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.’
Denne historien er fra June 05, 2024-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra June 05, 2024-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds
