(d. 1759), artist; pupil of George Lambert; his earliest dated work is from 1754, when he was probably the servant of Abp. Thomas Herring in Croydon and Canterbury; d. Rome.
1757 - 9 [Portsmouth, Sep. 1757] Leghorn, Florence, Rome (29 Dec. 1757 - d. 19 Jan. 1759)
Skelton arrived in Rome on 29 December 1757 having sailed from Portsmouth to Leghorn, a voyage not without incident during French hostilities. His nine (monthly) letters from Rome to his patron William Herring (a cousin of Archbishop Herring) afford interesting details of the artist's life.1 His lodgings on the Trinita dei Monte had once been Joseph Vernet's and commanded extensive views; he needed at least £60 a year and, since there was little patronage available, he proposed sending home his drawings for sale 'every 6 or 8 Months'. By the end of June he had sold nothing and he enquired anxiously of Herring whether he had sold any in England. Some of the drawings he brought with him from England had been admired in Florence and Rome, and he had been told that he would find himself 'the best painter in Landscape here', even though there were 'many Young People' then studying landscape in Rome. Skelton worked out of doors and tried to follow his patron's advice - 'to follow Nature strictly'. After three months he had been told he was 'much altered' in his manner; he had then six paintings in hand, one of a wood 'having something new in it' according to his fellow painters. He proposed to copy a Vernet in the Accademia di S.Luca, but he could never obtain access to a Poussin [Gaspard Dughet] or a Claude.
He was distracted in his work by the consequences of his warm friendship with Andrew Lumisden, and it was supposed that Skelton too was a Jacobite, a slander which perplexed him. John, Lord Brudenell, was put off from visiting him in June but, reassured by Nathaniel Dance of Skelton's loyalty, he later called with Henry Lyte and Peter Stephens, pronouncing Skelton's manner 'very like Natures Manner'. Skelton was much excited by Tivoli, 'ye only school where our two most celebrated Landscape Painters Claude and Gasper studied'. He first went there in April and then returned for three months in July to paint 'with a body in Water-colours after Nature', staying in rooms in the Villa d'Este. On his return to Rome, George James said his work was quite free of his master, George Lambert's, manner2 '& he paints Italian fine weather very like & he improves in his taste of composition. the thing he is most wanting in is figures ... he proposes repairing this want by the help of the academy this winter ... the only thing I have to say against Mr Skelton is that he starves himself'.
By the end of November Skelton had completed three large drawings, and at the end of December he was making figure sketches in the Academy and had finished views of the Ponte Molle and of Tivoli. Sir Wyndham Knatchbull-Wyndham and Richard Dalton had called on him, but still he could not sell - 'people seem at present to think of purchasing nothing in the painting way but Portraits, the War makes them very saving of their Mony'. Then suddenly on 19 January Skelton died in Rome after a violent fever. The contents of his studio confirmed what George James then described as his 'miserable way of living for the poor creature absolutely denied himself the necesseries of live' (see George James). On 6 April a case of his pictures addressed to Dr Hay was forwarded fom Leghorn.
1. See Skelton 1960. 2. Mylne letters MSS (11 Feb. 1758).