Life
James Thornhill was born in Melcombe Regis. He was the son of Walter Thornhill of Wareham and Mary, eldest daughter of Colonel William Sydenham, governor of Weymouth. In 1689, he was apprenticed to Thomas Highmore (1660–1720), a specialist in non-figurative decorative painting. Young James also learned much from Antonio Verrio (1639?–1707) and Louis Laguerre (1663–1721), prominent foreign decorative painters then working in England. In 1696 he completed his apprenticeship and in March 1704 became a Freeman of the Painter-Stainers’ Company of London. From 1707 on, Thornhill successfully worked for the upper class as a history painter.
Thornhill decorated palace interiors with large-scale compositions. The figures of these wall paintings are commonly shown in idealized and rhetorical postures. In 1711, Thornhill was one of the 12 original directors of Sir Godfrey Kneller's academy at Great Queen Street, London. In 1716, he succeeded Kneller as Governor there and held the post until 1720. He then established his own private drawing school at Covent Garden, but this was soon closed.
In 1707 Thornhill was given the commission to decorate the Painted Hall at Greenwich Hospital (1707–1727) by "a whig, low-church dominated committee inspired by a moral Anglican nationalism". The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Tenison, is said to have remarked: "I am no judge of painting, but on two articles I think I may insist: first that the painter employed be a Protestant; and secondly that he be an Englishman". In June 1715 (in which year work on the upper hall began) the Weekly Packet said that the decision to award Thornhill the commission would "put to silence all the loud applauses hitherto given to foreign artists". The allegorical wall and ceiling decorations of the Painted Hall depict the Protestant succession of English monarchs from William and Mary to George I.
In June 1718 George I made Thornhill court painter, and in March 1720 Serjeant Painter. On 2 May 1720, the king knighted him, the first native artist to be knighted. In the same year, he was master of the Painters' Company and in 1723 fellow of the Royal Society. In October 1720, Louis Cheron and John Vanderbank opened another academy in an old Presbyterian meeting house in St. Martin's Lane, which survived a few years. One of the subscribers was William Hogarth
From 1722 to 1734 Thornhill was also a member of Parliament for Melcombe Regis..
His last major commission was to paint the chapel at Wimpole Hall, he started work on the preliminary sketches in 1713 and the work was finished by 1724, the north wall has fictive architecture and four statues all in Trompe-l'œil of the four Doctors of the Church: St. Gregory, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine & St. Jerome. The east wall above the altar is painted with the Adoration of the Magi.
In November 1724, Thornhill made a second attempt to establish a new free academy in his private house at Covent Garden. This was more successful, and Hogarth must have been a member from the beginning. On 23 March 1729, Hogarth married Sir James' daughter Jane, indicating the depth of their relationship.
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