(1719 - 1804), painter; pupil of Ramsay 1739; exh. FS 1761 - 2; held an office in the Privy Purse and later gave up painting.
1744 - 8 Turin (Dec. 1744), Florence, Rome (1745 - )
In December 1744 Mathias was in Turin, where the British resident, Villettes, who had known him since childhood, recommended him to Horace Mann in Florence: 'this young man has a place in one of our public offices; but as he has a particular genius and a strong Passion for painting, he is come over into Italy, with the leave of his Superiors, in order to perfect himself in that Art by the Abode of two or three years'.1 Also from Turin, the Sardinian foreign minister, the Marchese d'Ormea, recommended Mathias to Cardinal Albani in Rome.2 On 25 January Mann introduced him to John Clephane in Rome: 'he designs to fix some time in Rome to study painting & has been advised to put himself under Battoni as the best master'.3 In 1745 he had rooms on the Monte Giordano in Rome in the same house as Batoni (the only British subject recorded as residing with him),4 and at one stage he was the neighbour of the French landscape painter Joseph Vernet,5 from whom he commissioned seventeen paintings, nine for himself, the remainder for friends.6 Mathias later said that he had gone to Italy in 1745 and returned in 1748.7
1. SP 105/283, f.409 (2 Dec. 1744). 2. AST Lettere Ministri Roma, 214 (Albani, 31 Jan. 1745). 3. Rose of Kilravock mss, note by F. Russell. 4. Clark/Bowron, p.236. 5. HMC Ailesbury, 276. 6. Lagrange, 329 - 30, 360, 333, 336, 384, 392 - 3; and see 437, 441, 391. 7. Farington Diary (14 Jun. 1795).