John Linnell

If you were to ask most people today who were the two most famous landscape painters of Victorian Britain they would probably say Turner and Constable. Turner is certainly one, but the other is John Linnell. Prior to 1900, Constable’s work always played second fiddle to the highly charged romanticism of Linnell.

John Linnell exhibited at the Royal Academy from the age of 15 and despite initially becoming famous at a portraitist, it was as a brilliant painter of poetical landscapes that prompted both his great acclaim and the resentment of John Constable. Linnell’s confident and forthright nature - especially his readiness to ensure his wealthy patrons paid promptly for the paintings they purchased – never endeared him to the elite grandees of the Royal Academy, but it was malicious and false gossip spread by John Constable that probably help prevent Linnell’s election as a Royal Academician.

So successful and famous was Linnell that by the 1860s his exclusion was considered a public scandal, and a panicked Royal Academy repeatedly invited Linnell to put his name down for an associateship. He refused, and instead published a pamphlet attacking the Academy's exclusivity; a unique and brilliant man, as well as painter.

Nevertheless, Linnell was greatly esteemed during his lifetime by most of his peers, and as a landscape artist he was considered second only to JMW Turner. Upon his death in 1882, The Times obituary said 'A glory seems to have faded from the domain of British Art. England mourns John Linnell, the most powerful of landscape painters since Turner died'.

Between 1807 and 1881 John Linnell exhibited 177 paintings at the Royal Academy, and 92 at the British Institution. During his long career John Linnell was a patron and financial supporter of William Blake, Samuel Palmer and the young Pre Raphaelites.

Submitted by Academy Fine Paintings