Thomas Heaphy

Thomas Heaphy the elder (1775–1835) was an English water-colour painter, known also for his portraits.

Heaphy was born in London on 29 December 1775. His father, John Gerrard Heaphy, was a merchant of Irish background, with a French wife. Heaphy was articled at an early age to R. M. Meadows the engraver, and attended a drawing-school run by John Boyne near Queen Square, Bloomsbury.

Heaphy was a successful painter. He devoted much of his fortune to developing land in the neighbourhood of what is now Regent's Park, and a portion of St. John's Wood owes its origin to him. This took him temporarily away from painting. He then established the Society of British Artists, of which he was elected the first president, and to its first exhibition, in 1824, contributed nine works, but he resigned his membership the following year. In 1831 he went to Italy, where he remained until the middle of the following year, and made copies of famous pictures by the old masters. After his return to England he painted little.

Heaphy died at 8 St. John's Wood Road, 23 October 1835, and was buried in Bunhill Fields.

Heaphy exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy in 1797, and until 1804 his contributions were exclusively portraits, but in that year he sent a subject picture, The Portland Fish Girl. Subsequently, he turned his attention to water-colour painting, to which he from that time confined himself, and became a large contributor to the exhibitions of the newly formed Water-colour Society, then held in Spring Gardens, where his representations of fish markets and other scenes of working-class life were popular. In 1807 he became an associate of the society, and in the same year a full member; his Hastings Fish Market, exhibited in 1809, sold for five hundred guineas.

Heaphy at this point returned to portraiture, successfully. He was appointed portrait-painter to the Princess of Wales; Princess Charlotte, Prince Leopold, and other distinguished persons sat to him.

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