Francis Wheatley (painter)

He assisted in the decoration of Vauxhall, and aided John Hamilton Mortimer in painting a ceiling for Lord Melbourne at Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire.

[1] In the summer of 1779 he was in Dublin with Elizabeth, whom he passed off as his wife, and established himself there as a portrait-painter, executing, among other works, the best-known interior of the Irish House of Commons.

He produced small landscapes, portraits, or street scenes, and began to work in imitation of the French painter Jean-Baptiste Greuze.

He painted several subjects for Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, designed illustrations to Bell's edition of the poets, and practised to some small extent as an etcher and mezzotint-engraver.

[1] In 1774 Francis Wheatley married Rosamond Mann at St Paul, Covent Garden, London, England and that was thought to be the first marriage of the artist.

Francis junior was a beneficiary along with his sisters in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury will of Marianne Leigh, an unmarried sister of his mother Clara Maria, the will being written in 1843 and proved in 1851: "I leave my three beloved nieces Clara Maria Brettingham, Fanny Middleton and Caroline Adams £10 each and Frank Wheatley £5".

Frances (Fanny) Wheatley was married in Bangalore, Madras, India and that event was reported in the 16 July 1818 edition of the Caledonian Mercury, Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland thus: "At Madras, in September last, Captain Middleton, of the 22d light dragoons, to Frances Wheatly, second daughter of the late Francis Wheatley, Esq.