John Linnell

The precocious son of a Bloomsbury frame maker, John Linnell entered the Royal Academy schools in 1805 at the same time that he began studying with influential watercolor painter and drawing master John Varley (1778-1842). Under Varley's tutelage, but primarily in the company of fellow student William Mulready (1786-1863), Linnell mastered plein-air landscape painting. His studies at the Kensington gravel pits (ca. 1812) and other locales in and around London are remarkable for the intensity and novelty of their naturalistic observation. From 1807 Linnell was a regular contributor of...