John Astley (24 June 1724 – 14 November 1787) was an English portrait painter and amateur architect, known for his "patronage among a vast circle of fashion" as well as a fortune acquired through marriage.
"[7] Several jaundiced contemporary accounts of Astley's character exist, notably a lengthy observation by John Williams, (aka Anthony Pasquin), who wrote: "He thought that every advantage in civil society was compounded in women and wine: and, acting up to this principal of bliss, he gave his body to Euphrosyne, and his intellects to madness.
He had a haram and a bath at the top of his house, replete with every enticement and blandishment to awaken desire; and thus lived, jocund and thoughtless, until his nerves were unstrung by age; when his spirits decayed with his animal powers, and he sighed and drooped into eternity!
[9] He later went to study in Rome and Florence in 1747 (one of his teachers was Pompeo Batoni), before establishing his career during several years in Dublin, Ireland, and afterwards settling in England.
[13] To Sir Horace Mann, 1st Baronet, an Astley admirer and subject, Horace Walpole wrote of a visit to one of Astley's exhibitions in 1752, declaring, "I confess myself a little prejudiced, for he has drawn the whole Pigwigginhood: but he has got too much into the style of the four thousand English painters about town, and is so intolerable as to work for money, not for fame: in short, he is not such a Rubens, as in your head".
[23] Another source states that Astley, although now rich, continued to accept commissions and charged a steep "20 guineas, the usual price".