18 Facts About James Thornhill

Sir James Thornhill was an English painter of historical subjects working in the Italian baroque tradition.

James Thornhill was responsible for some large-scale schemes of murals, including the "Painted Hall" at the Royal Hospital, Greenwich, the paintings on the inside of the dome of St Paul's Cathedral, and works at Chatsworth House and Wimpole Hall.

James Thornhill learned a great deal from Antonio Verrio and Louis Laguerre, two prominent foreign decorative painters then working in England.

James Thornhill decorated palace interiors with large-scale compositions, with figures commonly shown in idealized and rhetorical postures.

James Thornhill chooses to feature strongly Hersilia, who was deified for her loyalty to her Roman husband, Romulus, as against her Sabine family - a deliberate reference to Mary, lauded by the Whigs for supporting her Protestant husband, William, against her Catholic father, James.

At Hanbury Hall, beneath an imposing view of both the Olympian Gods and the story of Achilles which dominates the ceiling of the main staircase, James Thornhill added a small portrait of Rev Henry Sacheverell, a Tory propagandist put on trial for sedition by the Whig government in 1710, being cast to the Furies to be burnt.

In 1716 James Thornhill painted the ceiling of the Great Hall in Blenheim Palace for John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, newly returned to the country after being prosecuted by the Tory ministry in the last years of Queen Anne.

James Thornhill gave his services free, although he was rewarded with a valuable gold cup.

James Thornhill carried out a commission in Worcestershire painting the walls and ceiling around the grand staircase at Hanbury Hall.

In 1711, James Thornhill was one of the twelve original directors of Sir Godfrey Kneller's academy at Great Queen Street, London.

James Thornhill then established his own private drawing school at Covent Garden, but this soon closed.

James Thornhill was with Hogarth when he went to see Sarah Malcolm in Newgate prison just days before her execution.

James Thornhill was returned unopposed as Member of Parliament for Melcombe Regis at the 1722 British general election.

James Thornhill was returned in a contest at the 1727 British general election.

James Thornhill presented to the church an altarpiece painted by himself.

In 1718 James Thornhill took a large house on Covent Garden Piazza, and in 1725 he renovated James Thornhill House in the south of Stalbridge, near Sturminster Newton, Dorset, in the Palladian manner.

Towards the end of his life James Thornhill was receiving no major commissions, so he began to copy the Raphael Cartoons, then at Hampton Court.

The chapel at Wimpole Hall, with James Thornhill's murals, completed 1724.