George Lambert (English painter)

George Lambert (1700 – 30 November 1765) was an English landscape artist and theatre scene painter. With Richard Wilson he is recognised as a pioneer of English landscape in art, for its own sake.

Lambert was born in Kent and studied art under Warner Hassells and John Wootton, soon attracting attention by the quality of his landscape painting. He painted many large and fine landscapes in the style of Gaspar Poussin and Salvator Rosa. Many of his landscapes were finely engraved by François Vivares, James Mason (1710–1785), and others, including a set of views of Plymouth and Mount Edgcumbe (painted conjointly with Samuel Scott), a view of Saltwood Castle in Kent, another of Dover, and a landscape presented to the Foundling Hospital in London.

Lambert also obtained a great reputation as a scene-painter, working at first for the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, in London, under John Rich. When Rich moved to Covent Garden Theatre, Lambert secured the assistance of Amiconi, and together they produced scenery of far higher quality than any previously executed.

Lambert was a man of jovial temperament and shrewd wit, and frequently spent his evenings at work in his painting-loft at Covent Garden Theatre, to which men of note in the fashionable or theatrical world resorted to share his supper of a beef-steak, freshly cooked on the spot. Out of these meetings arose the well-known "Beefsteak Club" which long maintained a high social reputation. Most of Lambert's scene-paintings unfortunately perished when Covent Garden Theatre was destroyed by fire in 1808.

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