811, he was named as an Elect of the College. Like his father and grandfather he was employed at Bedlam starting as Assistant Physician in 1787, in 1792 he became Principal Physician as successor to his father. He resigned in June 1816, as a result of scandal when he was accused of ‘wanting in humanity’ towards his patients, Monro was also known as a patron to numerous artists. The group of artists around him was known as The Monro Circle and included students from his ‘Academy’ in London, other painters who visited his home included J. M. W. Turner, Joseph Farington, Thomas Hearne, James Bourne, Henry Edridge, William Henry Hunt, John Laporte, Monro had a house in Adelphi Terrace, London and a cottage in Fetcham, Surrey. From 1807 until his death, on 14 May 1833, he lived in a house in Merry Hill near Bushey in Hertfordshire. Monro was himself an amateur artist, and a pupil of John Laporte, Monro had several children, and three of his sons also became artists, in particular Henry. Coincidentally, Monros distant kinsman Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro of Novar would later be one of Turners chief patrons, the Monro family of Physicians Attribution This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Monkhouse, William Cosmo. London, Smith, Elder & Co. Thomas Monro at Contemporary Art
4.
J. M. W. Turner
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Joseph Mallord William Turner, RA was an English Romanticist landscape painter. Turner was considered a figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting and he is commonly known as the painter of light. Joseph Mallord William Turner was baptised on 14 May 1775, and it is generally believed he was born between late April and early May. Turner himself claimed he was born on 23 April, but there is no proof and he was born in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, in London, England. His father, William Turner, was a barber and wig maker and his mother, Mary Marshall, came from a family of butchers. A younger sister, Mary Ann, was born in September 1778, the earliest known artistic exercise by Turner is from this period—a series of simple colourings of engraved plates from Henry Boswells Picturesque View of the Antiquities of England and Wales. Around 1786, Turner was sent to Margate on the north-east Kent coast, here he produced a series of drawings of the town and surrounding area foreshadowing his later work. Turner returned to Margate many times in later life, by this time, Turners drawings were being exhibited in his fathers shop window and sold for a few shillings. His father boasted to the artist Thomas Stothard that, My son, in 1789, Turner again stayed with his uncle who had retired to Sunningwell in Berkshire. A whole sketchbook of work from time in Berkshire survives as well as a watercolour of Oxford. The use of sketches on location, as the foundation for later finished paintings. By the end of 1789, he had begun to study under the topographical draughtsman Thomas Malton. Turner learned from him the tricks of the trade, copying and colouring outline prints of British castles. He would later call Malton My real master, topography was a thriving industry by which a young artist could pay for his studies. In the same year of 1789 he entered the Royal Academy of Art schools, when he was 14 years old, Sir Joshua Reynolds, president of the Royal Academy, chaired the panel that admitted him. At first Turner showed a keen interest in architecture, but was advised by the architect Thomas Hardwick to continue painting and his first watercolour painting A View of the Archbishops Palace, Lambeth was accepted for the Royal Academy summer exhibition of 1790 when Turner was 15. As a probationer in the academy, he was drawing from plaster casts of antique sculptures
5.
Peter De Wint
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Peter De Wint was an English landscape painter. A number of his pictures are in the National Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum and The Collection, De Wint was the son of an English physician of Dutch extraction who had come to England from New York. He was born in Stone, Staffordshire and he moved to London in 1802, and was apprenticed to John Raphael Smith, the mezzotint engraver and portrait painter. He bought his freedom from Smith in 1806, on condition that he supplied 18 oil paintings over the two years. In 1806 he visited Lincoln for the first time, with the painter of historical subjects William Hilton, De Wint and Hilton lived together in Broad Street, Golden Square, where John Varley lived. Varley gave De Wint lessons and introduced him to Dr Monro, De Wint first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1807, and the following year at the Gallery of Associated Artists in Watercolours. In 1809 entered the Royal Academy schools and he was elected an Associate of the Old Watercolour Society in 1810 and was made a full member the following year. By that time, as an established drawing-master, he was spending his summers teaching well-to-do provincial families, in 1812 he became a member of the Society of Painters in Watercolours, where he exhibited for many years, as well as at the Academy. De Wints life was devoted to art, he painted admirably in oils, no artist, asserted Alfred William Rich, ever came nearer painting a perfect picture than did Peter de Wint. He frequently visited his wifes home city of Lincoln, and many of his panoramic landscapes and he occasionally toured in Wales, and in 1828 travelled to Normandy
6.
Thomas Girtin
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Thomas Girtin was an English painter and etcher. A friend and rival of J. M. W. Turner, Thomas Girtin was born in Southwark, London, the son of a wealthy brushmaker of Huguenot descent. His father died while Thomas was a child, and his then married a Mr Vaughan. Girtin learnt drawing as a boy, and was apprenticed to Edward Dayes, certainly Dayes did not appreciate his pupils talent, and he was to write dismissively of Girtin after his death. While a youth, Girtin became friends with J. M. W. Turner, Girtin exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1794. He went on sketching tours, visiting the north of England, North Wales. By 1799, he had acquired influential patrons such as Lady Sutherland, and he was the dominant member of the Brothers, a sketching society of professional artists and talented amateurs. In 1800, Girtin married Mary Ann Borrett, the 16-year-old daughter of a well-to-do City goldsmith, and set up home in St Georges Row, Hyde Park, next door to the painter Paul Sandby. By 1801, he was a welcome houseguest at his patrons country houses such as Harewood House and Mulgrave Castle, and able to charge 20 guineas for a painting, but his health was deteriorating. In late 1801 to early 1802, he spent five and a months in Paris. They were published as Twenty Views in Paris and its Environs after his death, in spring and summer 1802, Girtin produced a panorama of London, the Eidometropolis,18 feet high and 108 feet in circumference which was exhibited with success that year. It was notable for its treatment of urban light and atmosphere. That November, Girtin died in his room, the cause was variously reported as asthma or ossification of the heart. Girtins early landscapes are akin to 18th-century topographical sketches, but in years he developed a bolder, more spacious, romantic style. The scenery of the north encouraged him to create a new palette of warm browns, slate greys, indigo. Girtins early death reportedly caused Turner to remark, Had Tom Girtin lived I should have starved, the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum have collections of his work. The British Museum was given significant Girtin watercolours by the collector Chambers Hall, in July 2002 Tate Britain organised an exhibition, Thomas Girtin, The Art of Watercolour which aimed to reveal his technical genius
7.
Surrey
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Surrey is a county in the south east of England. It shares borders with Kent to the east, East Sussex to the south-east, West Sussex to the south, Hampshire to the west and south-west, Surrey County Council sits extraterritorially at Kingston upon Thames, administered as part of Greater London since 1965. With a resident population of 1.1 million, Surrey is the most densely populated and third most populated county in the South East region, after Kent, the London boroughs of Lambeth, Southwark, Wandsworth, and parts of Lewisham and Bromley were in Surrey until 1889. The boroughs of Croydon, Kingston upon Thames, Merton, Sutton and Richmond upon Thames south of the River Thames were part of Surrey until 1965, when they too were absorbed into Greater London. In the same year, the county was extended north of the Thames by the addition of Spelthorne, due to this expansion, modern Surrey also borders on the London boroughs of Hounslow and Hillingdon. It has the highest GDP per capita of any English county, Surrey is divided in two by the chalk ridge of the North Downs, running east-west. To the north of the Downs the land is mostly flat, the geology of this area is dominated by London Clay in the east, Bagshot Sands in the west and alluvial deposits along the rivers. Much of Surrey is in the Metropolitan Green Belt and it contains a good deal of mature woodland. Among its many notable beauty spots are Box Hill, Leith Hill, Frensham Ponds, Newlands Corner and Puttenham & Crooksbury Commons. Surrey is the most wooded county in England, with 22. 4% coverage compared to an average of 11. 8%. Box Hill has the oldest untouched area of woodland in the UK. Surrey also contains Englands principal concentration of lowland heath, on soils in the west of the county. Agriculture not being intensive, there are many commons and access lands, together with a network of footpaths and bridleways including the North Downs Way. Accordingly, Surrey provides much in the way of leisure activities. The highest elevation in Surrey is Leith Hill near Dorking and it is either 293,294 or 295 metres above sea level and is the second highest point in southeastern England after Walbury Hill 297 metres in West Berkshire. Surrey has a population of approximately 1.1 million people and its largest town is Guildford, with a population of 66,773, Woking comes a close second with 62,796. They are followed by Ewell with 39,994 people and Camberley with 30,155, towns of between 25,000 and 30,000 inhabitants are Ashford, Epsom, Farnham, Staines and Redhill. Guildford is the county town, although the county administration was moved to Newington in 1791
8.
Royal Academy of Arts
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The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. The Royal Academy of Arts was founded through an act of King George III on 10 December 1768 with a mission to promote the arts of design in Britain through education and exhibition. Supporters wanted to foster a national school of art and to encourage appreciation, fashionable taste in 18th-century Britain was based on continental and traditional art forms, providing contemporary British artists little opportunity to sell their works. From 1746 the Foundling Hospital, through the efforts of William Hogarth, the success of this venture led to the formation of the Society of Artists of Great Britain and the Free Society of Artists. Both these groups were primarily exhibiting societies, their success was marred by internal factions among the artists. The combined vision of education and exhibition to establish a school of art set the Royal Academy apart from the other exhibiting societies. It provided the foundation upon which the Royal Academy came to dominate the art scene of the 18th and 19th centuries, supplanting the earlier art societies. Sir William Chambers, a prominent architect, used his connections with George III to gain royal patronage and financial support of the Academy, the painter Joshua Reynolds was made its first president. Francis Milner Newton was elected the first secretary, a post he held for two decades until his resignation in 1788, the instrument of foundation, signed by George III on 10 December 1768, named 34 founder members and allowed for a total membership of 40. William Hoare and Johann Zoffany were added to this list later by the King and are known as nominated members, among the founder members were two women, a father and daughter, and two sets of brothers. The Royal Academy was initially housed in cramped quarters in Pall Mall, although in 1771 it was given temporary accommodation for its library and schools in Old Somerset House, then a royal palace. In 1780 it was installed in purpose-built apartments in the first completed wing of New Somerset House, located in the Strand and designed by Chambers, the Academy moved in 1837 to Trafalgar Square, where it occupied the east wing of the recently completed National Gallery. These premises soon proved too small to house both institutions, in 1868,100 years after the Academys foundation, it moved to Burlington House, Piccadilly, where it remains. Burlington House is owned by the British Government, and used rent-free by the Royal Academy, the first Royal Academy exhibition of contemporary art, open to all artists, opened on 25 April 1769 and ran until 27 May 1769. 136 works of art were shown and this exhibition, now known as the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, has been staged annually without interruption to the present day. In 1870 the Academy expanded its programme to include a temporary annual loan exhibition of Old Masters. The range and frequency of these exhibitions have grown enormously since that time. Britains first public lectures on art were staged by the Royal Academy, led by Reynolds, the first president, a program included lectures by Dr. William Hunter, John Flaxman, James Barry, Sir John Soane, and J. M. W. Turner
Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1887). "Cotman, John Sell". Dictionary of National Biography. 12. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 285–87.
