He showed a precocious talent for drawing and mathematics, and by the age of twelve, he had mastered Euclid and opened an evening school for poor children where he taught reading, writing, and arithmetic.

[3] Opie's artistic abilities eventually came to the attention of local physician and satirist, Dr John Wolcot (Peter Pindar), who visited him at the sawmill where he was working in 1775.

Opie's residence at "Orange Court", Castle Street, Leicester Fields, was said to be "crowded with rank and fashion every day" and he was the talk of the town.

[13] Although socially reticent,[14] Opie was part of the "Strawberry Hill Set", the Gothick villa owned by Horace Walpole who would play host to the Blue Stockings Society.

[17] In response to this he began to work on improving his technique, while at the same time seeking to supplement his early education by the study of Latin, French and English literature, and to polish his provincial manners by mixing in cultivated and learned circles.

[5][10] In 1786 he exhibited his first important historical subject, the Assassination of James I, and in the following year the Murder of Rizzio, a work whose merit was recognized by his immediate election as associate of the Royal Academy, of which he became a full member in 1788.

[5][10][19] Opie painted many notable men and women including Mary Wollstonecraft, Samuel Johnson,[20] Francesco Bartolozzi,[21] John Bannister, Joseph Munden,[22] Charles James Fox,[23] William Betty,[24] Edmund Burke, John Crome, James Northcote, Henry Fuseli, Thomas Girtin, Robert Southey, Samuel Parr, Elizabeth Inchbald and Mary Shelley; 508 portraits in all, mostly in oil, and 252 other pictures.

[5] Opie died in April 1807, aged 45, at his home in Berners Street, and was buried at St Paul's Cathedral, in the crypt next to Joshua Reynolds, as he had wished.

[30] Royal etiquete allowed for Prince William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester to follow the Opie funeral procession in his carriages to St Paul's Cathedral.