About John Linnell (painter)
John Linnell 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. 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.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.