Henry Edridge (1768 in

Paddington Paddington is an area within the City of Westminster, in Central London. First a medieval parish then a metropolitan borough, it was integrated with Westminster and Greater London in 1965. Three important landmarks of the district are Paddi ...

– 23 April 1821 in London) was the son of a tradesman and apprenticed at the age of fifteen to

William Pether William Pether (c. 1739 – 19 July 1821) was primarily an English mezzotint engraver, but also decorated porcelain, made oil paintings and pastel drawings, and invented gadgets. Life He was born in London in 1739, and became a pupil of Thom ...

, 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 ...

er and landscapist, and became proficient as a painter of miniatures, portraits and landscapes. His first portraits were on ivory, and he subsequently turned to paper with black lead and India ink to which he added very ornate backgrounds, but he later produced a large number of elaborately finished pictures in water colours with light backgrounds. These were followed by others in which he combined the depth and richness of oil paintings with the freedom of water colour drawings. His subjects included

Lord Nelson Vice-admiral (Royal Navy), Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, 1st Duke of Bronte (29 September 1758 – 21 October 1805) was a British people, British flag officer in the Royal Navy. His inspirational leadership, grasp of strate ...

, the explorer Mungo Park, the Methodist missionary Thomas Coke, the Prime Minister William Pitt and

John Wesley John Wesley (; 2 March 1791) was an English people, English cleric, Christian theology, theologian, and Evangelism, evangelist who was a leader of a Christian revival, revival movement within the Church of England known as Methodism. The soci ...

at the age of 88. Sir

Joshua Reynolds Sir Joshua Reynolds (16 July 1723 – 23 February 1792) was an English painter, specialising in portraits. John Russell said he was one of the major European painters of the 18th century. He promoted the "Grand Style" in painting which depend ...

was so taken with one of his miniatures, that he insisted on having it and paid him handsomely for it. This was the sign for Edridge to abandon engraving and become a painter. He did wisely in copying many of the works of Reynolds for study. He first established himself in Golden Square and in 1801 moved to Margaret Street, Cavendish Square, where he remained for twenty years. With the desire to indulge his taste for landscape painting, which he cultivated under Thomas Hearne, he made two excursions to

Normandy Normandy (; french: link=no, Normandie ; nrf, Normaundie, Nouormandie ; from Old French , plural of ''Normant'', originally from the word for "northman" in several Scandinavian languages) is a geographical and cultural region in Northwestern ...

and

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

, in 1817 and 1819, producing many interesting drawings which were subsequently exhibited. Three of his landscapes are now in the

South Kensington Museum South is one of the cardinal directions or compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Proto-Germanic ''*sunþaz' ...

, and his sketches on the first

Lord Auckland Baron Auckland is a title in both the Peerage of Ireland and the Peerage of Great Britain. The first creation came in 1789 when the prominent politician and financial expert William Eden was made Baron Auckland in the Peerage of Ireland. In ...

and of

Robert Southey Robert Southey ( or ; 12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843) was an English poet of the Romantic school, and Poet Laureate from 1813 until his death. Like the other Lake Poets, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Southey began as a ra ...

are in the National Portrait Gallery. He became a student at the

Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its pur ...

in 1784 and was elected an associate in November 1820. Unhappily he had but a very short time to enjoy this distinction, for he died from an attack of asthma on 23 April 1821.

Sources

*The History of the Royal Academy of Arts - William Sandby (i862) (In public domain) *Simon Houfe,
Edridge, Henry (1768–1821)
, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008, accessed 29 July 2011

External links

*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Edridge, Henry 18th-century English painters English male painters 19th-century English painters 1768 births 1821 deaths Associates of the Royal Academy 19th-century English male artists 18th-century English male artists