1.
John Dalton
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John Dalton FRS was an English chemist, physicist, and meteorologist. He is best known for his work in the development of modern atomic theory and his research into colour blindness. John Dalton was born into a Quaker family in Eaglesfield, near Cockermouth and he received his early education from his father and from Quaker John Fletcher, who ran a private school in the nearby village of Pardshaw Hall. With his family too poor to support him for long, he began to earn his living at the age of ten in the service of a wealthy local Quaker, Elihu Robinson. It is said he began teaching at a school at age 12. He joined his older brother Jonathan at age 15 in running a Quaker school in Kendal, around age 23 Dalton may have considered studying law or medicine, but his relatives did not encourage him, perhaps because being a Dissenter, he was barred from attending English universities. He acquired much scientific knowledge from informal instruction by John Gough, at age 27 he was appointed teacher of mathematics and natural philosophy at the New College in Manchester, a dissenting academy. He remained there until age 34, when the colleges worsening financial situation led him to resign his post and begin a new career as a tutor for mathematics. During his years in Kendal, Dalton contributed solutions of problems and questions on subjects to The Ladies Diary. In 1787 at age 21 he began to keep a diary in which, during the succeeding 57 years. He also rediscovered George Hadleys theory of atmospheric circulation around this time, Daltons first publication was Meteorological Observations and Essays at age 27 in 1793, which contained the seeds of several of his later discoveries. However, in spite of the originality of his treatment, little attention was paid to them by other scholars, a second work by Dalton, Elements of English Grammar, was published at age 35 in 1801. In fact, a shortage of colour perception in people had not even been formally described or officially noticed until Dalton wrote about his own. Since both he and his brother were colour blind, he recognized that this condition must be hereditary, examination of his preserved eyeball in 1995 demonstrated that Dalton actually had a less common kind of colour blindness, deuteroanopia, in which medium wavelength sensitive cones are missing. The altitude achieved was estimated using a barometer and this meant that, until the Ordnance Survey started publishing their maps for the Lake District in the 1860s, Dalton was one of the few sources of such information. Dalton was often accompanied by Jonathan Otley, who was one of the few other authorities on the heights of the Lake District mountains and he became both an assistant and a friend. These four essays were presented between 2 and 30 October 1801 and published in the Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester in 1802. It seems, therefore, that general laws respecting the absolute quantity and he thus enunciated Gay-Lussacs law, published in 1802 at age 36 by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac
2.
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
3.
Portrait painting
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See Portrait for more about the general topic of portraits. Portrait painting is a genre in painting, where the intent is to depict a human subject, the term portrait painting can also describe the actual painted portrait. Portraitists may create their work by commission, for public and private persons, portraits are often important state and family records, as well as remembrances. Historically, portrait paintings have primarily memorialized the rich and powerful, over time, however, it became more common for middle-class patrons to commission portraits of their families and colleagues. Today, portrait paintings are commissioned by governments, corporations, groups, clubs. In addition to painting, portraits can also be made in other such as etching, lithography, photography, video. A well-executed portrait is expected to show the essence of the subject or a flattering representation. As Aristotle stated, The aim of Art is to present not the appearance of things. In most cases, this results in a serious, closed lip stare, or as Charles Dickens put it, there are only two styles of portrait painting, the serious and the smirk. Even given these limitations, a range of subtle emotions is possible from quiet menace to gentle contentment. However, with the mouth relatively neutral, much of the facial expression needs to be created through the eyes, as author and artist Gordon C. Aymar states, the eyes are the place one looks for the most complete, reliable, and the eyebrows can register, almost single-handedly, wonder, pity, fright, pain, cynicism, concentration, wistfulness, displeasure, and expectation, in infinite variations and combinations. Portrait painting can depict the full length, half length, head and shoulders, or ‘head’, as well as in profile, three-quarter view, or full face, with varying directions of light. Occasionally, artists have created portraits with multiple views, as with Anthony van Dycks Triple Portrait of Charles I, there are even a few portraits where the front of the subject is not visible at all. Another example of the view in portraiture, in this case photography, can be found here. Among the other variables, the subject can be clothed or nude, indoors or out, standing, seated, reclining. Portrait paintings can be of individuals, couples, parents and children, families and they can be created in various media including oils, watercolor, pen and ink, pencil, charcoal, pastel, and mixed media. Artists may employ a wide-ranging palette of colors, as with Pierre-Auguste Renoirs Mme, charpentier and her children,1878 or restrict themselves to mostly white or black, as with Gilbert Stuarts Portrait of George Washington
4.
Painting
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Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface. The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, Painting is a mode of creative expression, and the forms are numerous. Drawing, gesture, composition, narration, or abstraction, among other aesthetic modes, may serve to manifest the expressive, Paintings can be naturalistic and representational, photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolistic, emotive, or political in nature. A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by motifs and ideas. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action, the term painting is also used outside of art as a common trade among craftsmen and builders. What enables painting is the perception and representation of intensity, every point in space has different intensity, which can be represented in painting by black and white and all the gray shades between. In practice, painters can articulate shapes by juxtaposing surfaces of different intensity, thus, the basic means of painting are distinct from ideological means, such as geometrical figures, various points of view and organization, and symbols. In technical drawing, thickness of line is ideal, demarcating ideal outlines of an object within a perceptual frame different from the one used by painters. Color and tone are the essence of painting as pitch and rhythm are the essence of music, color is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but in the East, some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky, and Newton, have written their own color theory. Moreover, the use of language is only an abstraction for a color equivalent, the word red, for example, can cover a wide range of variations from the pure red of the visible spectrum of light. There is not a register of different colors in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music. For a painter, color is not simply divided into basic, painters deal practically with pigments, so blue for a painter can be any of the blues, phthalocyanine blue, Prussian blue, indigo, cobalt, ultramarine, and so on. Psychological and symbolical meanings of color are not, strictly speaking, colors only add to the potential, derived context of meanings, and because of this, the perception of a painting is highly subjective. The analogy with music is quite clear—sound in music is analogous to light in painting, shades to dynamics and these elements do not necessarily form a melody of themselves, rather, they can add different contexts to it. Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, as one example, collage, some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet and Anselm Kiefer, there is a growing community of artists who use computers to paint color onto a digital canvas using programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, and many others. These images can be printed onto traditional canvas if required, rhythm is important in painting as it is in music
5.
Dudley
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Dudley is a large town in the West Midlands of England,6 miles south-east of Wolverhampton and 10.5 miles north-west of Birmingham. The town is the centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley. The Metropolitan Borough, which includes the towns of Stourbridge and Halesowen, had a population of 312,900, Dudley is sometimes called the capital of the Black Country. Tourist attractions include Dudley Zoo, Dudley Castle, the Black Country Living Museum, working iron and mining for coal was in practice as early as the 13th century. The first mention of Dudleys status as a borough dates from the mid-13th century, an inquisition after his death further established the value and importance of the borough, with mentions to the towns growing coal industry. Following Dudleys death, the returned to the Sutton family. In 1605, conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot fled to Holbeche House in nearby Wall Heath and it is also from around this time that the oldest excavated condoms, found in the remains of Dudley Castle, were believed to have originated. Dudley had become an incredibly impoverished place during the 16th and 17th centuries, abraham Darby was descended from Dud Dudleys sister, Jane, and was the first person to produce iron commercially using coke instead of charcoal at his works in Coalbrookdale, Shropshire in 1709. Abraham Darby was born near Wrens Nest Hill near the town of Dudley, Dud Dudleys discovery, together with improvements to the local road network and the construction of the Dudley Canal, made Dudley into an important industrial and commercial centre. Dudleys population grew dramatically during the 18th and 19th centuries because of the increase in industry, with the main industries including coal, other industries included iron, steel, engineering, metallurgy, glass cutting, textiles and leatherworking. Following the Reform Act of 1832, Dudley returned one Member of Parliament, the town was re-incorporated as a Municipal Borough in 1865, later becoming a County Borough in 1889. Dudley Castle, which had fallen into ruin following a fire in 1750, was converted into a zoo in 1937 by the Earl of Dudley, a reported 250,000 people attempted to visit the site upon the first day of opening. In World War II, Dudley was bombed on several occasions, on 12 August 1941, four people were killed when another landmine was dropped in nearby Birch Crescent. These were the fatal air raids on Dudley. Most of this land had been held by the Lords of Dudley, in 1974, further reorganization led to the creation of the present-day metropolitan borough, which included the nearby towns of Stourbridge and Halesowen. The declining industry in Dudley has given rise to high unemployment, Dudley is the administrative centre of the Dudley Metropolitan Borough, and is governed by the Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council. The metropolitan borough, which includes the towns of Stourbridge, Halesowen. For many years the town formed part of an exclave of the county of Worcestershire, despite the more recent changes in county boundaries, the town and borough still remain part of the Anglican Diocese of Worcester
6.
Worcestershire
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Worcestershire is a county in the West Midlands of England. Between 1974 and 1998, it was merged with the county of Herefordshire as Hereford. The cathedral city of Worcester is the largest settlement and county town, other towns in the county include Redditch, Bromsgrove, Stourport-on-Severn, Droitwich, Evesham, Kidderminster, and Malvern. The north-east of Worcestershire includes part of the industrial West Midlands, the county is divided into six administrive districts, Worcester, Redditch, Wychavon, Malvern Hills, Wyre Forest, and Bromsgrove. The county borders Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, West Midlands, Warwickshire, to the west, the county is bordered by the Malvern Hills and the spa town of Malvern. The south of the county is bordered by Gloucestershire and the edge of the Cotswolds. Two major rivers flow through the county, the Severn and the Avon, Worcestershire was the heartland of the early English kingdom of the Hwicce. It was absorbed by the Kingdom of Mercia during the 7th century and it was a separate ealdormanship briefly in the 10th century before forming part of the Earldom of Mercia in the 11th century. In the years leading up to the Norman conquest, the Church, supported by the cathedral, Evesham Abbey, Pershore Abbey, Malvern Priory, and other religious houses, increasingly dominated the county. The last known Anglo-Saxon sheriff of the county was Cyneweard of Laughern, on 4 August 1265, Simon de Montfort was killed in the Battle of Evesham in Worcestershire. In 1642, the Battle of Powick Bridge was the first major skirmish of the English Civil War, during the Middle Ages, much of the countys economy was based on the wool trade. Many areas of its forests, such as Feckenham Forest, Horewell Forest. Droitwich Spa, situated on large deposits of salt, was a centre of production from Roman times. These old industries have declined, to be replaced by other. The county is home to the worlds oldest continually published newspaper. Malvern was one of the centres of the 19th century rise in English spa towns due to Malvern water being believed to be very pure, containing nothing at all. The 2011 census found the population of Worcestershire to be 566,169, while this change is in line with the nationwide trend of White British peoples share of the population shrinking, Worcestershire is still much more ethnically homogeneous than the national average. In 2011 England as a whole was 79. 8% White British, the most notable were Dudley, Evenlode, and the area around Shipston-on-Stour
7.
Birmingham
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Birmingham is a major city and metropolitan borough of West Midlands, England lying on the River Rea, a small river that runs through Birmingham. It is the largest and most populous British city outside London, the city is in the West Midlands Built-up Area, the third most populous urban area in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2,440,986 at the 2011 census. Birminghams metropolitan area is the second most populous in the UK with a population of 3.8 million and this also makes Birmingham the 8th most populous metropolitan area in Europe. By 1791 it was being hailed as the first manufacturing town in the world, perhaps the most important invention in British history, the industrial steam engine, was invented in Birmingham. From the summer of 1940 to the spring of 1943, Birmingham was bombed heavily by the German Luftwaffe in what is known as the Birmingham Blitz. The damage done to the infrastructure, in addition to a deliberate policy of demolition and new building by planners, led to extensive demolition. Today Birminghams economy is dominated by the service sector and its metropolitan economy is the second largest in the United Kingdom with a GDP of $121. 1bn, and its six universities make it the largest centre of higher education in the country outside London. Birmingham is the fourth-most visited city in the UK by foreign visitors, Birminghams sporting heritage can be felt worldwide, with the concept of the Football League and lawn tennis both originating from the city. Its most successful football club Aston Villa has won seven league titles, people from Birmingham are called Brummies, a term derived from the citys nickname of Brum. This originates from the citys name, Brummagem, which may in turn have been derived from one of the citys earlier names. There is a distinctive Brummie accent and dialect, Birminghams early history is that of a remote and marginal area. The main centres of population, power and wealth in the pre-industrial English Midlands lay in the fertile and accessible river valleys of the Trent, the Severn and the Avon. The area of modern Birmingham lay in between, on the upland Birmingham Plateau and within the wooded and sparsely populated Forest of Arden. Birmingham as a settlement dates from the Anglo-Saxon era, within a century of the charter Birmingham had grown into a prosperous urban centre of merchants and craftsmen. By 1327 it was the third-largest town in Warwickshire, a position it would retain for the next 200 years, by 1700 Birminghams population had increased fifteenfold and the town was the fifth-largest in England and Wales. The importance of the manufacture of goods to Birminghams economy was recognised as early as 1538. Equally significant was the emerging role as a centre for the iron merchants who organised finance, supplied raw materials. The 18th century saw this tradition of free-thinking and collaboration blossom into the phenomenon now known as the Midlands Enlightenment
8.
Francis Eginton
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Francis Eginton, was an English glass painter. He painted windows for cathedrals, churches, chapels and stately homes, etc. around the country, leaving 50 large works altogether and his masterpiece is The Conversion of St. Paul, for the east window of St Pauls Church, Birmingham. He also developed a method for reproducing paintings mechanically, Eginton was the grandson of the rector of Eckington, Worcestershire, and was trained as an enameller at Bilston. As a young man he was employed by Matthew Boulton at the Soho Manufactory, in 1764 Eginton was employed as a decorator of japanned wares, but also did much work in modelling. Eginton perfected the method and applied it to the production of coloured copies of paintings, more plates than one were required for each picture, and after leaving the printing-press Eginton finished them by hand. They were copied from the works of Philip James de Loutherbourg, Angelica Kauffman and other artists, the largest were 40 inches by 50. The matter was settled by a series of pamphlets written by Boultons grandson, M. P. W. Boulton, in 1863-5. The picture branch of Boultons business was discontinued as unprofitable, the loss on this, the partnership between Eginton and Boulton was dissolved. Lord Dartmouth proposed to grant Eginton a government pension of £20 a year for his work on the copying process, but Boulton raised objections. For the next year or two Eginton appears to have continued to work at Soho, and to have begun in 1781 to stain, in 1784 he left Soho and set up in business for himself at Prospect Hill House, which stood just opposite Soho. Before Eginton the art of glass-painting had fallen into complete disuse and he revived it and turned out a long series of works in stained glass from his Birmingham factory. His first work of consequence was the arms of the knights of the Garter for two Gothic windows in the stalls in St. and many windows, for which he was paid £12,000. Much of his work was for export, and some of his best work ended up in Amsterdam, egintons works were, in fact, transparencies on glass. He was obliged to render opaque a large portion of his glass, egintons showroom was visited by all distinguished visitors to Birmingham. Lord Nelson, accompanied by Sir William and Lady Hamilton called there on 29 August 1802, Eginton died on 26 March 1805, and was buried in Old Handsworth churchyard. His daughter married Henry Wyatt, the painter, his son, William Raphael Eginton, succeeded to his fathers business and his brother, John Eginton, was a noted stipple engraver. His nephew, also called Francis Eginton, was also a notable engraver and this article incorporates text from the article Eginton, Francis in A biographical history of the fine arts by Shearjashub Spooner, an 1873 publication now in the public domain
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Benjamin West
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Benjamin West PRA was an Anglo-American painter of historical scenes around and after the time of the American War of Independence and the Seven Years War. He was the president of the Royal Academy in London. He was offered a knighthood by the British Crown, but declined it and he said that Art is the representation of human beauty, ideally perfect in design, graceful and noble in attitude. West was born in Springfield, Pennsylvania, in a house that is now in the borough of Swarthmore on the campus of Swarthmore College, as the child of an innkeeper. The family later moved to Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, where his father was the proprietor of the Square Tavern, Benjamin West was an autodidact, while excelling at the arts, he had little education and, even when president of the Royal Academy, could scarcely spell. From 1746 to 1759, West worked in Pennsylvania, mostly painting portraits, while West was in Lancaster in 1756, his patron, a gunsmith named William Henry, encouraged him to paint a Death of Socrates based on an engraving in Charles Rollins Ancient History. His resulting composition, which differs from the source, has been called the most ambitious. During this time West met John Wollaston, a painter who had immigrated from London. West was a friend of Benjamin Franklin, whose portrait he painted. Franklin was the godfather of Wests second son, Benjamin, in common with many artists architects and lovers of the fine arts at that time he conducted a Grand Tour. West expanded his repertoire by copying works of Italian painters such as Titian, in Rome he met a number of international neo-classical artists including German-born Anton Rafael Mengs, Scottish Gavin Hamilton, and Austrian Angelica Kauffman. In August 1763, West arrived in England, on what he intended as a visit on his way back to America. In fact, he never returned to America and he stayed for a month at Bath with William Allen, who was also in the country, and visited his half-brother Thomas West at Reading at the urging of his father. In London he was introduced to Richard Wilson and his student Joshua Reynolds and he moved into a house in Bedford Street, Covent Garden. In 1765 he married Elizabeth Shewell, an American to whom he engaged in Philadelphia. All three prelates commissioned work from him, in 1766 West proposed a scheme to decorate St Pauls Cathedral with paintings. It was rejected by the Bishop of London, but his idea of painting an altarpiece for St Stephen Walbrook was accepted, at around this time he also received acclaim for his classical subjects, such as Orestes and Pylades and The Continence of Scipio. Benjamin West was known in England as the American Raphael and his Raphaelesque painting of Archangel Michael Binding the Devil is in the collection of Trinity College, Cambridge
10.
St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle
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St Georges Chapel is the place of worship at Windsor Castle in England, United Kingdom. It is both a royal peculiar and the chapel of the Order of the Garter, the chapel is governed by the Dean and Canons of Windsor. The chapel is located in the Lower Ward of the castle, the Society of the Friends of St Georges and Descendants of the Knights of the Garter, a registered charity, was established in 1931 to assist the College in maintaining the chapel. In 1348, King Edward III founded two new colleges, St Stephens at Westminster and St Georges at Windsor. The new college at Windsor was attached to the Chapel of St Edward the Confessor which had constructed by Henry III in the early thirteenth century. The chapel was rededicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, St Edward the Confessor. Edward III also built the Aerary Porch in 1353–1354 and it was used as the entrance to the new college. St Georges Chapel became the Mother Church of the Order of the Garter, and their heraldic banners hang above the upper stalls of the choir where they have a seat for life. The period 1475–1528 saw a redevelopment of St Georges Chapel, set in motion by Edward IV and continued by Henry VII. The Horseshoe Cloister was constructed for the new community of 45 junior members,16 vicars, St Georges Chapel was a popular destination for pilgrims during the late medieval period. The chapel was purported to contain several important relics, the bodies of John Schorne and Henry VI of England and these relics all appear to have been displayed at the east end of the south choir aisle. The Chapel suffered a great deal of destruction during the English Civil War, parliamentary forces broke into and plundered the chapel and treasury on 23 October 1642. Further pillaging occurred in 1643 when the chapter house was destroyed, lead was stripped off the chapel roofs. Following his execution in 1649, Charles I was buried in a vault in the centre of the choir at St Georges Chapel which also contained the coffins of Henry VIII. A programme of repair was undertaken at St Georges Chapel following the Restoration of the monarchy, the reign of Queen Victoria saw further changes made to the architecture of the chapel. On the roof of the chapel, standing on the pinnacles, the original beasts dated from the sixteenth century, but were removed in 1682 on the advice of Sir Christopher Wren, the present statues date from 1925, when the chapel was restored. Members of the meet at Windsor Castle every June for the annual Garter Service. After lunch in the State Apartments in the Upper Ward of the Castle they process on foot, wearing their robes and insignia, if any new members have been admitted to the Order they are installed at the service
11.
Windsor Castle
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Windsor Castle is a royal residence at Windsor in the English county of Berkshire. It is notable for its association with the English and later British royal family. The original castle was built in the 11th century after the Norman invasion of England by William the Conqueror, since the time of Henry I, it has been used by the reigning monarch and is the longest-occupied palace in Europe. Inside the castle walls is the 15th-century St Georges Chapel, considered by the historian John Martin Robinson to be one of the achievements of English Perpendicular Gothic design. Gradually replaced with stone fortifications, the castle withstood a siege during the First Barons War at the start of the 13th century. Edwards core design lasted through the Tudor period, during which Henry VIII and Elizabeth I made increasing use of the castle as a royal court and centre for diplomatic entertainment. Windsor Castle survived the period of the English Civil War, when it was used as a military headquarters for Parliamentary forces. At the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Charles II rebuilt much of Windsor Castle with the help of the architect Hugh May, Queen Victoria made a few minor changes to the castle, which became the centre for royal entertainment for much of her reign. Windsor Castle was used as a refuge for the family during the Luftwaffe bombing campaigns of the Second World War. It is a popular tourist attraction, a venue for hosting state visits, today, more than 500 people live and work in Windsor Castle, making it the largest inhabited castle in the world. Windsor Castle occupies 13 acres, and combines the features of a fortification, a palace, the present-day castle was created during a sequence of phased building projects, culminating in the reconstruction work after a fire in 1992. It is in essence a Georgian and Victorian design based on a medieval structure, since the 14th century, architecture at the castle has attempted to produce a contemporary reinterpretation of older fashions and traditions, repeatedly imitating outmoded or even antiquated styles. Although there has some criticism, the castles architecture and history lends it a place amongst the greatest European palaces. At the heart of Windsor Castle is the Middle Ward, a formed around the motte or artificial hill in the centre of the ward. The motte is 50 feet high and is made from chalk originally excavated from the surrounding ditch, the Round Tower is in reality far from cylindrical, due to the shape and structure of the motte beneath it. The western entrance to the Middle Ward is now open, the eastern exit from the ward is guarded by the Norman Gatehouse. Wyatville redesigned the exterior of the gatehouse, and the interior was later converted in the 19th century for residential use. The Upper Ward of Windsor Castle comprises a number of major buildings enclosed by the bailey wall
12.
John Hoppner
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John Hoppner RA was an English portrait painter, much influenced by Reynolds who achieved fame as a brilliant colourist. 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 showed a fatherly interest and patronage of the boy that gave rise to rumours, quite unfounded. Hoppner became a chorister at the chapel, but, showing strong inclination for art. In 1778 he took a medal for drawing from life, and in 1782 the Academys highest award. Hoppner first exhibited at the Royal Academy In 1780 and his earliest love was for landscape, but necessity obliged him to turn to the more lucrative business of portrait painting. At once successful, he had throughout life the most fashionable and wealthy sitters and he rarely attempted ideal subjects, though a Sleeping Venus, Belisarius, Jupiter and Io, a Bacchante and Cupid and Psyche are recorded among his works. His other sitters included Sir Walter Scott, the Duke of Wellington, Henry Bartle Frere, according to the 1911 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, Competent judges have deemed his most successful works to be his portraits of women and children. He was confessedly an imitator of Reynolds, the appearance, however, of some of his pictures in good condition has shown that his fame as a brilliant colourist was well-founded. His drawing is faulty, but his touch has qualities of breadth, in 1803 he published A Series of Portraits of Ladies, engraved after his paintings by Charles Wilkin, and in 1805 a volume of translations of Eastern tales into English verse. Unusually Hoppner painted the background and perhaps more of a full portrait of Charlotte, Countess Talbot by Thomas Gainsborough in 1788. It is now in the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Hoppner was a man of great social power, and had the knowledge and accomplishments of a man of the world. He married Phoebe Wright, the daughter of American-born sculptor Patience Wright and he died on the 23 January 1810. London, Smith, Elder & Co. p.342, old English Masters p.91 ff. Skipton, H. P. K. John Hoppner McKay, William & Roberts, John Hoppner John Hoppner on ArtCyclopedia Profile on Royal Academy of Arts Collections The Sackville children Portrait of William Locke Portrait of Anne, Lady Grenville
13.
Thomas Lawrence
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Sir Thomas Lawrence PRA FRS was a leading English portrait painter and the fourth president of the Royal Academy. He was born in Bristol and began drawing in Devizes, where his father was an innkeeper, at the age of ten, having moved to Bath, he was supporting his family with his pastel portraits. At eighteen he went to London and soon established his reputation as a painter in oils, receiving his first royal commission. He stayed at the top of his profession until his death, aged 60, self-taught, he was a brilliant draughtsman and known for his gift of capturing a likeness, as well as his virtuoso handling of paint. He became an associate of the Royal Academy in 1791, a member in 1794. Lawrences love affairs were not happy and, in spite of his success, at his death, Lawrence was the most fashionable portrait painter in Europe. His reputation waned during Victorian times, but has since been partially restored, Thomas Lawrence was born at 6 Redcross Street, Bristol, the youngest surviving child of Thomas Lawrence, a supervisor of excise, and Lucy Read, the daughter of a clergyman. The couple had 16 children but only five survived infancy, Lawrences brother Andrew became a clergyman, William had a career in the army, sisters Lucy and Anne married a solicitor and a clergyman. Soon after Thomas was born his father decided to become an innkeeper and took over the White Lion Inn and next-door American Coffee House in Broad Street, Bristol. It was during the familys stay at the Black Bear Inn that Lawrence senior began to make use of his sons precocious talents for drawing and reciting poetry. Visitors would be greeted with the words Gentlemen, heres my son – will you have him recite from the poets, among those who listened to a recitation from Tom, or Tommy as he was called, was the actor David Garrick. Lawrences formal schooling was limited to two years at The Fort, a school in Bristol, when he was aged six to eight, and he also became accomplished in dancing, fencing, boxing and billiards. But once again Lawrence senior failed as a landlord and, in 1779, he was declared bankrupt, from now on, Lawrence was to support his parents with the money he earned from his portraits. The family settled at 2 Alfred Street in Bath, and the young Lawrence established himself as a portraitist in pastels, the oval portraits, for which he was soon charging three guineas, were about 12 inches by 10 inches, and usually portrayed a half-length. His sitters included the Duchess of Devonshire, Sarah Siddons, Sir Henry Harpur, Warren Hastings, sometime before his eighteenth birthday in 1787 Lawrence arrived in London, taking lodgings in Leicester Square, near to Joshua Reynolds studio. He was introduced to Reynolds, who advised him to study nature, Lawrence set up a studio at 41 Jermyn Street and installed his parents in a house in Greek Street. In the Royal Academy exhibition of 1788 Lawrence was represented by five portraits in pastels and one in oils, a medium he quickly mastered. Between 1787 and his death in 1830 he would miss two of the annual exhibitions, once,1809, in protest about the way his paintings had been displayed and once, in 1819
14.
Martin Archer Shee
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Sir Martin Archer Shee PRA was an Irish portrait painter and president of the Royal Academy. He was born in Dublin, of an old Catholic Irish family, and his father Martin Shee, Martin Shee nevertheless studied art in the Royal Dublin Society and came to London. There, in 1788, he was introduced by Edmund Burke to Joshua Reynolds, in 1789 he exhibited his first two pictures, the Head of an Old Man and Portrait of a Gentleman. Over the next ten years he steadily increased in practice and he was chosen an associate of the Royal Academy in 1798, in 1789 he married Mary, eldest daughter of James Power of Youghal, and in 1800 he was elected a Royal Academician. He moved to George Romneys former house in Cavendish Square, Shee continued to paint with great readiness of hand and fertility of invention, although his portraits were eclipsed by more than one of his contemporaries, and especially by Thomas Lawrence. The earlier portraits of the artist are carefully finished, easy in action, with good drawing and they show an undue tendency to redness in the flesh painting—a defect which is still more apparent in his later works, in which the handling is less square, crisp and forcible. In addition to his portraits he executed various subjects and historical works, such as Lavinia, Belisarius, his diploma picture Prospero and Miranda, in 1805 he published a poem consisting of Rhymes on Art, and a second part followed in 1809. Lord Byron spoke well of it in his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, Shee published another small volume of verse in 1814, entitled The Commemoration of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and other Poems, but this was less successful. He also produced a tragedy, Alasco, set in Poland, the play was accepted at Covent Garden, but was refused a licence, on the grounds that it contained treasonable allusions, and Shee angrily resolved to make his appeal to the public. He carried out his threat in 1824, but Alasco was still on the list of unacted dramas in 1911 and he also published two novels – Oldcourt and Cecil Hyde. On the death of Sir Thomas Lawrence in 1830, Shee was chosen president of the Royal Academy in his stead, in 1831 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In an examination before the committee of 1836 concerning the functions of the Royal Academy. He continued to paint till 1845, when illness made him retire to Brighton and he was deputised for at the Academy by J. M. W. Turner, who had appointed him a trustee of the projected Turner almshouse. From 1842–1849, he was the first president of the Birmingham Society of Artists and he died in Brighton in 1850 and was buried in the western extension to St Nicholas Churchyard in Brighton. His headstone remains, but has been flat and moved to the perimeter of the site. Shee had three sons, who became successful barristers, and three daughters, descendants of one of the sons was George Archer-Shee, whose story inspired The Winslow Boy, a play written by Terence Rattigan and his older half-brother Martin Archer-Shee MP. Shees descendant Mary Archer-Shee supports the campaign for the fulfilment of Turners wishes for his bequests, Martin Archer Shee, The Life of Sir Martin Archer Shee, Volume 1, Volume 2. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Shee, Sir Martin Archer, Sir Martin Archer Shee online Biography of M. A. Shee William Archer Shee, the artists son
15.
Hanover Square, Westminster
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Hanover Square is a square in Mayfair, Westminster, situated to the south west of Oxford Circus, the major junction where Oxford Street meets Regent Street. The streets which converge at Hanover Square are, Brook Street, Dering Street, Hanover Street, Harewood Place and Princes Street. Hanover Square was developed from 1713 as a residential address by Richard Lumley, 1st Earl of Scarbrough. Like Scarbrough, most of the residents were staunch supporters of the Hanoverian succession of 1714. Early Hanover Square was decidedly Whig and most decidedly military, commented the architectural historian Sir John Summerson, early residents included Generals Earl Cadogan, Sir Charles Wills, Stewart, Evans, Lord Carpenter and John Pepper, names conspicuously associated with episodes in Marlborough’s war and the Fifteen. While a few of the 18th-century houses remain intact, most of the square has been reconstructed in a variety of periods. The parish church of St Georges, Hanover Square, is a distance to the south of the square at the junction of St George Street and Maddox Street. In 1759 James Abercrombie, commander-in-chief of British forces in North America during the French and Indian War, bibliography Sir John Summerson, Georgian London, London, Penguin,1969 Edward Walford, Hanover Square and neighbourhood, Old and New London, Volume 4, pp. 314–326
16.
Henry Tresham
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Henry Tresham RA was an Irish-born historical painter active in London, England, in the late 18th century. He spent some time in Rome early in his career, and was professor of painting at the Royal Academy in London from 1807 to 1809, Henry Tresham was born in about 1751. He received his first art instruction from W. Ennis, a pupil of Robert West at the Dublin Art School and he moved to England in 1775, but spent most of the next fourteen years in Rome. There he became a friend of the British painter, Thomas Jones, like many other artists in Rome he also acted as a dealer, working with Gavin Hamilton and Thomas Jenkins, and negotiating sales of antiquities to Frederick Hervey and John Campbell. Tresham returned to Britain in 1788 and his reputation was gained primarily through large-scale history paintings, somewhat similar in style to those of Henry Fuseli. These were based on his travels to Rome, in 1791 he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy, and became a full Academician in 1799. His appeal to the monarch was ultimately successful, and the practice of the rotation of the members reinstated. He was professor of painting at the Academy from 1807 to 1809 and his surviving paintings include The Earl of Warwicks Vow before the Battle of Towton. Hodgson, J. E. Eaton, Frederick A, the Royal Academy and its Members 1768-1830. Dublin, M. H. Gill & son, wikisource A Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy, 1701-1800, Compiled from the Brinsley Ford Archive by John Ingamells Dudgeon, Camphill. Henry Tresham online Henry Tresham on Artnet Henry Tresham - artist of the month Portrait of Henry Tresham
17.
George IV of the United Kingdom
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George IV was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of Hanover following the death of his father, George III, on 29 January 1820, until his own death ten years later. From 1811 until his accession, he served as Prince Regent during his fathers mental illness. George IV led an extravagant lifestyle that contributed to the fashions of the Regency era and he was a patron of new forms of leisure, style and taste. He commissioned John Nash to build the Royal Pavilion in Brighton and remodel Buckingham Palace and he even forbade Caroline to attend his coronation and asked the government to introduce the unpopular Pains and Penalties Bill in a desperate, unsuccessful attempt to divorce her. For most of Georges regency and reign, Lord Liverpool controlled the government as Prime Minister and his ministers found his behaviour selfish, unreliable and irresponsible. At all times he was much under the influence of favourites, taxpayers were angry at his wasteful spending at a time when Britons were fighting in the Napoleonic Wars. He did not provide leadership in time of crisis, nor act as a role model for his people. Liverpools government presided over Britains ultimate victory, negotiated the peace settlement, after Liverpools retirement, George was forced to accept Catholic emancipation despite opposing it. His only child, Princess Charlotte, died before him in 1817 and so he was succeeded by his younger brother, George was born at St Jamess Palace, London, on 12 August 1762, the first child of King George III of the United Kingdom and Queen Charlotte. As the eldest son of a British sovereign, he automatically became Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Rothesay at birth, he was created Prince of Wales, on 18 September of the same year, he was baptised by Thomas Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury. His godparents were the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the Duke of Cumberland, George was a talented student, and quickly learned to speak French, German and Italian, in addition to his native English. He was a witty conversationalist, drunk or sober, and showed good, the Prince of Wales turned 21 in 1783, and obtained a grant of £60,000 from Parliament and an annual income of £50,000 from his father. It was far too little for his needs – the stables alone cost £31,000 a year and he then established his residence in Carlton House, where he lived a profligate life. Animosity developed between the prince and his father, who desired more frugal behaviour on the part of the heir apparent, the King, a political conservative, was also alienated by the princes adherence to Charles James Fox and other radically inclined politicians. Soon after he reached the age of 21, the prince became infatuated with Maria Fitzherbert and she was a commoner, six years his elder, twice widowed, and a Roman Catholic. Despite her complete unsuitability, the prince was determined to marry her, nevertheless, the couple went through a marriage ceremony on 15 December 1785 at her house in Park Street, Mayfair. Legally the union was void, as the Kings consent was not granted, however, Fitzherbert believed that she was the princes canonical and true wife, holding the law of the Church to be superior to the law of the State. For political reasons, the union remained secret and Fitzherbert promised not to reveal it, the prince was plunged into debt by his exorbitant lifestyle
18.
Baron Thurlow
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Baron Thurlow, of Thurlow in the County of Suffolk, is a title in the Peerage of Great Britain. It was created in 1792 for the lawyer and politician Edward Thurlow, 1st Baron Thurlow, with remainder to his younger brothers, the latter was the son of the Right Reverend Thomas Thurlow, Bishop of Durham from 1787 to 1791. Lord Thurlow gained a reputation as a minor poet, in 1814 he assumed by Royal licence the additional surname of Hovell, in commemoration of his ancestor Sir Richard Hovell. One year Lord Thurlow assumed by Royal licence the surname of Cumming. In 1952, to pay the duties of his father the Sixth Baron, Henry Charles Hovell-Thurlow-Cumming-Bruce, 7th Baron Thurlow sold the family house in Surrey. It was later owned by helicopter entrepreneur Alan Bristow, under whose ownership the Grade II listed Elizabethan-country house burnt down in 1980, the title was then held by his son, the seventh Baron, who was succeeded by his younger brother in 1971. The eighth Baron Thurlow was a diplomat and notably served as High Commissioner to New Zealand and Nigeria, in 2013 he was succeeded by his son, the ninth Baron. New York, St Martins Press,1990, Leigh Rayments Peerage Pages Richard A. Thurlow
19.
William Blake
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William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a figure in the history of the poetry. His so-called prophetic works were said by 20th century critic Northrop Frye to form what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language. His visual artistry led 21st-century critic Jonathan Jones to proclaim him far, in 2002, Blake was placed at number 38 in the BBCs poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. Although he lived in London his entire life, he produced a diverse and symbolically rich œuvre and his paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of the Romantic movement and as Pre-Romantic. Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England, Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French, despite these known influences, the singularity of Blakes work makes him difficult to classify. William Blake was born on 28 November 1757 at 28 Broad Street in Soho and he was the third of seven children, two of whom died in infancy. Blakes father, James, was a hosier and he attended school only long enough to learn reading and writing, leaving at the age of ten, and was otherwise educated at home by his mother Catherine Blake. Even though the Blakes were English Dissenters, William was baptised on 11 December at St Jamess Church, Piccadilly, the Bible was an early and profound influence on Blake, and remained a source of inspiration throughout his life. Blake started engraving copies of drawings of Greek antiquities purchased for him by his father, within these drawings Blake found his first exposure to classical forms through the work of Raphael, Michelangelo, Maarten van Heemskerck and Albrecht Dürer. The number of prints and bound books that James and Catherine were able to purchase for young William suggests that the Blakes enjoyed, at least for a time, a comfortable wealth. When William was ten years old, his parents knew enough of his headstrong temperament that he was not sent to school and he read avidly on subjects of his own choosing. During this period, Blake made explorations into poetry, his work displays knowledge of Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser. On 4 August 1772, Blake was apprenticed to engraver James Basire of Great Queen Street, at the sum of £52.10, at the end of the term, aged 21, he became a professional engraver. This aside, Basires style of line-engraving was of a kind held at the time to be old-fashioned compared to the flashier stipple or mezzotint styles. It has been speculated that Blakes instruction in this form may have been detrimental to his acquiring of work or recognition in later life. After two years, Basire sent his apprentice to copy images from the Gothic churches in London and his experiences in Westminster Abbey helped form his artistic style and ideas. The Abbey of his day was decorated with suits of armour, painted funeral effigies, ackroyd notes that. the most immediate would have been of faded brightness and colour
20.
National Portrait Gallery, London
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The National Portrait Gallery is an art gallery in London housing a collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people. It was the first portrait gallery in the world when it opened in 1856, the gallery moved in 1896 to its current site at St Martins Place, off Trafalgar Square, and adjoining the National Gallery. It has been expanded twice since then, the National Portrait Gallery also has regional outposts at Beningbrough Hall in Yorkshire and Montacute House in Somerset. It is unconnected to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, the gallery is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The gallery houses portraits of important and famous British people, selected on the basis of the significance of the sitter. The collection includes photographs and caricatures as well as paintings, drawings, one of its best-known images is the Chandos portrait, the most famous portrait of William Shakespeare although there is some uncertainty about whether the painting actually is of the playwright. Not all of the portraits are exceptional artistically, although there are self-portraits by William Hogarth, Sir Joshua Reynolds, some, such as the group portrait of the participants in the Somerset House Conference of 1604, are important historical documents in their own right. Portraits of living figures were allowed from 1969, the three people largely responsible for the founding of the National Portrait Gallery are commemorated with busts over the main entrance. At centre is Philip Henry Stanhope, 5th Earl Stanhope, with his supporters on either side, Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay and it was Stanhope who, in 1846 as a Member of Parliament, first proposed the idea of a National Portrait Gallery. It was not until his attempt, in 1856, this time from the House of Lords. With Queen Victorias approval, the House of Commons set aside a sum of £2000 to establish the gallery, as well as Stanhope and Macaulay, the founder Trustees included Benjamin Disraeli and Lord Ellesmere. It was the latter who donated the Chandos portrait to the nation as the gallerys first portrait, Carlyle became a trustee after the death of Ellesmere in 1857. For the first 40 years, the gallery was housed in locations in London. The first 13 years were spent at 29 Great George Street, there, the collection increased in size from 57 to 208 items, and the number of visitors from 5,300 to 34,500. In 1869, the moved to Exhibition Road and buildings managed by the Royal Horticultural Society. Following a fire in buildings, the collection was moved in 1885. This location was unsuitable due to its distance from the West End, condensation. Following calls for a new location to be found, the government accepted an offer of funds from the philanthropist William Henry Alexander, Alexander donated £60,000 followed by another £20,000, and also chose the architect, Ewan Christian
21.
Line engraving
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Line engraving is a term for engraved images printed on paper to be used as prints or illustrations. The term is now less used and when is, it is mainly in connection with 18th or 19th century commercial illustrations for magazines and books. Copperplate engraving is somewhat outdated term for engravings. Engraving for the purpose of printmaking creates plates for intaglio printing, intaglio engravings are made by carving into a plate of a hard substance such as copper, zinc, steel, or plastic. Afterward ink is rubbed into the areas and away from the flat surface. Moistened paper is placed over the plate and both are run through the rollers of an intaglio press, the pressure exerted by the press on the paper pushes it into the engraved lines and prints the image made by those lines. In an intaglio print, the lines print black. Wood engraving is a printing technique, with the images made by carving into fine-grained hardwood blocks. In a relief print, the lines show white. The art of engraving has been practiced from the earliest ages, jewelry and many types of fine metal works frequently are engraved as well as furniture. Engraving often is used as an embellishment of knives, swords, guns, the important discovery which made line engraving one of the multiplying arts was the accidental discovery of how to print an incised line. This method was known for time before its real utility was realized. The resulting design, called a niello, was higher in contrast and thus. As this enamel was difficult to remove, goldsmiths developed alternate means of viewing their work still in progress. They would take a sulfur cast of the work on a matrix of fine clay and it was discovered later that a proof could be taken on damped paper by filling the engraved lines with ink and wiping it off the surface of the plate. Pressure was then applied to push the paper into the hollowed lines and this was the beginning of plate printing. This convenient way of proofing a niello saved the effort of producing a cast, although goldsmiths continued to engrave nielli to ornament plates and furniture, it was not until the late 15th century that the new method of printing was implemented. In early Italian and German prints, the line is used with such perfect simplicity of purpose that the methods of the artists are as obvious as if we saw them actually at work
22.
Luigi Schiavonetti
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Luigi Schiavonetti, Italian reproductive engraver and etcher, was born at Bassano in Venetia. After having studied art for years he was employed by Testolini, an engraver of very indifferent abilities, to execute imitations of Bartolozzis works. Among his early works are four plates of subjects from the French Revolution, Schiavonetti engraved a drawing of Maria Cosway that her husband, the artist Richard Cosway, had drawn. He also engraved a portrait that Maria Cosway had commissioned that was the first portrait of Napoleon seen in Britain and he also produced a Mater Dolorosa after Van Dyck, and Michelangelos cartoon of the Battle of Cascina depicting the Surprise of the Soldiers on the Banks of the Arno. From 1805 to 1808, he was engaged in etching William Blakes designs to Blairs Grave, the etching of Stothards Canterbury Pilgrims was one of his latest works, and on his death the plate was taken up by his brother Niccolo, and finally completed by James Heath. This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Schiavonetti
23.
William Bell Scott
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William Bell Scott was a Scottish artist in oils and watercolour and sometimes printmaking. He was one of the first British artists to depict the processes of the Industrial Revolution. He returned to London, working for the Science and Art Department until 1885 and he did not paint many portraits, but his striking portrait of his friend Algernon Charles Swinburne is the iconic image of the poet. His etchings were mostly designed to illustrate his books, the son of Robert Scott, the engraver, and brother of David Scott, the painter, he was born in Edinburgh. While a young man he studied art and assisted his father, in 1837 he went to London, and in 1839 he married Letitia Margery Norquoy, the marriage was childless. In London, he became well known as an artist to be appointed in 1844 master of the government school of design at Newcastle-on-Tyne. He held the post for twenty years, and did work in organizing art-teaching and examining under the Science and it was there that he gained as a pupil Alice Boyd, the sister of the then-laird of Penkill Castle in Scotland. In 1860, Bell Scott visited Penkill Castle and began a liaison with Alice that would last until his death at Penkill in 1890, for Penkill Castle, he executed a similar series, illustrating James Is The Kingis Quair. In Newcastle, Scott was visited by all the Rossetti family, Algernon Charles Swinburne, who wrote two poems to Scott, spent much time with him in Newcastle after being sent down from Oxford. After 1870 Scott was much in London, where he bought a house in Chelsea, and he was a friend of Rossetti and in high repute as an artist. He was, however, at daggers drawn with John Ruskin. E. L, byron, Coleridge, Shelley, Shakespeare and Scott. It is for his connection with Rossettis circle that Bell Scott will be chiefly remembered, William Bell Scott biography 44 Painting by or after William Bell Scott at the Art UK site William Bell Scott at Future Museum, South West Scotland
24.
Michael Faraday
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Michael Faraday FRS was an English scientist who contributed to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. His main discoveries include the principles underlying electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism, although Faraday received little formal education, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. It was by his research on the field around a conductor carrying a direct current that Faraday established the basis for the concept of the electromagnetic field in physics. Faraday also established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was a relationship between the two phenomena. He similarly discovered the principles of induction and diamagnetism. His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, Faraday ultimately became the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a lifetime position. James Clerk Maxwell took the work of Faraday and others and summarized it in a set of equations which is accepted as the basis of all theories of electromagnetic phenomena. The SI unit of capacitance is named in his honour, the farad, albert Einstein kept a picture of Faraday on his study wall, alongside pictures of Isaac Newton and James Clerk Maxwell. Faraday was born in Newington Butts, which is now part of the London Borough of Southwark but was then a part of Surrey. His family was not well off and his father, James, was a member of the Glassite sect of Christianity. James Faraday moved his wife and two children to London during the winter of 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been an apprentice to the village blacksmith, Michael was born in the autumn of that year. The young Michael Faraday, who was the third of four children, at the age of 14 he became an apprentice to George Riebau, a local bookbinder and bookseller in Blandford Street. During his seven-year apprenticeship Faraday read many books, including Isaac Wattss The Improvement of the Mind, at this time he also developed an interest in science, especially in electricity. Faraday was particularly inspired by the book Conversations on Chemistry by Jane Marcet, many of the tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance, who was one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society. Faraday subsequently sent Davy a 300-page book based on notes that he had taken during these lectures, davys reply was immediate, kind, and favourable. In 1813, when Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, very soon Davy entrusted Faraday with the preparation of nitrogen trichloride samples, and they both were injured in an explosion of this very sensitive substance. In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman, Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davys wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal, the trip did, however, give him access to the scientific elite of Europe and exposed him to a host of stimulating ideas
25.
Joseph Banks
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Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, GCB, PRS was a British naturalist, botanist and patron of the natural sciences. Banks made his name on the 1766 natural history expedition to Newfoundland and he took part in Captain James Cooks first great voyage, visiting Brazil, Tahiti, and, after 6 months in New Zealand, Australia, returning to immediate fame. He held the position of President of the Royal Society for over 41 years and he advised King George III on the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and by sending botanists around the world to collect plants, he made Kew the worlds leading botanical gardens. He is credited with introducing the eucalyptus, acacia, and the named after him, Banksia. Approximately 80 species of plants bear his name and he was the leading founder of the African Association and a member of the Society of Dilettanti which helped to establish the Royal Academy. Banks was born on Argyle Street in London to William Banks, a wealthy Lincolnshire country squire and member of the House of Commons and he had a younger sister, Sarah Sophia Banks, born in 1744. Banks was educated at Harrow School from the age of 9 and at Eton College from 1756, as a boy, Banks enjoyed exploring the Lincolnshire countryside and developed a keen interest in nature, history and botany. When he was 17, he was inoculated with smallpox, but he became ill, in late 1760, he was enrolled as a gentleman-commoner at the University of Oxford. At Oxford, he matriculated at Christ Church, where his studies were focused on natural history rather than the classical curriculum. Determined to receive instruction, he paid the Cambridge botanist Israel Lyons to deliver a series of lectures at Oxford in 1764. Banks left Oxford for Chelsea in December 1763 and he continued to attend the university until 1764, but left that year without taking a degree. He began to make friends among the men of his day and to correspond with Carl Linnaeus. As Bankss influence increased, he became an adviser to King George III and urged the monarch to support voyages of discovery to new lands and he became a Freemason sometime before 1769. He made his name by publishing the first Linnean descriptions of the plants and animals of Newfoundland and his diary, describing his expedition to Newfoundland, was rediscovered recently in the Royal Geographical Society of South Australia. Banks also documented 34 species of birds, including the great auk, on 7 May, he noted a large number of penguins swimming around the ship on the Grand Banks, and a specimen he collected in Chateau Bay, Labrador, was later identified as the great auk. Banks was appointed to a joint Royal Navy/Royal Society scientific expedition to the south Pacific Ocean on HMS Endeavour and this was the first of James Cooks voyages of discovery in that region. Banks funded seven others to him, the Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander. The voyage went to Brazil, where Banks made the first scientific description of a now common garden plant, bougainvillea, and to other parts of South America
26.
Lord Byron
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George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, FRS, commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet, peer, politician, and a leading figure in the Romantic movement. Among his best-known works are the narrative poems, Don Juan and Childe Harolds Pilgrimage. Byron is regarded as one of the greatest British poets and remains widely read and influential and he travelled extensively across Europe, especially in Italy, where he lived for seven years with the struggling poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Later in his life, Byron joined the Greek War of Independence fighting the Ottoman Empire. He died in 1824 at the age of 36 from a fever contracted while in Missolonghi, ethel Colburn Mayne states that George Gordon Byron was born on 22 January 1788 in a house on 24 Holles Street in London. However, Robert Charles Dallas in his Recollections states that Byron was born in Dover and he was the son of Captain John Mad Jack Byron and his second wife, the former Catherine Gordon, a descendant of Cardinal Beaton and heiress of the Gight estate in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Byrons father had seduced the married Marchioness of Carmarthen and, after she divorced her husband. His treatment of her was described as brutal and vicious, in order to claim his second wifes estate in Scotland, Byrons father took the additional surname Gordon, becoming John Byron Gordon, and he was occasionally styled John Byron Gordon of Gight. Byron himself used this surname for a time and was registered at school in Aberdeen as George Byron Gordon, at the age of 10, he inherited the English Barony of Byron of Rochdale, becoming Lord Byron, and eventually dropped the double surname. Byrons paternal grandparents were Vice-Admiral the Hon. John Foulweather Jack Byron, vice Admiral John Byron had circumnavigated the globe, and was the younger brother of the 5th Baron Byron, known as the Wicked Lord. He was christened, at St Marylebone Parish Church, George Gordon Byron after his maternal grandfather George Gordon of Gight, a descendant of James I of Scotland, Mad Jack Byron married his second wife for the same reason that he married his first, her fortune. In a move to avoid his creditors, Catherine accompanied her husband to France in 1786. He was born on 22 January in lodgings at Holles Street in London, Catherine moved back to Aberdeenshire in 1790, where Byron spent his childhood. His father soon joined them in their lodgings in Queen Street, Catherine regularly experienced mood swings and bouts of melancholy, which could be partly explained by her husbands continuing to borrow money from her. As a result, she fell even further into debt to support his demands and it was one of these importunate loans that allowed him to travel to Valenciennes, France, where he died in 1791. When Byrons great-uncle, the wicked Lord Byron, died on 21 May 1798, described as a woman without judgment or self-command, Catherine either spoiled and indulged her son or vexed him with her capricious stubbornness. Her drinking disgusted him, and he often mocked her for being short and corpulent and she once retaliated and, in a fit of temper, referred to him as a lame brat. Langley-Moore questions the Galt claim that she over-indulged in alcohol, upon the death of Byrons mother-in-law Judith Noel, the Hon
27.
Robert Graves (engraver)
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Robert Graves was an English line engraver. He was born in Tottenham Court Road on 7 May 1798, his father and grandfather and he became in 1812 a pupil of John Romney, the line engraver, and at the same time studied in the life school in Ship Yard, Temple Bar. He executed in pen and ink facsimiles of prints on commissions from collectors. Before long he decided to concentrate on engraving, in 1836 Graves was elected an associate engraver of the Royal Academy, in succession to James Fittler. He presented as his work a portrait of Lord Byron. Graves died of paralysis at 20 Grove Terrace, Highgate Road, London, on 28 February 1873 and these were followed by portraits and vignettes for J. F. Doves English Classics and other works, between 1831 and 1834 Graves executed the three plates of The Enthusiast and Mathematical Abstraction after Theodore Lane, and The Musical Bore, after Robert William Buss. For the authors edition of the Waverley Novels he engraved plates after David Wilkie, Edwin Landseer, William Mulready, and others. He also worked for the Literary Souvenir, Iris, Amulet, Forget-Me-Not, and Keepsake Français on plates, after Murillo, Wilkie, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Simon Jacques Rochard, and other painters. His last finished plate was a portrait of Charles Dickens, after William Powell Frith and he left unfinished a plate after Gainsboroughs portrait of Lady Bowater, which was completed by James Stephenson. Gravess son Frederick Percy Graves was a landscape artist, another son, Robert Edmund Graves, worked at the British Museum. The printseller Henry Graves was Robert Gravess brother, and Algernon Graves was son of Henry, attribution This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Stephen, Leslie, Lee, Sidney, eds
28.
Francis Leggatt Chantrey
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Sir Francis Legatt Chantrey RA was an English sculptor. He became the leading sculptor in Regency era Britain, producing busts. He left the Chantrey Bequest or Chantrey Fund for the purchase of works of art for the nation, Chantrey was born at Jordanthorpe near Norton, where his father had a small farm. His father, who dabbled in carpentry and wood-carving, died when Francis was twelve. In 1802 Chantrey paid £50 to buy out of his apprenticeship with Ramsay and immediately set up a studio as a portrait artist in Sheffield. For several years he divided his time between Sheffield and London, studying intermittently at the Royal Academy Schools, in the summer of 1802 he travelled to Dublin, where he fell very ill, losing all his hair. He exhibited pictures at the Royal Academy for a few years from 1804, but from 1807 onwards devoted himself mainly to sculpture. Asked later in life, as a witness in a case, whether he had ever worked for any other sculptors, he replied, No. His first recorded marble bust was one of the Rev. James Wilkinson and his first imaginative sculpture, a head of Satan was shown at the Royal Academy in 1808. Three of them were shown at the Royal Academy that year, on 23 November 1809 he married his cousin, Mary Ann Wale at St Marys Church, Twickenham. He also bought land to two more houses, a studio and offices. In 1811 he showed six busts in the Royal Academy, the subjects included Horne Tooke and Sir Francis Burdett, two political figures he greatly admired, his early mentor John Raphael Smith, and Benjamin West. Joseph Nollekens placed the bust of Tooke between two of his own, and the given to it is said to have had a significant influence on Chantreys career. In the wake of the exhibition he received commissions amounting to £2,000, in 1813 he was able to raise his price for a bust to a hundred and fifty guineas, and in 1822 to two hundred. He visited Paris in 1814, and again in 1815, this time with his wife, Thomas Stothard, in 1819 he went to Italy, accompanied by the painter John Jackson, and an old friend named Read. In Rome he met Thorvaldsen and Canova, getting to know the latter especially well, in 1828 Chantrey set up his own foundry in Eccleston Place, not far from his house and studio, where large-scale works in bronze, including equestrian statues, could be cast. His assistants would make a clay model based on the drawings. A plaster cast would be made of the model
29.
George Crabbe
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George Crabbe was an English poet, surgeon, and clergyman. He is best known for his use of the realistic narrative form and his descriptions of middle and working-class life. In the 1770s, Crabbe began his career as a doctors apprentice, in 1780, he travelled to London to make a living as a poet. After encountering serious financial difficulty and being unable to have his work published, he wrote to the statesman, Burke was impressed enough by Crabbes poems to promise to help him in any way he could. The two became friends and Burke helped Crabbe greatly both in his literary career and in building a role within the church. Burke introduced Crabbe to the literary and artistic society of London, including Sir Joshua Reynolds and Samuel Johnson, Burke secured Crabbe the important position of Chaplain to the Duke of Rutland. Crabbe served as a clergyman in various capacities for the rest of his life, Lord Byron described him as natures sternest painter, yet the best. Crabbes poetry was predominantly in the form of heroic couplets, and has described as unsentimental in its depiction of provincial life. The modern critic Frank Whitehead wrote that Crabbe, in his tales in particular, is an important—indeed. Crabbes works include The Village, Poems, The Borough, Crabbe was born in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, the eldest child of George Crabbe Sr. George Jr. spent his first 25 years close to his birthplace. He showed an aptitude for books and learning at an early age and he was sent to school while still very young, and developed an interest in the stories and ballads that were popular among his neighbors. His father owned a few books, and used to read passages from John Milton and he also subscribed to a country magazine called Martins Philosophical Magazine, giving the poets corner section to George. His early reading included the works of William Shakespeare, Alexander Pope and he spent three years at Stowmarket before leaving school to find a physician to be apprenticed to, as medicine had been settled on as his future career. In 1768 he was apprenticed to a doctor at Wickhambrook. This doctor practiced medicine while also keeping a small farm, and George ended up doing more farm labour, in 1771 he changed masters and moved to Woodbridge, where he remained until 1775. While at Woodbridge he joined a club of young men who met at an inn for evening discussions. Through his contacts at Woodbridge he met his wife, Sarah Elmy. Crabbe called her Mira, later referring to her by name in some of his poems
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Henry Fuseli
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Henry Fuseli RA was a Swiss painter, draughtsman and writer on art who spent much of his life in Britain. Many of his works, such as The Nightmare, deal with supernatural subject-matter and he painted works for John Boydells Shakespeare Gallery, and created his own Milton Gallery. He held the posts of Professor of Painting and Keeper at the Royal Academy and his style had a considerable influence on many younger British artists, including William Blake. Fuseli was born in Zürich, Switzerland, the second of 18 children and his father was Johann Caspar Füssli, a painter of portraits and landscapes, and author of Lives of the Helvetic Painters. He intended Henry for the church, and sent him to the Caroline college of Zurich, one of his schoolmates there was Johann Kaspar Lavater, with whom he became close friends. After taking orders in 1761 Fuseli was forced to leave the country as a result of having helped Lavater to expose an unjust magistrate and he travelled through Germany, and then, in 1765, visited England, where he supported himself for some time by miscellaneous writing. Eventually, he acquainted with Sir Joshua Reynolds, to whom he showed his drawings. Following Reynolds advice, he decided to devote entirely to art. In 1770 he made an art-pilgrimage to Italy, where he remained until 1778, Early in 1779 he returned to Britain, taking in Zürich on his way. In London he found a commission awaiting him from Alderman Boydell, Fuseli painted a number of pieces for Boydell, and published an English edition of Lavaters work on physiognomy. He also gave William Cowper some valuable assistance in preparing a translation of Homer, in 1788 Fuseli married Sophia Rawlins, and he soon after became an associate of the Royal Academy. Fuseli later said I hate clever women, in 1790 he became a full Academician, presenting Thor Battering the Midgard Serpent as his diploma work. In 1799 Fuseli was appointed professor of painting to the Academy, four years later he was chosen as Keeper, and resigned his professorship, but resumed it in 1810, continuing to hold both offices until his death. As Keeper, he was succeeded by Henry Thomson, in 1799 Fuseli exhibited a series of paintings from subjects furnished by the works of John Milton, with a view to forming a Milton gallery comparable to Boydells Shakespeare gallery. There were 47 Milton paintings, many of them very large, the exhibition proved a commercial failure and closed in 1800. In 1805 he brought out an edition of Pilkingtons Lives of the Painters, which did little for his reputation. Antonio Canova, when on his visit to England, was taken with Fuselis works. As a painter, Fuseli favoured the supernatural and he pitched everything on an ideal scale, believing a certain amount of exaggeration necessary in the higher branches of historical painting
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William Hilton
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William Hilton RA, was an English portrait and history painter. Hilton was born in Lincoln, the son of a portrait-painter, in 1800, Hilton was apprenticed to the engraver John Raphael Smith, and around the same time enrolled at the Royal Academy school. He made a tour in Italy with Thomas Phillips, the portraitist, in 1813, having exhibited Miranda and Ferdinand with the Logs of Wood, he was elected as an associate of the Academy, and in 1820 as a full academician, his diploma-picture representing Ganymede. In 1823, he produced Christ crowned with Thorns, a large and important work regarded as his masterpiece, in 1827 he succeeded Henry Thomson as Keeper of the Royal Academy. Hilton may be compared with Benjamin Haydon, though he was more successful. He died in London on 30 December 1839, the Tate Gallery now owns Edith finding the Body of Harold, Cupid Disarmed, Rebecca and Abrahams Servant, Nature blowing Bubbles for her Children, and Sir Calepine rescuing Serena. In the National Portrait Gallery is his likeness of John Keats, murder of the Innocents, his last exhibited work,1838. Edith finding the Body of Harold,1834, venus in Search of Cupid Surprises Diana, Wallace Collection, London. Phaeton, c 1820, Manchester Art Gallery, mary Magdalene, Newark-on-Trent This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. article name needed
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David Wilkie (artist)
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Sir David Wilkie RA was a Scottish painter. Wilkie was the son of the minister of Cults in Fife. He developed a love for art at an early age, in 1799, after he had attended school at Pitlessie, Kingskettle and Cupar, his father reluctantly agreed to his becoming a painter. Through the influence of the Earl of Leven Wilkie was admitted to the Trustees Academy in Edinburgh, in 1804, Wilkie left the Trustees Academy and returned to Cults. In addition to this elaborate figure-piece, Wilkie was much employed at the time upon portraits, Wilkie now turned to historical art, and painted his Alfred in the Neatherds Cottage, for the gallery illustrative of English history which was being formed by Alexander Davison. His next great work was the Ale-House Door, afterwards entitled The Village Festival and it was followed in 1813 by the well-known Blind Mans Buff, a commission from the Prince Regent, to which a companion picture, the Penny Wedding, was added in 1818. In November 1809 he was elected an associate of the Royal Academy, when he had attained the age prescribed by its laws. In 1812 he opened an exhibition of his works in Pall Mall. In 1814 he executed the Letter of Introduction, one of the most delicately finished, in the same year he made his first visit to the continent, and in Paris entered upon a profitable and delighted study of the works of art collected in the Louvre. On his return he began Distraining for Rent, one of the most popular, in 1816 he made a tour through Holland and Belgium in company with Raimbach, the engraver of many of his paintings. The Sir Walter Scott and his Family, a picture with small full-length figures in the dress of Scottish peasants, was the result of a visit to Abbotsford in 1818. In 1822 Wilkie visited Edinburgh, in order to select from the Visit of King George IV to Scotland a fitting subject for a picture. But several years elapsed before its completion, for, like all such works, it proved a harassing commission, uncongenial to the painter while in progress. His health suffered from the strain to which he was subjected, in 1825 he sought relief in foreign travel, after visiting Paris, he went to Italy, where, in Rome, he received the news of fresh disasters through the failure of his publishers. A residence at Toplitz and Carlsbad was tried in 1826, with good result. In October he passed into Spain, whence he returned to England in June 1828 and it is impossible to overestimate the influence upon Wilkies art of these three years of foreign travel. It amounts to nothing short of a change of style. But now he experienced the spell of the Italian masters, and of Diego Velázquez, the popular verdict had in it a basis of truth, Wilkie was indeed greatest as a genre-painter
33.
Florence
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Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the Metropolitan City of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants, Florence was a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of the time. It is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance, and has called the Athens of the Middle Ages. A turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family, from 1865 to 1871 the city was the capital of the recently established Kingdom of Italy. The Historic Centre of Florence attracts 13 million tourists each year and it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982. The city is noted for its culture, Renaissance art and architecture, the city also contains numerous museums and art galleries, such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Palazzo Pitti, and still exerts an influence in the fields of art, culture and politics. Due to Florences artistic and architectural heritage, it has been ranked by Forbes as one of the most beautiful cities in the world, in 2008, the city had the 17th highest average income in Italy. Florence originated as a Roman city, and later, after a period as a flourishing trading and banking medieval commune. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, it was politically, economically, and culturally one of the most important cities in Europe, the language spoken in the city during the 14th century was, and still is, accepted as the Italian language. Starting from the late Middle Ages, Florentine money—in the form of the gold florin—financed the development of all over Europe, from Britain to Bruges, to Lyon. Florentine bankers financed the English kings during the Hundred Years War and they similarly financed the papacy, including the construction of their provisional capital of Avignon and, after their return to Rome, the reconstruction and Renaissance embellishment of Rome. Florence was home to the Medici, one of European historys most important noble families, Lorenzo de Medici was considered a political and cultural mastermind of Italy in the late 15th century. Two members of the family were popes in the early 16th century, Leo X, catherine de Medici married king Henry II of France and, after his death in 1559, reigned as regent in France. Marie de Medici married Henry IV of France and gave birth to the future king Louis XIII, the Medici reigned as Grand Dukes of Tuscany, starting with Cosimo I de Medici in 1569 and ending with the death of Gian Gastone de Medici in 1737. The Etruscans initially formed in 200 BC the small settlement of Fiesole and it was built in the style of an army camp with the main streets, the cardo and the decumanus, intersecting at the present Piazza della Repubblica. Situated along the Via Cassia, the route between Rome and the north, and within the fertile valley of the Arno, the settlement quickly became an important commercial centre. Peace returned under Lombard rule in the 6th century, Florence was conquered by Charlemagne in 774 and became part of the Duchy of Tuscany, with Lucca as capital. The population began to again and commerce prospered
34.
Walter Scott
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Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet, FRSE was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright and poet. Many of his works remain classics of both English-language literature and of Scottish literature, famous titles include Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, Old Mortality, The Lady of the Lake, Waverley, The Heart of Midlothian and The Bride of Lammermoor. A prominent member of the Tory establishment in Edinburgh, Scott was an member of the Highland Society. He survived a bout of polio in 1773 that left him lame. To cure his lameness he was sent in 1773 to live in the rural Scottish Borders at his grandparents farm at Sandyknowe, adjacent to the ruin of Smailholm Tower. Here he was taught to read by his aunt Jenny, and learned from her the speech patterns and many of the tales and legends that characterised much of his work. In January 1775 he returned to Edinburgh, and that went with his aunt Jenny to take spa treatment at Bath in England. In the winter of 1776 he went back to Sandyknowe, with another attempt at a cure at Prestonpans during the following summer. In 1778, Scott returned to Edinburgh for private education to him for school. In October 1779 he began at the Royal High School of Edinburgh and he was now well able to walk and explore the city and the surrounding countryside. His reading included chivalric romances, poems, history and travel books and he was given private tuition by James Mitchell in arithmetic and writing, and learned from him the history of the Church of Scotland with emphasis on the Covenanters. Scott began studying classics at the University of Edinburgh in November 1783, at the age of 12, in March 1786 he began an apprenticeship in his fathers office to become a Writer to the Signet. While at the university Scott had become a friend of Adam Ferguson, Scott met the blind poet Thomas Blacklock, who lent him books and introduced him to James Macphersons Ossian cycle of poems. During the winter of 1786–87 the 15-year-old Scott saw Robert Burns at one of these salons, for what was to be their only meeting. When Burns noticed a print illustrating the poem The Justice of the Peace and asked who had written the poem, only Scott knew that it was by John Langhorne, and was thanked by Burns. When it was decided that he would become a lawyer, he returned to the university to study law, first taking classes in Moral Philosophy, after completing his studies in law, he became a lawyer in Edinburgh. As a lawyers clerk he made his first visit to the Scottish Highlands directing an eviction and he was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1792. He had an unsuccessful love suit with Williamina Belsches of Fettercairn, as a boy, youth and young man, Scott was fascinated by the oral traditions of the Scottish Borders
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Robert Southey
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Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called Lake Poets, and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 until his death in 1843. Although his fame has long been eclipsed by that of his contemporaries and friends William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Southey was also a prolific letter writer, literary scholar, essay writer, historian and biographer. His biographies include the life and works of John Bunyan, John Wesley, William Cowper, Oliver Cromwell, the last has rarely been out of print since its publication in 1813 and was adapted for the screen in the 1926 British film, Nelson. He also wrote on issues, which led to a brief, non-sitting. Robert Southey was born in Wine Street, Bristol, to Robert Southey and he was educated at Westminster School, London, and Balliol College, Oxford. Southey later said of Oxford, All I learnt was a little swimming, experimenting with a writing partnership with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, most notably in their joint composition of The Fall of Robespierre, Southey published his first collection of poems in 1794. Each young man should take to himself a mild and lovely woman for his wife, it would be her part to prepare their innocent food, and tend their hardy and beautiful race. Southey was the first to reject the idea as unworkable, suggesting that they move the location to Wales. In 1799 Southey and Coleridge were involved with experiments with nitrous oxide. Southey married Edith Fricker at St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol and she was a sister of Sara Fricker, Coleridges wife. The Southeys made their home at Greta Hall, Keswick, in the Lake District, also living at Greta Hall and supported by him were Sara Coleridge and her three children, after Coleridge abandoned them, as well as the widow of poet Robert Lovell and her son. In 1808 Southey met Walter Savage Landor, whose work he admired and that same year he wrote Letters from England under the pseudonym Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella, an account of a tour supposedly from a foreigners viewpoint. From 1809 Southey contributed to the Quarterly Review and he had become so well known by 1813 that he was appointed Poet Laureate after Walter Scott refused the post. In 1819, through a friend, Southey met the leading civil engineer Thomas Telford. From mid-August to 1 October 1819, Southey accompanied Telford on an tour of his engineering projects in the Scottish Highlands. This was published in 1929 as Journal of a Tour in Scotland in 1819 and he was also a friend of the Dutch poet Willem Bilderdijk, whom he met twice, in 1824 and 1826, at Bilderdijks home in Leiden. In 1837 Southey received a letter from Charlotte Brontë, seeking his advice on some of her poems and he wrote back praising her talents, but also discouraging her from writing professionally. He said Literature cannot be the business of a womans life, years later, Brontë remarked to a friend that the letter was kind and admirable, a little stringent, but it did me good
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George Anthony Legh Keck
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George Anthony Legh Keck was an English landowner and MP. He was born at Stoughton Grange, Leicestershire, the son of Anthony James Keck and he was a member of the Legh family of Lyme Hall at Lyme Park, Cheshire. His wife Elizabeth was from Atherton Hall in Atherton and he inherited Bank Hall in Bretherton, Lancashire and renovated it with help from the architect George Webster in 1832-33. Legh Keck represented Leicestershire in Parliament five times between 1797 and 1831, Legh Keck, in a portrait from 1851 wore a broad topped Shako with a 12-inch white plume held in place by bronze chin scales. 1805 Legh Keck bought the manor of Houghton on the hill remained in the Lilford family until 1913. George Anthony Legh Keck, Esquire was a member of the Leicestershire Yeomanry Cavalry from 1803 until his death in 1860 and his title within the regiment was Colonel of Prince Alberts Own Regiment of Yeomanry Cavalry. Legh Kecks nephew was William Legh, 1st Baron Newton who was also a member of Parliament, in 1802, Legh Keck married his cousin Elizabeth Atherton, daughter of Robert Vernon Atherton of Atherton Hall, and Henrietta Maria Legh of Lyme Hall. In 1832, he engaged the architect, George Webster to design extensions and renovate Bank Hall, his mansion in Bretherton, Legh Keck attended St Marys Church, Tarleton, where he had box pews for himself and staff. Elizabeth died at Bank Hall in 1837, Legh Keck died aged 86 on 4 September 1860 at Bank Hall and is buried at Stoughton Church. George Anthony and Elizabeth Legh Keck had no children, the Bank Hall Estates passed to Thomas Atherton Powys and the Stoughton estate to his wifes nephew, Henry Littleton Powys. Thomas Atherton Powys inherited the Bank Hall estates after the death of his father in March 1861, lord Lilford V then moved to his family seat at Lilford Hall, Northamptonshire, leaving Bank Hall empty and leasing it out. Legh Keck collected stuffed animals and birds and sets of horns from animals all over the world. He owned a collection of classical style statuettes and casts of figures by the sculptor Antonio Canova, in 1830, the artist Thomas Phillips painted a portrait of Legh Keck which is in the Leicester Arts and Museums Service Collection. A large mural painted on the wall of the room at Bank Hall. There is a collection of Legh Kecks accoutrements held by the Leicestershire Yeomanry Association, hansard 1803–2005, contributions in Parliament by George Anthony Legh Keck LEGH KECK, George Anthony at historyofparliamentonline. org
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Thomas Campbell (poet)
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Thomas Campbell was a Scottish poet chiefly remembered for his sentimental poetry dealing especially with human affairs. A co-founder of the Literary Association of the Friends of Poland, in 1799, he wrote The Pleasures of Hope, a traditional 18th century didactic poem in heroic couplets. He also produced several stirring patriotic war songs—Ye Mariners of England, The Soldiers Dream, Hohenlinden and in 1801, The Battle of Mad and Strange Turkish Princes. Born on High Street, Glasgow in 1777, he was the youngest of the children of Alexander Campbell, son of the 6th and last Laird of Kirnan, Argyll. His mother, Margaret, was the daughter of Robert Campbell of Craignish and Mary, daughter of Robert Simpson, a celebrated Royal Armourer. In about 1737, his father went to Falmouth, Virginia as a merchant in business with his wifes brother Daniel Campbell and they enjoyed a long period of prosperity until he lost his property and their old and respectable firm collapsed in consequence of the American Revolutionary War. Having personally lost nearly £20,000, Campbells father was nearly ruined, several of Thomas brothers remained in Virginia, one of whom married a daughter of Patrick Henry. Both his parents were inclined, his father being a close friend of Thomas Reid while his mother was known for her refined taste and love of literature. Thomas Campbell was educated at the High School of Glasgow and the University of Glasgow and he spent the holidays as a tutor in the western Highlands and his poems Glenara and the Ballad of Lord Ullins Daughter were written during this time while visiting the Isle of Mull. In 1797, Campbell travelled to Edinburgh to attend lectures on law and he continued to support himself as a tutor and through his writing, aided by Robert Anderson, the editor of the British Poets. Among his contemporaries in Edinburgh were Sir Walter Scott, Lord Henry Brougham, Lord Francis Jeffrey, Thomas Brown, John Leyden and these early days in Edinburgh influenced such works as The Wounded Hussar, The Dirge of Wallace and the Epistle to Three Ladies. In 1799, six months after the publication of the Lyrical Ballads of Wordsworth and Coleridge and its success was instantaneous, but Campbell was deficient in energy and perseverance and did not follow it up. He went abroad in June 1800 without any very definite aim, visited Gottlieb Friedrich Klopstock at Hamburg, and made his way to Regensburg and he found refuge in a Scottish monastery. Some of his best lyrics, Hohenlinden, Ye Mariners of England and The Soldiers Dream and he spent the winter in Altona, where he met an Irish exile, Anthony McCann, whose history suggested The Exile of Erin. He had at time the intention of writing an epic on Edinburgh to be entitled The Queen of the North. On the outbreak of war between Denmark and England he hurried home, the Battle of the Baltic being drafted soon after, at Edinburgh he was introduced to the first Lord Minto, who took him in the next year to London as occasional secretary. In June 1803 appeared a new edition of the Pleasures of Hope, in 1803 Campbell married his second cousin, Matilda Sinclair, and settled in London. He was well received in Whig society, especially at Holland House and his prospects, however, were slight when in 1805 he received a government pension of £200
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan and his critical work, especially on William Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. Coleridge coined many words and phrases, including suspension of disbelief. He was an influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson and American transcendentalism. Throughout his adult life Coleridge had crippling bouts of anxiety and depression, it has been speculated that he had bipolar disorder and he was physically unhealthy, which may have stemmed from a bout of rheumatic fever and other childhood illnesses. He was treated for these conditions with laudanum, which fostered a lifelong opium addiction, Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772 in the town of Ottery St Mary in Devon, England. He had previously been Master of Hugh Squiers School in South Molton, Devon, John Coleridge had three children by his first wife. Samuel was the youngest of ten by the Reverend Mr. Coleridges second wife, Anne Bowden, probably the daughter of John Bowden, Mayor of South Molton, Devon, Coleridge suggests that he took no pleasure in boyish sports but instead read incessantly and played by himself. At that school Coleridge became friends with Charles Lamb, a schoolmate, in fancy I can almost hear him now, exclaiming Harp. Pen and ink, boy, you mean, oh aye. the cloister-pump, I suppose. Be this as it may, there was one custom of our masters and he would often permit our theme exercises. To accumulate, till each lad had four or five to be looked over, throughout his life, Coleridge idealised his father as pious and innocent, while his relationship with his mother was more problematic. His childhood was characterised by attention seeking, which has linked to his dependent personality as an adult. He was rarely allowed to return home during the term. He later wrote of his loneliness at school in the poem Frost at Midnight, With unclosed lids, from 1791 until 1794, Coleridge attended Jesus College, Cambridge. In 1792, he won the Browne Gold Medal for an ode that he wrote on the slave trade, afterwards, he was rumoured to have had a bout of severe depression. His brothers arranged for his discharge a few months later under the reason of insanity and he was readmitted to Jesus College, at Jesus College, Coleridge was introduced to political and theological ideas then considered radical, including those of the poet Robert Southey. Coleridge joined Southey in a plan, soon abandoned, to found a utopian society, called Pantisocracy
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Henry Hallam
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Henry Hallam FRS FRSE FSA was an English historian. Educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, he practised as a barrister on the Oxford circuit for years before turning to history. Although he took no part in politics himself, he was acquainted with the band of authors. In an 1828 review of Constitutional History, Robert Southey claimed that the work was biased in favour of the Whigs, Hallam was a fellow of the Royal Society, and a trustee of the British Museum. In 1830 he received the medal for history founded by George IV. The only son of Rev John Hallam, canon of Windsor and dean of Bristol, Henry Hallam was born on 9 July 1777 and educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, graduating in 1799. He was, however, a supporter of many popular movements—particularly of that which ended in the abolition of the slave trade. Hallams earliest literary work was undertaken in connection with the Whig periodical, the Edinburgh Review and his first major work, View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, was published in 1818, and was followed nine years later by The Constitutional History of England. Introduction to the Literature of Europe, in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries appeared in 1837. A volume of notes to his Middle Ages was published in 1843. These works represent nearly all of Hallams career, Hallam was a fellow of the Royal Society, and a trustee of the British Museum. In 1830 he received the medal for history founded by George IV. Hallam described his work Middle Ages as a series of dissertations for the period from the 5th to the 15th century. The work consists of nine chapters, the histories of France, Italy, Spain, Germany. Others deal with major features of medieval society, the feudal system, the ecclesiastical system. The last chapter sketches society, commerce, manners, and literature in the Middle Ages. The Quarterly Review for 1828 contains an article on the Constitutional History, written by Robert Southey, full of reproach. It was his distant treatment of Charles I, Thomas Cranmer, Hallam, like Thomas Babington Macaulay, ultimately referred political questions to the standard of Whig constitutionalism
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Mary Somerville
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Mary Fairfax Somerville was a Scottish science writer and polymath. She studied mathematics and astronomy, and was nominated to be jointly the first female member of the Royal Astronomical Society at the time as Caroline Herschel. When John Stuart Mill, the British philosopher and economist, organised a petition to Parliament to give women the right to vote. When she died in 1872, Mary Somerville was hailed by The Morning Post as The Queen of Nineteenth-Century Science. Mary was the daughter of Vice-Admiral Sir William George Fairfax, scion of a family of Fairfaxes. She was born at the manse of Jedburgh, in the Borders and her childhood home was at Burntisland, Fife. Returning from sea, her father considered the 10-year-old Mary a savage and sent her for a year of tuition at Musselburgh and she returned being able to read and write, albeit poorly, she could perform simple arithmetic and knew a little French. Following this, she was informally taught elementary geography and astronomy, to supplement this, her uncle, Dr Thomas Somerville, taught her Latin, he described her as an eager student. Once, listening in to her brother receive tutoring in mathematics, she answered when he could not and she also studied art with Alexander Nasmyth in Edinburgh, who taught her about perspective. Inspired, she managed to obtain a copy of Euclids Elements of Geometry, around this time, however, following the death of her sister at age ten, her parents forbade Mary from further study, believing it had contributed to her sisters death. This did not deter her from studying on her own, although she had to continue in secret, I had studied plane and spherical trigonometry, conic sections, and Fergussons Astronomy. I think it was immediately after my return to Scotland that I attempted to read Newtons Principia, in 1804 she married her distant cousin, the Russian consul in London, Captain Samuel Greig, son of Admiral Samuel Greig. They had two children, one of whom, Woronzow Greig, would become a barrister and scientist. They lived in London, but it was not a time for Somerville – although she could study more easily. Indeed, Mr. Greig possessed in full the prejudice against learned women which was common at that time, however, he died in 1807 and she returned home to Scotland. Her inheritance from Greig gave her the freedom to pursue intellectual interests, in 1812 she married another cousin, Dr William Somerville, inspector of the Army Medical Board, who encouraged and greatly aided her in the study of the physical sciences. Somerville warmly encouraged her zeal for study and supported her in it and his love and admiration for her were unbounded, he frankly and willingly acknowledged her superiority to himself. William was elected to the Royal Society and together they moved in the scientific circles of the day
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William Parry (explorer)
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His 1819 voyage through the Parry Channel was probably the most successful in the long quest for the Northwest Passage. In 1827 he attempted one of the earliest expeditions to the North Pole, Parry was born in Bath, the son of Dr. Caleb Hillier Parry and Sarah Rigby. He was educated at King Edwards School, Bath, from 1813–1817 he served on the North American station. In 1818 he received command of the brig Alexander in the Arctic expedition under Captain John Ross and this expedition followed the coast of Baffin Bay without making any new discoveries. Parry and many thought that Ross was wrong to turn back after entering Lancaster Sound at the north end of Baffin Island. Partly as a result Parry was given command of a new expedition in the HMS Hecla accompanied by the slower HMS Griper under Matthew Liddon, others on the expedition were Edward Sabine, science officer and Frederick William Beechy. For protection from ice the ships were clad with 3-inch oak, had plates on their bows. They also carried food in tin cans, an invention so new that there were as yet no can openers, instead of taking Rosss easy route anti-clockwise around Baffin Bay he headed straight for Lancaster Sound. Fighting his way through ice he reached clear water on 28 July and he passed Rosss farthest west and kept going. Blocked by heavy ice, they went south for more than 100 miles into Prince Regent Inlet before turning back, continuing west they passed 110°W which entitled them to a £5,000 award offered by Parliament. Finally blocked by ice they turned back to a place Parry called Winter Harbour on the shore of Melville Island. Cutting their way through new ice the ships reached anchorage on 26 September, here they were frozen in for the next 10 months. There were three months of total darkness and in the new year the temperature reached −54 °F, the men were kept busy with regular exercise while the officers put on plays and produced a newspaper. The first case of scurvy was reported in January and by March fourteen men were on the sick list, there was some excitement in early March when the first melt water appeared, but by the end of the month the ice was still 6 feet thick. In June Parry led a group of men dragging a wooden cart to the shore of the island which he named Hecla. It was the first of August before the ships were able to out of the harbor. They got as far west as 113°46W before turning back and it was too late in the season and new ice was already beginning to form. They reached England in October 1820 having lost only one man,1819 was unusually ice-free and no ship was able to travel so far west until Edward Belchers expedition in 1850
42.
John Franklin
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Rear-Admiral Sir John Franklin KCH FRGS RN was an English Royal Navy officer and explorer of the Arctic. Franklin also served as Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemens Land from 1837 to 1843 and he disappeared on his last expedition, attempting to chart and navigate a section of the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic. The icebound ships were abandoned and the crew perished from starvation, hypothermia, tuberculosis, lead poisoning. Franklin was born in Spilsby, Lincolnshire, in 1786 and educated at King Edward VI Grammar School and he was the ninth of twelve children born to Hannah Weekes and Willingham Franklin, the descendant of a long line of country gentlemen. One of Johns sisters, Sarah, was the mother of Emily Tennyson and his father initially opposed Franklins interest in a career at sea and reluctantly allowed him to go on a trial voyage with a merchant ship. This confirmed his decision, so when he was 14, his father secured him a Royal Navy appointment on HMS Polyphemus. He also accompanied Captain Dance on the East India Companys ship the Earl Camden, in 1819, Franklin was chosen to lead an expedition overland from Hudson Bay to chart the north coast of Canada eastwards from the mouth of the Coppermine River. On his 1819 expedition, Franklin fell into the Hayes River at Robinson Falls and was rescued by a member of his expedition about 90 metres downstream, between 1819 and 1822, he lost 11 of the 20 men in his party. Most died of starvation, but there were also at least one murder, the survivors were forced to eat lichen and even attempted to eat their own leather boots. This gained Franklin the nickname of the man who ate his boots, in 1823, after returning to England, Sir John Franklin married the poet Eleanor Anne Porden. Their daughter, Eleanor Isabella, was born the following year, Eleanor died of tuberculosis in 1825. In 1825 he left for his second Canadian and third Arctic expedition, with him was John Richardson who would follow the coast east from the Mackenzie to the mouth of the Coppermine River. At the same time, William Edward Parry would try to sail west from the Atlantic, supplies were better organized this time, in part because they were managed by Peter Warren Dease of the Hudsons Bay Company. He erected a flagpole with buried letters for Parry and he returned to winter at Fort Franklin on the Great Bear Lake. Next summer he went downriver and found the ocean frozen and he worked his way west for several hundred miles and gave up on 16 August 1826 at Return Reef when he was about 150 miles east of Beecheys Point Barrow. He reached safety at Fort Franklin on 21 September and he left Fort Franklin on 20 February 1827 and spent the rest of the winter and spring at Fort Chipewyan, Alberta. He reached Liverpool on the first of September 1827, richardsons eastward journey was more successful. On 5 November 1828, he married Jane Griffin, a friend of his first wife, on 29 April 1829, he was knighted by George IV and the same year awarded the first Gold Medal of the Société de Géographie of France
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Dixon Denham
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Dixon Denham was an English soldier, explorer of West Central Africa, and ultimately Governor of Sierra Leone. Dixon Denham was born at Salisbury Square, Fleet Street, London on New Years Day,1786, the son of James Denham, a haberdasher, and his wife Eleanor, née Symonds. The youngest of their three sons, Denham was educated at Merchant Taylors School from 1794 to 1800, on leaving he was articled to a solicitor, but joined the army in 1811. Initially in the 23rd Royal Welch Fusiliers, and later the 54th Foot, Denham served in the campaigns in Portugal, Spain, France, at the end of hostilities, Lieutenant Denham served at Cambray and with the occupation of Paris. Placed on half pay in 1818, he travelled for a time in France, in 1819, Denham entered the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, as a student, intending to become a staff officer in the Senior Department of the Royal Military College. He attracted the attention of the Commandant of the College, Sir Howard Douglas. Alas, he was domineering, insecure, jealous. Hugh Clapperton, arriving at Tripoli aboard the schooner Express on 19 November, for reasons unknown, Denham was detained in Tripoli, and the mission proceeded to Murzuk, in Fezzan, without him on 23 February 1822. Denham soon returned to Tripoli, to further funds, and to persuade the bashaw, Yusuf Karamanli. He arrived back in Tripoli on 13 June 1822, his departure from the mission unlamented, Denham was to find the bashaw as obdurate as Murzuks bey. Outraged, he decided to return to London to report the situation to Lord Bathurst and also seek promotion, boarding a ship bound for Marseilles, he warned the bashaws lieutenants of his governments displeasure when it learned of the bashaws duplicity. Denham received the letter while in quarantine in Marseilles, still very angry, he sent an ill-judged letter to Bathurst complaining of Oudneys incompetence. News of Denhams conduct left his compatriots at Murzuk dumbfounded, Oudney wrote a bitter letter of complaint about Denham to Hanmer Warrington, the British Consul in Tripoli, comparing Denham to a snake hidden in the grass. In an unfortunate breach of confidence, Warrington showed the letter to Denham, by the end of September 1822, Denham was on his way back to Murzuk with the merchant and the promised escort. The mission, now comprising four Britons, five servants, and four camel drivers and it was from Kuka that Denham, against the wishes of Oudney and Clapperton, accompanied a slave-raiding expedition into the Mandara Mountains south of Bornu. The raiders were defeated, and Denham barely escaped with his life, by this time, a deep antipathy had developed between Clapperton and Denham, Denham secretly sending home malicious reports about Clapperton having homosexual relations with one of the Arab servants. A more odious man than Dixon Denham and he was unable to survey the eastern shore owing to the warring tribes there, but nevertheless proved beyond doubt that Lake Chad was not the source of the Niger, as had been widely believed. Denham was briefly aided in his surveys by a 21-year-old ensign, Ernest Toole, however Toole, already weakened by the arduous desert crossing from Tripoli, soon died of fever, and was buried by Denham on the shores of the lake
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Hugh Clapperton
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Bain Hugh Clapperton was a Scottish naval officer and explorer of West and Central Africa. Clapperton was born in Annan, Dumfriesshire, where his father and he gained some knowledge of practical mathematics and navigation, and at thirteen was apprenticed on board a vessel which traded between Liverpool and North America. After having made several voyages across the Atlantic Ocean, he was impressed for the navy, in which he soon rose to the rank of midshipman. During the Napoleonic Wars he saw a deal of active service. In 1814 Clapperton went to Canada, was promoted to the rank of lieutenant, in 1817, when the flotilla on the lakes was dismantled, he returned home on half-pay. In 1820 Clapperton removed to Edinburgh, where he made the acquaintance of Walter Oudney, lieutenant G. F. Lyon having returned from an unsuccessful attempt to reach Bornu from Tripoli, the British government determined on a second expedition to that country. Walter Oudney was appointed by Lord Bathurst, then secretary, to proceed to Bornu as consul. From Tripoli, early in 1822, they set out southward to Murzuk, where they were joined by Dixon Denham. They eventually proceeded south from Murzuk on 29 November 1822, by this time, a deep antipathy had developed between Clapperton and Denham, Denham secretly sending home malicious reports about Clapperton having homosexual relations with one of the Arab servants. A more odious man than Dixon Denham, whilst at Kuka, Clapperton and Oudney parted company with Denham on 14 December to explore the course of the Niger River. Denham remained behind to explore and survey the western, south and south-eastern shores of Lake Chad, however, only a few weeks later, Oudney died at the village of Murmur, located near the town of Katagum on the road to Kano. Exhausted by his travels, he returned by way of Zaria and Katsina to Kuka, Clapperton and Denham departed Kuka for Tripoli in August 1824, reaching Tripoli on 26 January 1825. Their mutual antipathy unabated, they exchanged not a word during the 133-day journey, the pair continued their journey to England, arriving home to a heroes welcome on 1 June 1825. An account of their travels was published in 1826 under the title Narrative of Travels and Discoveries in Northern, Clapperton came out on HMS Brazen, which was joining the West Africa Squadron for the suppression of the slave trade. Before the month was out Pearce and Morrison were dead of fever, Clapperton continued his journey, and, passing through the Yoruba country, in January 1826 he crossed the Niger at Bussa, the spot where Mungo Park had died twenty years before. In July, Clapperton arrived at Kano and thence the Fulani capital Sokoto, intending to continue to Bornu, however, the Fulani were now at war with al-Kaneimi, and Sultan Bello refused him permission to leave. After many months detention, afflicted by malaria, depression, and dysentery, Clapperton died, Lander returned to the coast, and at Fernando Po by extraordinary coincidence met Clappertons old antagonist, Dixon Denham, who duly relayed the news of Clappertons demise to London. Clapperton was the first European to make known from personal observation the Hausa states, Richard Lander, who had brought back the journal of his master, also published Records of Captain Clappertons Last Expedition to Africa
45.
Liverpool
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Liverpool is a major city and metropolitan borough in North West England.24 million people in 2011. Liverpool historically lay within the ancient hundred of West Derby in the south west of the county of Lancashire and it became a borough from 1207 and a city from 1880. In 1889 it became a county borough independent of Lancashire, Liverpool sits on the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary and its growth as a major port is paralleled by the expansion of the city throughout the Industrial Revolution. Along with general cargo, freight, raw materials such as coal and cotton, the city was also directly involved in the Atlantic slave trade. Liverpool was home to both the Cunard and White Star Line, and was the port of registry of the ocean liner RMS Titanic and others such as the RMS Lusitania, Queen Mary, and Olympic. The city celebrated its 800th anniversary in 2007, and it held the European Capital of Culture title together with Stavanger, Norway, several areas of Liverpool city centre were granted World Heritage Site status by UNESCO in 2004. The Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City includes the Pier Head, Albert Dock, tourism forms a significant part of the citys economy. Liverpool is also the home of two Premier League football clubs, Liverpool and Everton, matches between the two being known as the Merseyside derby, the world-famous Grand National horse race takes place annually at Aintree Racecourse on the outskirts of the city. The city is home to the oldest Black African community in the country. Natives of Liverpool are referred to as Liverpudlians and colloquially as Scousers, a reference to scouse, the word Scouse has also become synonymous with the Liverpool accent and dialect. Pool is a place name element in England from the Brythonic word for a pond, inlet, or pit, cognate with the modern Welsh. The derivation of the first element remains uncertain, with the Welsh word Llif as the most plausible relative and this etymology is supported by its similarity to that of the archaic Welsh name for Liverpool Llynlleifiad. Other origins of the name have suggested, including elverpool. The name appeared in 1190 as Liuerpul, and it may be that the place appearing as Leyrpole, in a record of 1418. King Johns letters patent of 1207 announced the foundation of the borough of Liverpool, the original street plan of Liverpool is said to have been designed by King John near the same time it was granted a royal charter, making it a borough. The original seven streets were laid out in an H shape, Bank Street, Castle Street, Chapel Street, Dale Street, Juggler Street, Moor Street, in the 17th century there was slow progress in trade and population growth. Battles for the town were waged during the English Civil War, in 1699 Liverpool was made a parish by Act of Parliament, that same year its first slave ship, Liverpool Merchant, set sail for Africa. Since Roman times, the city of Chester on the River Dee had been the regions principal port on the Irish Sea
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William Buckland
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William Buckland DD FRS was an English theologian who became Dean of Westminster. He was also a geologist and palaeontologist, writing the first full account of a fossil dinosaur and he was a pioneer in the use of fossilised faeces, for which he coined the term coprolites, to reconstruct ancient ecosystems. Having taken his BA in 1804, he went on to obtain his MA degree in 1808, in 1813, he was appointed reader in mineralogy, in succession to John Kidd, giving lively and popular lectures with increasing emphasis on geology and palaeontology. As curator of the Ashmolean Museum, he built up collections, touring Europe, in 1818, Buckland was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. Thus, his catastrophism theory incorporated a version of Old Earth creationism or Gap creationism, however, over the next decade as geology continued to progress Buckland changed his mind. In his famous Bridgewater Treatise, published in 1836, he acknowledged that the account of Noahs flood could not be confirmed using geological evidence. He continued to live in Corpus Christi College and, in 1824, here he announced the discovery, at Stonesfield, of fossil bones of a giant reptile which he named Megalosaurus and wrote the first full account of what would later be called a dinosaur. In 1825, Buckland was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts, in December 1825 he married Mary Morland of Abingdon, Oxfordshire, an accomplished illustrator and collector of fossils. Their honeymoon was a year touring Europe, with visits to famous geologists and she continued to assist him in his work, as well as having nine children, five of whom survived to adulthood. His son Frank Buckland became a well known practical naturalist, author, on 18 January 1823 Buckland walked into Paviland Cave, where he discovered a skeleton which he named the Red Lady of Paviland, as he at first supposed it to be the remains of a local prostitute. It is the oldest anatomically modern human found in the United Kingdom, carbon-data tests have since dated the skeleton, now known to be male as from circa 33,000 years before present. The fossil hunter Mary Anning noticed that stony objects known as bezoar stones were found in the abdominal region of ichthyosaur skeletons found in the Lias formation at Lyme Regis. She also noted that if such stones were broken open they often contained fossilised fish bones and scales and these observations by Anning led Buckland to propose in 1829 that the stones were fossilised faeces. He coined the name coprolite for them, the name came to be the name for all fossilised faeces. After De le Beche had a print made based on his original watercolour. He also discussed other similar objects found in formations, including the fossilised hyena dung he had found in Kirkdale Cave. Murchison would later name these older strata, characterised by marine fossils, as Silurian. In 1832 Buckland presided over the meeting of the British Association
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Humphry Davy
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He also studied the forces involved in these separations, inventing the new field of electrochemistry. Berzelius called Davys 1806 Bakerian Lecture On Some Chemical Agencies of Electricity one of the best memoirs which has ever enriched the theory of chemistry and he was a Baronet, President of the Royal Society, Member of the Royal Irish Academy, and Fellow of the Geological Society. He also invented the Davy Lamp and an early form of incandescent light bulb. Davy was born in Penzance in Cornwall in England on 17 December 1778 and his family moved to Varfell, near Ludgvan, when he was nine, and in term-time Davy boarded with John Tonkin, his mothers godfather. Davy said, I consider it fortunate I was left much to myself as a child, after Davys father died in 1794, Tonkin apprenticed him to John Bingham Borlase, a surgeon with a practice in Penzance. Davys indenture is dated 10 February 1795, in the apothecarys dispensary, Davy became a chemist, and a garret in Tonkins house was where he conducted his earliest chemical experiments. Davys friends said, This boy Humphry is incorrigible and he will blow us all into the air. His elder sister complained of the ravages made on her dresses by corrosive substances, John Ayrton Paris remarked that poetry written by the young Davy bear the stamp of lofty genius. Davys first preserved poem entitled The Sons of Genius is dated 1795, other poems written in the following years, especially On the Mounts Bay and St Michaels Mount, are descriptive verses, showing sensibility but no true poetic imagination. Three of Davys paintings from around 1796 have been donated to the Penlee House museum at Penzance, one is of the view from above Gulval showing the church, Mounts Bay and the Mount, while the other two depict Loch Lomond in Scotland. While writing verses at the age of 17 in honour of his first love, he was discussing the question of the materiality of heat with his Quaker friend. Dunkin remarked, I tell thee what, Humphry, thou art the most quibbling hand at a dispute I ever met with in my life and it was a crude form of analogous experiment exhibited by Davy in the lecture-room of the Royal Institution that elicited considerable attention. As professor at the Royal Institution, Davy repeated many of the experiments he learned from his friend and mentor. Davies Giddy met Davy in Penzance carelessly swinging on the half-gate of Dr Borlases house and this led to an introduction to Dr Edwards, who lived at Hayle Copper House. Edwards was a lecturer in chemistry in the school of St. Bartholomews Hospital, galvanic corrosion was not understood at that time, but the phenomenon prepared Davys mind for subsequent experiments on ships copper sheathing. Gregory Watt, son of James Watt, visited Penzance for his healths sake, Davy was acquainted with the Wedgwood family, who spent a winter at Penzance. Thomas Beddoes and John Hailstone were engaged in a controversy on the rival merits of the Plutonian. They travelled together to examine the Cornish coast accompanied by Davies Gilbert, Beddoes, who had established at Bristol a Pneumatic Institution, needed an assistant to superintend the laboratory
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Samuel Rogers
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He made his money as a banker and was also a discriminating art collector. Rogers was born at Newington Green, then a village north of Islington, London and his father, Thomas Rogers, a banker, was the son of a Stourbridge glass manufacturer, who was also a merchant in Cheapside. Thomas married Mary, the daughter of his fathers partner, Daniel Radford. He was educated in Hackney and Stoke Newington, two nephews, orphaned young and for whom he assumed responsibility, were Samuel Sharpe, the Egyptologist and translator of the Bible, and his younger brother Daniel, the early geologist. Samuel Rogers wished to enter the Presbyterian ministry, but his father persuaded him to join the business in Cornhill. In long holidays, necessitated by delicate health, Rogers became interested in English literature, particularly the work of Samuel Johnson, Thomas Gray and he learned Grays poems by heart, and his family wealth allowed him to leisure to try writing poetry himself. He began with contributions to the Gentlemans Magazine, and in 1786 he published a volume containing some imitations of Goldsmith, in 1788 his elder brother Thomas died, and Samuels business responsibilities were increased. In the next year he paid a visit to Scotland, where he met Adam Smith, Henry Mackenzie, Hester Thrale and others. In 1791 he was in Paris, and enjoyed the Orleans Collection of art at the Palais Royal, the theory of elevating and refining familiar themes by abstract treatment and lofty imagery is taken to extremes. In this art of raising a subject, as the 18th century phrase was, Byron said of it, There is not a vulgar line in the poem. In 1793 his fathers death gave Rogers the principal share in the house in Cornhill. He left Newington Green and established himself in chambers in the Temple, within his intimate circle at this time were his best friend, Richard Sharp, and the artists John Flaxman, John Opie, Martin Shee and John Henry Fuseli. He also made the acquaintance of Charles James Fox, with whom he visited the galleries in Paris in 1802, in 1803 he moved to 22 St Jamess Place, where for fifty years he entertained all the celebrities of London. Flaxman and Charles Alfred Stothard had a share in the decoration of the house, which Rogers virtually rebuilt and his collections at his death realised £50,000. in the mid-nineteenth century, social breakfasts were in vogue in London. An invitation to one of Rogerss breakfasts was an entry into literary society. He certainly had the kindest heart and unkindest tongue of any one I ever knew and he helped the poet Robert Bloomfield, he reconciled Thomas Moore with Francis Jeffrey and with Byron, and he relieved Sheridans difficulties in the last days of his life. Moore, who refused help from all his friends, and would only owe debts to his publishers and he procured a pension for HF Cary, the translator of Dante, and obtained Wordsworth his sinecure as distributor of stamps. John Mitford, while maintaining his country livings, rented permanent lodgings in Sloane Street, Rogers was in effect a literary dictator in England
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This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Phillips, Thomas". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
