Figures in a landscape - portraits by Francis Wheatley

 Family Group, circa 1775-80.

The Wilkinson Family, 1776.

A Gentleman and his Dog in a Landscape, circa 1780s.

Mrs. Barclay and her Children, circa 1776-77.

The Browne Family, circa 1778.

Lord Spencer Hamilton, circa 1778.

The Oliver and Ward Families, circa 1778.

Mrs. Bentley, circa 1775.

Henry Addington, later 1st Viscount Sidmouth, circa 1785-86.

A Family Group in a Landscape, circa 1775.

I'd love to know more about this portrait, the identity of the family and, especially, the inclusion of the Black child at left. A ward of the family? A servant?

Portrait of a Man, called George Basil Woodd, circa 1780.

Mr. and Mrs. Richardson, 1777-78.

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Francis Wheatley RA (1747, London - 28 June 1801, London), English portrait and landscape painter. Born the son of a master tailor, he studied at William Shipley's drawing school and the Royal Academy, and won several prizes from the Society of Arts. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1778, built up a good practice and was praised by the critics. But he lived a dissipated life, ran up debts, and was forced to flee his creditors. He eloped to Ireland with Elizabeth Gresse, wife of a fellow artist John Alexander Gresse. (He may have already had a wife, himself; there is mention of him marrying a certain Rosamund Mann in 1774.) Living in Dublin with Elizabeth, whom he passed off as his wife, he quickly re-established himself there as an in-demand artist, popular in good society. But the circumstances of his private life were soon revealed, and he returned to London in 1783. In 1787 he married one of his models, Clara Maria Leigh, who was also an artist; they had four children together. The majority of his later works were historical and genre pictures, mostly intended for engraving and for distribution on the French as well as the English market. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1790 and became a full Academician in 1791. Though popular and hard working, it appears he was not normally well paid, and by 1793 he was again seriously in debt. For the last seven years of his life he was not only in constant financial difficulties but severely crippled by gout. He died aged fifty-four, after which the Royal Academy provided a pension for his widow and children. Six years later his wife remarried. Her second husband was the Irish actor Alexander Pope, and as Mrs. Pope she was known as a painter of flowers and portraits.