Forrester, James
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- Forrester, James
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(1730 - 76) of Dublin, landscape painter, etcher and dealer; studied under Robert West at Dublin Soc. School of Drawing 1747; awarded premiums from Dublin Soc. 1747, 1750 and 1st prize for drawing in 1752; exh. RA 1771 (from Rome), exh. SA, Dublin, 1765; d. Rome.
1755 - 76 Rome (1755 - d. 31 Jan. 1776) with visit to Ancona (11 - 29 Jun. 1769) through Bassano, Caprarola, Narni, Terni, Foligno, Spoleto, Loreto, Seravalle, Macerata, Valcimara, Assisi and Perugia
Forrester spent the last twenty years of his life in Rome, where he practised with some success as a landscape painter. He arrived in Rome in 17551 and by Easter he was living in the Strada della Croce with the painters Robert Crone and Jacob Ennis; in 1758 he lived near the Piazza di Spagna in the same house as the French artist L-G. Blanchet. By 1763 he had moved to the Strada Felice with George Dance and the amateur artist Peter Stephens; from 1765 to 1773 he lived on the Via Babuino (sharing with Joseph Nollekens until 1770), and from 1774 until his death he was with Father Thorpe on the Corso.2
Although, with his compatriots Hugh Dean and Solomon Delane, he was accused by Philipp Hackert of slavishly aping the styles of Gaspard Poussin and Claude instead of referring directly to nature,3 Forrester's sombre and slowly executed4 paintings found ready purchasers among British travellers in Rome. Two moonlit scenes dated 1766 were bought by William, Earl Fitzwilliam, in 1767. Other landscapes were acquired by the Duke of Gloucester (a moonlit scene, commissioned in 1772 and unfinished in 1774), Lord Bute, Lord Arundell, Lord Shelburne and Colonel Ward. Eight drawings by Forrester of Italian scenes were bought by the 1st Earl of Portarlington (as mentioned by Thomas Jenkins in December 1769).5 Forrester also acted as a drawing master (for example, to Sir Watkin Williams Wynn in November and December 17686). Occasionally Forrester practised as an etcher: in 1760, as well as contributing two of his own drawings, Forrester had etched fifteen plates after Peter Stephens for the latter's 150 Views of Italy [1762], see Stephens.
Jonathan Skelton and Father Thorpe were his particular friends in Rome. Skelton wrote on 20 August 1758 that there were 'some very good young men' among the young British artists studying in Rome, of whom one 'is my very particular Friend, his name is Forrester, I have learn'd many excellent things from him in private Life. He studies Painting in my own way and is very ingenious'. Following Skelton's early death in January 1759, Forrester was among those who helped to settle his affairs.7
His friendship with Father Thorpe began some ten years later. In 1771 Thorpe explained to his patron Lord Arundell 'I have many & great obligations to Forrester who has laid by every other work to Serve me in your commissions, & in the present circumstances of the Jesuits in Rome I should have been hindered from serving you if I could not have had his honest assistance with assurance of secrecy'8 (see Father John Thorpe). It also appears that Forrester had been receiving an annuity from Lord Arundell.9
In June 1769 Forrester made a three-week excursion from Rome across Umbria to Ancona with his artist friends George Robertson and Joseph Nollekens (together with Richard and Esther Dalton, Joseph Rose, [Gavin?] Hamilton and the unidentified Miss Robinson and De Angelis). Forrester wrote a descriptive and practical narrative account of their journey which was subsequently published by Robertson as A Tour Made in Italy in the Year 1769 [1787]; the volume includes a final section, 'Miscellaneous Observations Useful to Painters', compiled by Robertson from material collected by Forrester, describing some of the practices of the painters Benjamin West, Thomas Jenkins, Mengs and others.
Forrester appears occasionally to have acted as a dealer. On 22 June 1771 he applied to export forty-four paintings (five of them described as 'modern', which may have been by his own hand).(10) An undated letter from Timothy Collopy refers to Forrester's activities as a dealer; he owned a version of the Descent from the Cross by Lo Spagnoletto, and Collopy added (somewhat doubtfully) that 'Mr Dashwood [probably Thomas Dashwood] has been told that you have been set up in the dealing way by Mr Jenkins in opposition to some others'.(11)
Forrester died in Rome at the age of forty-five on 31 January 1776,12 and his memorial was recorded in 1869 in the Church of S.Maria del Popolo.(13)
1. Hayward List, 10. 2. AVR SA, S.Lorenzo in Lucina, S.Andrea delle Fratte, S.Maria del Popolo. 3. Goethe, Philipp Hackert, [1811], 327. 4. Thorpe letters MSS (15 Dec. 1770*). 5. See N. Figgis, Irish Arts Review, 4iv[1987]:63. 6. Wynn disbursements MSS (7 Jan. 1769). 7. Skelton 1960, 58. 8. Thorpe letters MSS (25 May 1771). 9. Ibid. (13 Apr. 1776).
10. Bertolotti, 2:269. 11. Thorpe letters MSS (c.Feb. 1773). 12. AVR lm, S.Maria del Popolo, xii, 121. 13. V. Forcella, Iscrizioni delle Chiese e D'Altri Edifici di Roma, 1:396, no.1512.
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