About John Linnell (painter)
John Linnell (16 June 1792 – 20 January 1882) was an English engraver, portrait painter, and landscape painter. He was a naturalist and a rival to the artist John Constable. He had a taste for Northern European art of the Renaissance, particularly Albrecht Dürer. He also associated with the amateur artist Edward Thomas Daniell, and with William Blake, to whom he introduced the painter and writer Samuel Palmer and others of the Ancients. == Life and work == John Linnell was born in Bloomsbury, London on 16 June 1792, where his father was a carver and gilder. He was in contact with artists from an early age, and by the age of ten was drawing and selling portraits in chalk and pencil. His first art teacher was the American-born artist Benjamin West, and he spent a year in the house of the painter John Varley, where William Hunt and William Mulready were also pupils, and made the acquaintance of Shelley, Godwin and others. In 1805 he was admitted to study at the Royal Academy, where he obtained medals for drawing, modelling and sculpture. He was trained as an engraver, and executed a transcript of Varley's "Burial of Saul." In 1808, the 16-year-old Linnell moved into Mulready's house, whose wife had accused him of infidelity with both other women and boys. Linnell's association with Mulready may have caused the breakup of Mulready's marriage.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.