Biography
Moser was born in Schaffhausen, Switzerland and trained initially as a coppersmith in Geneva. He later learnt additional skills as a chaser, goldsmith and engraver.
He moved to London during the 1720s and married Mary Guynier. Surviving metal works by him include elaborate gold snuff-boxes and watch-cases (including movements by noted watchmakers George Philip Strigel and John Ellicott, among others), and silver candlesticks in the Rococo style.
Moser was the Royal Academy's first Keeper and as a teacher at the Academy taught many notable artists including William Blake. Another student was his nephew Joseph Moser. He also taught at the St Martin's Lane Academy and was drawing master to the British royal family.
Read more about this topic: George Michael Moser
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)