Thomas Bardwell (1704 – 9 September 1767) was an English

portrait A portrait is a portrait painting, painting, portrait photography, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, Personality type ...

and figure painter, art copyist, and writer.Thomas Bardwell
(answers.com).

Life and work

Bardwell initially earned his living initially as a painter of decorative panels for his family's business in

Bungay Bungay () is a market town, civil parish and electoral ward in the English county of Suffolk.OS Explorer Map OL40: The Broads: (1:25 000) : . It lies in the Waveney Valley, west of Beccles on the edge of The Broads, and at the neck of a meand ...

, Suffolk. His earliest known portraits are two

conversation piece A conversation piece refers to a group portrait in a domestic or landscape setting depicting persons chatting or otherwise socializing with each other.Beccles Beccles ( ) is a market town and civil parish in the English county of Suffolk.OS Explorer Map OL40: The Broads: (1:25 000) : . The town is shown on the milestone as from London via the A145 and A12 roads, north-east of London as the crow fli ...

, is in the collection of the

Geffrye Museum The Museum of the Home, formerly the Geffrye Museum, is a free museum in the 18th-century Grade I-listed former almshouses on Kingsland Road in Shoreditch, London. The museum explores home and home life from 1600 to the present day with gallerie ...

. In 1746 he was commissioned by the artillery company in Norwich to paint a portrait of William Crowe (who became mayor the following year), breaking the monopoly on civic portraiture in the city held until then by the German-born

John Theodore Heins John Theodore Heins (–1756) was a painter and engraver, probably of German birth, but active in Great Britain. He settled in Norwich and by 1720 was working on a series of portraits of members of prominent local families. Life Heins was wo ...

. It became the first of nine portraits by Bardwell that were to be hung in St Andrew's Hall in Norwich. He painted several portraits in London during the 1740s and 1750s. One, ''

Joshua Ward Joshua Ward (1685–1761) was an English doctor, most remembered for the invention of Friar's Balsam. He sat briefly in the House of Commons from 1715 to 1717. Life Ward was born in Yorkshire. He was the brother of John Ward who was MP for seve ...

Receiving Money from Britannia (and Bestowing it as Charity on the Needy)'' (1748) is an allegorical work, showing Ward, a London doctor, with symbolic figures of

Britannia Britannia () is the national personification of Britain as a helmeted female warrior holding a trident and shield. An image first used in classical antiquity, the Latin ''Britannia'' was the name variously applied to the British Isles, Great ...

and Charity and a crowd of patients. Now in the collection of the

Royal College of Surgeons The Royal College of Surgeons is an ancient college (a form of corporation) established in England to regulate the activity of surgeons. Derivative organisations survive in many present and former members of the Commonwealth. These organisations a ...

, it once hung in the Ward's parlour in

Whitehall Whitehall is a road and area in the City of Westminster, Central London. The road forms the first part of the A roads in Zone 3 of the Great Britain numbering scheme, A3212 road from Trafalgar Square to Chelsea, London, Chelsea. It is the main ...

. There is an engraving after it, of 1748-9, probably by

Bernard Baron Bernard Baron (1696? – 1762) Web articl Library of Congress, lower section "About the Artists" was a French engraver and etcher who spent much of his life in England. Life Baron was born in Paris in 1696, the son of the engraver Laurent Baron ...

. In 1752-3 Bardwell carried out a large number of commissions in Yorkshire and Scotland. Eventually, in 1759, he settled permanently in Norwich. An obituary in a Norwich newspaper was to describe him as "an eminent portrait painter of this city, who principally through the power of genius and dint of application, acquired a degree of perfection in his art, which would have been deemed excellent, even had it been accompanied with a liberal tuition." According to ''A General History of the County of Norfolk'', published in 1829, "the best of his portraits are at Langley; Mr. Turner and Mr. Carr, both of orwichhave historical subjects by him."

Writings

In 1756, a 64-page treatise by Bardwell, entitled ''The Practice of Painting and Perspective Made Easy'', dedicated to the Earl of Rochford, was published, printed by Miller of Bungay. It gives a London address for Bardwell, being advertised as available from the author "at the Golden Lamp, in Rose Street, near the end of Covent Garden". Edward Edwards, writing in 1808, praised the book, despite his generally low opinion of Bardwell as an artist,Edwards viewed Bardwell as basically a copyist, adding that "in his original works he held no very high rank". saying that "the instructions contained in that short work, so far as they relate to the process of painting, are the best that have hitherto been published". He did however, find the part on perspective unsatisfactory. A second edition was published in 1773.

References

External links

*
Thomas Bardwell on artnetPortraits by Bardwell
(National Portrait Gallery)
Paintings by Thomas Bardwell
(Art Renewal Centre)
Group Portrait of the Brewster Family
(1736,

Art Fund Art Fund (formerly the National Art Collections Fund) is an independent membership-based British charity, which raises funds to aid the acquisition of artworks for the nation. It gives grants and acts as a channel for many gifts and bequests, as ...

) {{DEFAULTSORT:Bardwell, Thomas 1704 births 1767 deaths 18th-century English painters English male painters English portrait painters People from Bungay Artists from Norwich 18th-century English male artists

Life and work

Writings

References

Further reading

External links