14 Facts About Joseph Highmore

Joseph Highmore was an English painter of portraits, conversation pieces and history subjects, illustrator and author.

Joseph Highmore displayed early his ability in art but was discouraged by his family from taking up art professionally, and began a legal training instead.

In 1762, Joseph Highmore sold the contents of his studio and retired to Canterbury, where he lived with his daughter and son-in-law.

Joseph Highmore subsequently published art historical and critical articles, including on Rubens' ceiling decorations in the Banqueting House, Whitehall, London, colour theory and Brook Taylor's theory of perspective.

Joseph Highmore was buried in sheep's wool in the fifth bay of the south aisle of Canterbury Cathedral.

Joseph Highmore's wife Susanna Highmore was a poet, though little of her work was published.

Joseph Highmore's son Anthony Highmore was an artist, one of whose 15 children, Anthony Highmore Jnr.

Joseph Highmore worked for artistocratic clients as well as middle-class patrons.

Joseph Highmore is looking with an expression of barely concealed amusement at his guests who are already seated at a table.

Joseph Highmore painted works illustrating biblical subjects, historical painting being a genre which Joseph Highmore had studied during his visit to Paris.

One such biblical painting is Hagar and Ishmael, which Joseph Highmore donated to the Foundling Hospital for the purpose of decorating its Court Room.

In 1744, Joseph Highmore painted a series of 12 paintings after scenes from Samuel Richardson's epistolary novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded.

Joseph Highmore's paintings were based on the novel Pamela but were not conceived as book illustrations, although they were later engraved by Antoine Benoist and Louis Truchy.

Joseph Highmore's pictures were conversation pieces which focused on the characters.