Serjeant Painter - List of Serjeant Painters

List of Serjeant Painters

• John Browne, heraldic painter since 1502, appointed "King's Painter" in 1511/12, and as the first Serjeant Painter in 1527, when the imported artist Lucas Horenbout took over as "King's Painter" - now the superior position. Browne died in office in December 1532.
• Andrew Wright
• "Antony Toto", really Antonio di Nunziato d'Antonio, a pupil of Ridolfo Ghirlandajo from 1544, who died in office in 1554. He was the first Serjeant Painter who can be evidenced as an artist rather than an artisan. None of his paintings are known to survive, but his New Year gifts to Henry, presumably his own work, are documented as including a Calumny of Apelles (1538/39) and a Story of King Alexander (1540/41). He had an Italian colleague Bartolommeo Penni, brother of the much more distinguished Luca and Gianfrancesco, Raphael's right hand man. Both probably came to Henry from Cardinal Wolsey, as they first appear in the accounts just after Wolsey's fall in October 1529. "Toto" had been signed on in Florence in 1519 as an assistant to Pietro Torrigiano, who in fact left England for good later that year.
• Nicolas Lizard (or Lisory), a French artist, held the post from 1554 to 1571. Lizard had worked for the Office of the Revels since 1544.
• William Herne or Heron, 1572 to 1580
• George Gower 1581 until his death in 1596
• Leonard Fryer 1596-1607, about whom very little is known, joined by
• John de Critz the Elder from 1603 until he died in 1642 - see above, later joined by
• Robert Peake the Elder, on Fryer's death in 1607, he had been painter to the Prince of Wales since 1610. Peake tended to paint royal portraits while De Critz supervised a large department that painted and decorated royal residences and palaces. Peake died in 1619.
• John de Critz the Younger succeeded his father on his death in March 1642, having probably been doing most of the work for some years, as his father was over ninety when he died. John the Younger died in the fighting at Oxford soon after, by which stage Charles I was very short of palaces or barges to paint.
• William Dobson became the painter of the royal family and court during the difficult period of 1642–46, during the English Civil War. It is not recorded that he was officially appointed serjeant-painter, though Horace Walpole believed that he was. According to art historian Ellis Waterhouse, the only evidence for Dobson's appointment as serjeant-painter derives from a note by the eighteenth-century antiquarian William Oldys.
• Robert Streater or Streeter was appointed in 1660 at the English Restoration. He was essentially a topographical or landscape painter. Samuel Pepys noted him as "a very civil little man and lame but lives very handsomely". He painted the ceiling of the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford. He died in 1679.
• Robert Streeter, junr., son of the above.
• Thomas Highmore, to 1720. Appointed serjeant-painter to William III. Uncle of the painter Joseph Highmore.
• Sir James Thornhill, pupil of Thomas Highmore, from 1720; he was knighted the same year, and two years later became a Member of Parliament. He died in 1734.
• John Thornhill, son of Sir James, until shortly before his death in 1757.
• William Hogarth, brother-in-law of John Thornhill and son-in-law to Sir James, from 1757 until his death in 1764.
• Benjamin Wilson, succeeded William Hogarth upon his death in 1764. Dictionary of National Biography 1900, page 83
• James Stewart to 1782 or perhaps later, the last appointment.