Northcote, James
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- Northcote, James
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(1746 - 1831), painter; RA schools and assistant to Reynolds 1771 - 5; exh. RA 1773 - 1828, BI 1806 - 31; settled in London 1781; ARA 1786; RA 1787.
1777 - 80 [dep. Plymouth 31 Mar. 1777] Genoa, Turin (May), Rome (23 May 1777 - Jun. 1779) with visit to Naples (Apr. 1779); Florence (Jul. - Aug. 1779), Bologna (Oct., three weeks), Parma (two months), Modena, Venice (Jan. - Mar. 1780), Padua, Verona, Mantua [Margate, 2 May 1780]
By the end of 1776, after he had left Reynolds's studio, Northcote recalled that 'the greatest object with me was to visit Italy as soon as possible, in hopes to make myself more able in my profession by seeing and studying the works of ancient masters'.1 He left England in March 1777 and travelled through France. He spent a week in Genoa, where he met Hugh Barron (another ex-pupil of Reynolds), who gave him an introduction to Jacob More in Rome. When Northcote reached Rome on 23 May, Jacob More received him and found him lodgings recently vacated by David Allan on the Strada della Croce, on the third floor 'as none but servants and the meaner sort inhabit the first or second'. In February 1779 he ('Najohet') moved to apartments in the Palazzo Zuccaro, 'the pleasantest part of all Rome' with James Nevay, Alexander Day and the French painter Antoine Lemoine;2 he noticed that his rooms were those used by Joshua Reynolds (13 Feb. 1779).
There were a number of English artists then in Rome, besides the antiquaries, of whom Northcote met Thomas Jenkins, 'a very great man here', within a day of his arrival. He met Maria Hadfield, Thomas Banks, Day and Fuseli, while the painter Prince Hoare became his particular friend. Northcote also spent some time with the young French painter Jacques-Louis David, and on 4 February 1778 he told his brother how, with Day and Prince Hoare, he had visited Mengs who 'lives in vast state, is very conceited and haughty' and had several houses in Rome and Florence. Later, on 11 September, he wrote of the contempt Mengs and Batoni had for each other, adding that Mengs 'is by much more liberal and magnificent'. Northcote also commented on Mengs's self-portrait hanging next to Reynolds's in the Uffizi, 'finished so that you can almost tell the hairs of his beard and Sir Joshua's appears as if it were painted with his fingers'.
Northcote 'employed himself chiefly in making sketches or copying parts from such pictures as I thought would be most useful memorandums.' He spent some time drawing in the evenings at the French Academy, and in September 1778 he was copying Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, having earlier been apprehensive about working there since he heard that 'the Pope cannot suffer the smell of oil colours'. He painted 'nothing original at that time, except a few portraits of my particular friends, and one of myself', which Bencivenni Pelli, Director of the Uffizi, had requested from him in the summer of 1778.3 Northcote left three self-portraits in Italy: that for the Uffizi dated 1778, the second painted in Florence in the summer of 1779 (Uffizi) for the Accademia del Disegno (he was elected a member on 27 September 1778), and the third painted in Venice in January - February 1780 for the Accademia Etrusca at Cortona (to which he was elected on 9 August 1779). Northcote was also elected to the Accademia dei Forti at Rome on 4 November 1779. He regretted to his brother that it was impossible to make money by his painting because, he explained, 'those cursed antiquaries' controlled patronage and Italian artists 'work for the meanest trifle' (4 Feb. 1778).
On Christmas Day 1778 Northcote dined with Jenkins 'with a great many young painters' (26 Dec. 1778), and in April 1779 he went to Naples for a month with his English artist friends. He finally left Rome, after two years, in June 1779 with Prince Hoare. They spent 'about three months' in Florence, where they met the singer Anna Storace. On 13 July Northcote applied for permission to copy a Rubens Venus in the Uffizi,4 and he recalled being asked in August by the museum's Director for his place of birth and age, 'which I did as well as I can remember', and whether he used 'the same colours as Sir Joshua, for he had been informed that in a few years Reynolds's picture (presented in 1775) would not be fit to be seen' (2 Aug. 1779). They then spent 'near three weeks' in Bologna, looking at Carraccis and inspecting the body of St Catherine of Bologna (preserved seated in a gilt chair). Northcote copied Correggio's Magdalene in Parma, where they spent a further two months, before going to Venice for the Carnival. At the beginning of March 1780 they left for Padua, Verona, Mantua and thence to Augsburg. On 2 May 1780 they reached Margate.
1. See Northcote Memorials, 117 - 89, and his letters in Whitley, 2:307 - 15 (dates in brackets). Northcote's Autobiographical Memoir is Add.4779 - 3. 2. AVR sa. S.Andrea delle Fratte. 3. See Firenze e l'Inghilterra, exh. cat., Florence [1971], nos.61 - 2. 4. Borroni 1987, 136.