Samuel Lines

Samuel Lines (1778 – 22 November 1863) was an English designer, painter and art teacher, and an early member of the Birmingham School of landscape painters.

A significant figure in the development of art in Birmingham during its rapid growth in the early nineteenth century, Lines pioneered the teaching of drawing and painting in the town and was one of the founders of the life drawing academy that would eventually evolve into the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists and Birmingham School of Art.

Samuel Lines was born in the village of Allesley in Warwickshire, where his mother was a schoolmistress. After a period working in agriculture for his uncle he moved to Birmingham in 1794 and secured an apprenticeship as a designer to Thomas Keeling, a firm of clockmakers and enamellers. Lines was then employed by Messrs Osborn and Gunby of Bordesley as a sword blade decorator, designer and engraving to the highest standard.

Lines studied drawing under Joseph Barber at the latter's academy on Great Charles Street, and in 1807 opened his own academy for training pupils in drawing and painting in Newhall Street. This was so successful that he was able to build his own house in Temple Row.

Lines' pupils included Thomas Creswick, Andrew Hunt, William Wyon and his own sons Samuel Rostill Lines, Frederick Thomas Lines and Henry Harris Lines. His art classes notoriously started at five o'clock in the morning, with Lines himself personally visiting latecomers to rouse them.

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