Joseph Farington

He was an active member of the Academy and sat on several important committees, including the one which determined where artworks would be hung during the exhibitions.

[1] Farington resided for a time in the Lake District and between 1776 and 1780 he made numerous drawings of the landscapes of the region and maintained a list describing what he believed should be their intended order.

[1] According to Evelyn Newby's biographical article in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, "[i]t is difficult to make a real appraisal of his paintings as they are scattered in many private and public collections, and rarely appear in art sales.

"[1] However, she writes that "Farington's real forte lay in the careful, accurate topographical drawings which he prepared for the folios of engravings of British views which found a ready market among tourists confined to Britain by unrest abroad.

In the early 19th century, he participated in Cadell and Davies modernisation of the illustrated atlas Britannia depicta,[5] which ran to six volumes of the projected whole; to it he contributed topographical Views in Cornwall (1814) and other views; for the unpublished seventh volume, depicting Devon, Farington's drawings were engraved but never published,[6] and William Byrne's Magna Britannia., a project that became so costly that it was never completed.

As Newby explains, "[w]ith its emphasis on biography and anecdote it is an invaluable source of information on artists of the period and of the internal workings of the Royal Academy.

"[1] Farington knew the new industrialists in the Midlands, he understood the internal workings of the East India Company, his wife's family gave him access to information on government policy, he attended the major political trials of the day, such as Warren Hastings's failed impeachment, and he followed William Wilberforce's anti-slavery campaign.