James Pearson (painter)

[2] Pearson and his wife came to public attention through works shown at the Society of Artists of Great Britain in its exhibitions in 1775–77.

Although the couple usually worked on separate pieces they occasionally collaborated, as on their stained glass copy after Carlo Maratti’s Salutation, shown in 1775.

[4] It was there, in 1781, that Pearson showed his spectacular Brazen Serpent in the Wilderness, after a design by John Hamilton Mortimer, before its installation in the east window of Salisbury Cathedral, where it still remains.

[4] A critic in the Morning Chronicle admired the way in which "the lead and iron are intirely concealed, so as not to interrupt the outline either of the figures or drapery, by which the whole appears as one entire plate of glass, without joining or division".

[4] His patrons included Horace Walpole, for whom he executed a window of a cobbler whistling to a bird in a cage for the refectory at Strawberry Hill, and William Beckford, for whom he made a portrait of Thomas Becket for Fonthill.