ONE fine day at the end of 1759, Cupid swapped his arrow for a brush. When wealthy widow Penelope Dukinfield Daniell met painter John Astley at the Knutsford Assembly in Cheshire, she was so smitten that she asked him to paint her portrait. He turned up the following morning and, between a brushstroke and the next, they got on so well that, within a week, they were married. Astley (about 1724–87) had secured his fortune and all because of a chance encounter.
The son of a surgeon from Wem, Shropshire, Astley had moved to London in the early 1740s to train as an artist under Thomas Hudson, where he struck up a friendship with another pupil, Joshua Reynolds. The two met again in 1747 in Italy, where Astley, after a spell in Florence, secured a place with the celebrated Roman artist Pompeo Batoni. However, the Shropshire lad was desperately strapped for cash: when he (reluctantly) took off his coat at a picnic in the Roman countryside, it became obvious that his waistcoat had partly been fashioned from one of his canvases ‘and thus displayed a tremendous waterfall on his back,’ according to James Northcote’s The Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds, first published in 1813.
Nor did things get any better when Astley returned to Florence—despite commissions from his patron Horace Mann, whose portrait he would paint for Horace Walpole—or Paris, where Lord Cardigan called him somewhat optimistically ‘le Titien Anglois’, and even once he was back home in Britain. Although in London he painted many notable sitters, he also encountered sharp criticism. Walpole,
who had initially appreciated Astley’s portrait of Mann, albeit noting it was better coloured than drawn, later gave him short shrift: ‘He has got too much into the style of the four thousand English painters about town, and is so intolerable as to work for money, not for fame: in short, he is not such a Rubens.’
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June 05, 2024-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June 05, 2024-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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A trip down memory lane
IN contemplating the imminent approach of a rather large and unwanted birthday, I keep reminding myself of the time when birthdays were exciting: those landmark moments of becoming a teenager or an adult, of being allowed to drive, to vote or to buy a drink in a pub.
The lord of masterly rock
Charles Dance, fresh from donning Michelangelo’s smock for the BBC, discusses the role, the value of mentoring and why the Sistine chapel is like playing King Lear
The good, the bad and the ugly
With a passion for arguing and a sharp tongue to match his extraordinary genius, Michelangelo was both the enfant prodige and the enfant 'terribile’ of the Renaissance, as Michael Hall reveals
Ha-ha, tricked you!
Giving the impression of an endless vista, with 18th-century-style grandeur and the ability to keep pesky livestock off the roses, a ha-ha is a hugely desirable feature in any landscape. Just don't fall off
Seafood, spinach and asparagus puff-pastry cloud
Cut one sheet of pastry into a 25cm–30cm (10in–12in) circle. Place it on a parchment- lined baking tray and prick all over with a fork. Cut the remaining sheets of pastry to the same size, then cut inner circles so you are left with rings of about 5cm (2½in) width and three circles.
Small, but mighty
To avoid the mass-market cruise-ship circuit means downsizing and going remote—which is exactly what these new small ships and off-the-beaten track itineraries have in common.
Sharp practice
Pruning roses in winter has become the norm, but why do we do it–and should we? Charles Quest-Ritson explains the reasoning underpinning this horticultural habit
Flour power
LONDON LIFE contributors and friends of the magazine reveal where to find the capital's best baked goods
Still rollin' along
John Niven cruises in the wake of Mark Twain up the great Mississippi river of the American South
The legacy Charles Cruft and Crufts
ACKNOWLEDGED as the ‘prince of showmen’ by the late-19th-century world of dog fanciers and, later, as ‘the Napoleon of dog shows’, Charles Cruft (1852–1938) had a phenomenal capacity for hard graft and, importantly, a mind for marketing—he understood consumer behaviour and he knew how to weaponise ‘the hype’.
