LINNELL, John (1792-1882), a richly gifted English painter, was born in London on the 16th of June 1792. His father being a carver and gilder, Linnell was early brought into contact with artists, and when he was ten years old he was already drawing and selling his portraits in chalk and pencil. His first artistic instruction was received from Benjamin West, and he spent a year in the house of John Varley the water-colour painter, where he had William Hunt and Mulready as fellow pupils, and made the acquaintance of Shelley, Godwin, and other men of mark and individuality. In 1805 he was admitted a student of the Royal Academy, where he obtained medals for drawing, modelling, and sculpture. He was also trained as an engraver, and executed a transcript of the Burial of Saul, one of Varley’s most impressive pictures. In after life he frequently occupied himself with the burin, publishing, in 1834, a series of outlines from Michelangelo’s frescos in the Sistine chapel, and, in 1840, superintending the issue of a selection of plates from the pictures in Buckingham Palace, one of them, a Titian landscape, being mezzotinted by himself. At first he supported himself mainly by miniature painting, and by the execution of larger portraits, such as the likenesses of Mulready, Whately, Peel, and Carlyle. Several of his portraits he engraved with his own hand in line and mezzotint He also painted many subjects like the St John Preaching, the Covenant of Abraham, and the Journey to Emmaus, in which, while the landscape background is usually prominently insisted upon, the figures are yet of sufficient size and importance to supply the title of the work. But it is mainly in connexion with his long series of paintings of pure landscape that his name is known to the public. When he was ...