Francis Wheatley (painter)

Francis Wheatley RA (London 1747 – 28 June 1801) was an English portrait and landscape painter.

Wheatley was born at Wild Court, Covent Garden, London, the son of a master tailor. He studied at William Shipley's drawing school and the Royal Academy, and won several prizes from the Society of Arts. He assisted in the decoration of Vauxhall, and aided John Hamilton Mortimer in painting a ceiling for Lord Melbourne at Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire.

In his youth, his life was irregular and dissipated. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1778, built up a good practice and was praised by the critics. But he fell in with extravagant company and was forced to flee his creditors: so he eloped to Ireland with Elizabeth Gresse, wife of a fellow artist John Alexander Gresse (1741–1794).

In the summer of 1779 he was in Dublin with Elizabeth whom he passed off as his wife, and established himself there as a portrait-painter, executing, among other works, the best-known interior of the Irish House of Commons. He also painted the review of the Dublin regiments of the Irish Volunteers in College Green in November 1779, the basis for a best-selling print bought by numerous Irish Patriot supporters. He was careful to include the grandees of Dublin and also exotic visitors such as Princess Dashkov.

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