Thomas Hawker (died 1699 or c.1722) 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 ...

painter. There is little clear historical information about Hawker.

George Vertue George Vertue (1684 – 24 July 1756) was an English engraver and antiquary, whose notebooks on British art of the first half of the 18th century are a valuable source for the period. Life Vertue was born in 1684 in St Martin-in-the-Fields, ...

recorded that Hawker moved into Sir

Peter Lely Sir Peter Lely (14 September 1618 – 7 December 1680) was a painter of Dutch origin whose career was nearly all spent in England, where he became the dominant portrait painter to the court. Life Lely was born Pieter van der Faes to Dutch ...

's house after the latter's death in 1680, in the hope of benefiting from the famous associations of the address.''Dictionary of National Biography'', 1891 More recently,

Ellis Waterhouse Sir Ellis Kirkham Waterhouse (16 February 1905 – 7 September 1985) was an English art historian and museum director who specialised in Roman baroque and English painting. He was Director of the National Galleries of Scotland (1949–52) ...

suggested that Hawker had been one of Lely's chief assistants. A full-length portrait of Charles II, believed to be by Hawker, is in the National Portrait Gallery in London. The attribution was made on the basis of comparisons with Hawker's full-length depiction of the king's son,

Henry FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Grafton Henry FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Grafton, (28 September 16639 October 1690) was an illegitimate son of King Charles II of England and his mistress Barbara Villiers. A military commander, Henry FitzRoy was appointed colonel of the Grenadier Guards i ...

, at

Euston Hall Euston Hall is a country house, with park by William Kent and Capability Brown, located in Euston, a small village in Suffolk located just south of Thetford, England. It is the family home of the Dukes of Grafton. The Hall Euston first appears ...

. The painting of Grafton was reproduced in a

mezzotint Mezzotint is a monochrome printmaking process of the '' intaglio'' family. It was the first printing process that yielded half-tones without using line- or dot-based techniques like hatching, cross-hatching or stipple. Mezzotint achieves tonali ...

Isaac Beckett Isaac Beckett (1653 – 1719) was an English mezzotint engraver, one of the first practitioners of the art in the country. Life and work Beckett was born in Kent in 1653, and apprenticed to a calico printer in London, but, after meeting Edward ...

and his portrait of

Titus Oates Titus Oates (15 September 1649 – 12/13 July 1705) was an English priest who fabricated the " Popish Plot", a supposed Catholic conspiracy to kill King Charles II. Early life Titus Oates was born at Oakham in Rutland. His father Samuel (1610� ...

was engraved by Cornelius Nicolas Schurtz The date of his death has often been given as c.1722, on the basis of Vertue's reference to a painter called Edward Hawker, who was still alive, aged over 80, in 1721. Waterhouse. however, believes that there is no reason to equate Edward and Thomas, and that the artist is more likely to have been the Thomas Hawker who was buried at Covent Garden on 5 November 1699.

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* 17th-century English painters English male painters 1722 deaths Year of birth unknown Court painters {{England-painter-17thC-stub