John James Masquerier

John James Masquerier (5 October 1778 – 13 March 1855) was a British painter of French Hugenot descent. His work was mainly portrait painting, including of notables such as Lady Hamilton.

He was born at Chelsea, London in October 1778. Both his parents were from French refugee Protestant families, his mother's maiden name being Barbot.

As a child he was taken to Paris by his mother, who had set up a school in the Champs-Elysées He studied painting under François Vincent at the Tuileries, and was there at the time of the murder of the Swiss Guards on 10 August 1792, but escaped with his life. Masquerier made sketches from personal observation of many events of the French Revolution, such as the murder of the Princesse de Lamballe and the trial of the king. In 1793, when the arrest was imminent of all English residents in France, he and his mother tried to leave Paris. His mother was, however, arrested and imprisoned with Helen Maria Williams and others. She owed her life and liberty to the fall of Robespierre and the events of the 10 Thermidor.

Masquerier returned to London, where he enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools on 31 December 1792. A self-portrait, painted at the age of 14, (later in the collection of Baroness Burdett Coutts), was shown to George III. In 1793 he visited the Isle of Wight, where he was the guest of John Wilkes. In 1795 he began his professional career as an artist, and in 1796 exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy, showing a portrait and The Incredulity of St. Thomas; the latter forming the altar-piece of the chapel (once the hall of the house of Lord Chief Justice George Jeffreys) in Duke Street, Westminster.

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