James Thornhill

Sir James Thornhill (25 July 1675 or 1676 – 4 May 1734) was an English

Thornhill was born in Melcombe Regis, Dorset, the son of Walter Thornhill of Wareham and Mary, eldest daughter of Colonel William Sydenham, governor of Weymouth. In 1689 he was apprenticed to Thomas Highmore (1660–1720), a specialist in non-figurative decorative painting. He also learned a great deal from Antonio Verrio and Louis Laguerre, two prominent foreign decorative painters then working in England. He completed his apprenticeship in 1696 and, on 1 March 1704, became a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers of London.

Thornhill decorated palace interiors with large-scale compositions, with figures commonly shown in idealized and rhetorical postures. In 1707, he was given the commission to decorate the Hall now known as the

In 1725 he offered to paint decorations for the ceiling of the New Council Chamber at the Guildhall in the City of London. He gave his services free, although he was rewarded with a valuable gold cup. The chamber was later demolished, though some of the paintings – an Allegory of London, and representations of the Cardinal Virtues, personified as naked children – survive.^[4]

In his native

In 1711, Thornhill was one of the twelve original directors of Sir Godfrey Kneller's academy at Great Queen Street, London. In 1716, he succeeded Kneller as governor there and held the post until 1720. He then established his own private drawing school at Covent Garden, but this soon closed. In November 1724, Thornhill made a second, more successful, attempt to establish a new free academy in his private house at Covent Garden. One artist that Thornhill is very likely to have influenced is the draughtsman and mathematical instrument designer Thomas Carwitham.

William Hogarth seems to have been a member of Thornhill's second academy from the beginning. On 23 March 1729 he married Thornhill's daughter Jane. Thornhill was with Hogarth when he went to see Sarah Malcolm in Newgate prison just days before her execution. This was in order that Hogarth might record her portrait.^[5]

In June 1718 George I made Thornhill court painter, and in March 1720 Serjeant Painter, succeeding his former master Highmore in the latter role. On 2 May 1720, the King knighted him, the first native artist to be knighted.^[6] In the same year, he was master of the Painters' Company and in 1723 fellow of the Royal Society.

Thornhill was returned unopposed as

In 1718 Thornhill took a large house on Covent Garden Piazza, and in 1725 he renovated Thornhill House in the south of Stalbridge, near Sturminster Newton, Dorset, in the Palladian manner.^[8]

In 1720 he tried his hand at architecture. Along with Giacomo Leoni, he designed Moor Park,^[9] for which he also painted the entrance hall ceiling and other rooms.

Towards the end of his life Thornhill was receiving no major commissions, so he began to copy the

Thornhill's copies of the cartoons were sold by auction by Christopher Cock on 24 and 25 February 1735 at his room in the Great Piazza, Covent Garden.^[10] The full-sized copies of the cartoons were bought by John Russell, 4th Duke of Bedford for £200, a very small sum which was less than the cost of the canvas and other materials used in making them. In 1800 Francis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford presented them to the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where they remain.^[11]

• 
  Hersilia Presented to Romulus in Olympus, Sabine Room, Chatsworth House, 1708
• 
  Triumph of Peace and Liberty over Tyranny,

  Painted Hall, Greenwich Hospital

  , 1708–1712
• 
  King George I and his family surrounded by allegorical figures, Painted Hall, Greenwich Hospital, 1718–1725
• 
  Painted Hall, Greenwich Hospital, 1708–1727
• 
  Ceiling of staircase at Hanbury Hall, c.1710
• 
  Hall ceiling, Blenheim Palace, 1716
• 
  The chapel at

  Wimpole Hall

  , with Thornhill's murals, completed 1724

General

• Barber, Tabitha, ‘Thornhill, Sir James (1675/6–1734)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008, accessed 23 Sept 2010.
• Souden, David (2004). Wimpole Hall. National Trust. p. 14.
• Raffaele De Giorgi, "Couleur, couleur!". Antonio Verrio: un pittore in Europa tra Seicento e Settecento (Edifir, Firenze 2009).
  ISBN 9788879704496

• Memorial of Sir James Thornhill (The Gentleman's Magazine and Historical Chronicle, Volume 195, Jan 1855) p486 ff.
• Sir James Thornhill (Dictionary of National Biography, 1885–1900, Volume 57).
• "Thornhill, Sir James" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 26 (11th ed.). 1911. p. 880.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to James Thornhill.

• James Thornhill biography (The Dorset Page)
• 90 artworks by or after James Thornhill at the Art UK site