(1737 - 94), painter, s. of George Carter of Colchester; mercer, Covent Garden; exh. SA 1772 - 4, RA 1775 - 6; Russia c.1780; exh. Pall Mall 1785; India 1786 - 8.
1774 - 5 [dep. England Aug. 1774] Genoa (by 8 Oct.), Leghorn, Pisa, Florence, Rome (26 Oct. 1774 - Jul. 1775), Venice (26 Jul.) [England by 1776]
Encouraged by the success of his subject pictures at the SA in 1773,1 Carter set out for Rome at the end of August 1774 to further his career. He travelled with J.S. Copley, who described him as 'a Gentleman who is about forty lately ingaged in painting [who] has the french and Italian langage',2 but they were not good companions. Allan Cunningham later described Carter as 'a captious, cross-grained, and self-conceited person, who kept a regular journal of his tour, in which he remorselessly set down the smallest trifle that could bear a construction unfavourable to the American's character'.3 They separated on arrival in Rome on 26 October 1774, Copley then describing Carter as 'a sort of snail which crawled over a man in his sleep, and left its slime and no more'.4 In Rome Carter met several other artists, including Romney, Humphry and Peters;5 he sent two pictures from Rome to the RA in 1775 (when his presence in Rome was noted by Hayward).6 He was conceivably the Carter who arrived in Venice with a 'Mr Bertis'[?] on 26 July 1775.7 In 1776 Carter gave a London address in the RA catalogue. Carter's diary of his grand tour is in a private collection.8
1. Humphry corr.MSS, hu/2/2 (H. Spicer, 9 Jan. 1774). 2. Copley, Letters, 227. 3. A. Cunningham, British Painters, [1837], 5:167. 4. Ibid., 169 - 70. 5. Romney 1830, 116 - 19. 6. Hayward List, 15, 19. 7. ASV IS 760. 8 See Tate, winter 1996, 24.