James Pearson (died 1838) was an Irish-born glass painter, active in London.

Life

Pearson was born in

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 c ...

about the middle of the 18th century. He learnt his art in

Bristol Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...

. In 1768 he married Eglington Margaret Paterson, also a glass painter. She was the daughter of Samuel Paterson, a well-known book-auctioneer. Pearson and his wife came to public attention through works shown at the Society of Artists of Great Britain in its exhibitions in 1775–77. Although the couple usually worked on separate pieces they occasionally collaborated, as on their stained glass copy after Carlo Maratti’s ''Salutation'', shown in 1775. A later joint work was one after Guido Reni’s ''Aurora'', shown in London in 1793. The Pearsons used a technique in which the image was painted in enamels on sheets of plain glass and then fired. The Pearsons exhibited regularly throughout the 1780s and 1790s at their homes in London, first in Church Street, Westminster, and later in Great Newport Street, and also at the new

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in Oxford Street. It was there, in 1781, that Pearson showed his spectacular ''Brazen Serpent in the Wilderness'', after a design by

John Hamilton Mortimer John Hamilton Mortimer (17 September 1740 – 4 February 1779) was a British figure and landscape painter and printmaker, known for romantic paintings set in Italy, works depicting conversations, and works drawn in the 1770s portraying war ...

, before its installation in the east window of Salisbury Cathedral, where it still remains. A critic in the ''Morning Chronicle'' admired the way in which "the lead and iron are intirely concealed, so as not to interrupt the outline either of the figures or drapery, by which the whole appears as one entire plate of glass, without joining or division". His patrons included Horace Walpole, for whom he executed a window of a cobbler whistling to a bird in a cage for the refectory at Strawberry Hill, and William Beckford, for whom he made a portrait of

Thomas Becket Thomas Becket (), also known as Saint Thomas of Canterbury, Thomas of London and later Thomas à Becket (21 December 1119 or 1120 – 29 December 1170), was an English nobleman who served as Lord Chancellor from 1155 to 1162, and then ...

for Fonthill. The catalogue of an exhibition held by the Pearsons in 1821 was entitled ''Celebrated Cartoons of Raphael, and Various Other Beautiful Specimens, by Mr. and Mrs. Pearson, Appointed Painters to Her Majesty, on Glass, in Vitrified Colours, at No. 112, Great Russell-Street, Bloomsbury''. The paintings after Raphael were by his wife. He also made windows for

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, Oxford and the church of St Botolph, Aldersgate in London. He painted some designs after James Barry. He exhibited as late as 1821, and died in 1838, his wife having died in 1823.

References

Sources

Attribution: * {{DEFAULTSORT:Pearson, James Artists from Dublin (city) 1838 deaths 19th-century British painters 18th-century Irish painters British stained glass artists and manufacturers Year of birth missing Irish emigrants to Kingdom of Great Britain