James Wadmore

His son, on leaving a school near Greta Bridge, Yorkshire, obtained a place in the same office, which he resigned to become a land-surveyor.

He began early in life to collect pictures, and his first purchase of importance was Richard Westall's Hagar and Ishmael.

In 1815 he inherited a fortune from an uncle, and moved to 40 Chapel Street, Paddington, where he collected pictures by modern English artists, Turner, Wilkie, Webster and others, and also by old masters including St. John in the Wilderness then attributed to Leonardo da Vinci.

He formed a good collection of English watercolours, as well as manuscripts, prints and books including two proof copies of John Curtis's British Entomology.

The English collection contained Vincent's masterpiece, Greenwich Hospital from the River, with other works by the same painter, and three important Turners - Cologne, Dieppe Harbour and Guardship at the Nore - which realised over five thousand guineas.