Richard Earlom

His natural faculty for art appears to have been first called into exercise by his admiration for the lord mayor's state coach, which had just been decorated by Giovanni Battista Cipriani.

[2] In 1765, Earlom was employed by Alderman Boydell, a publisher and promoter of the fine arts, to make a series of drawings from the pictures at Houghton Hall; and these he engraved in mezzotint.

Among his historical and figure subjects are Agrippina, after Benjamin West; Love in Bondage, after Guido Reni; the Royal Academy, the Embassy of Hyderbeck to meet Lord Cornwallis, Colonel Mordant's Cock Fight and a Tiger Hunt, all after Johan Zoffany, and Lord Heathfield, after Sir Joshua Reynolds.

The prints used etching for Claude's pen lines, and mezzotint for the ink washes, giving a good impression of the originals.

They were recommended by drawing teachers as models for copying, and influenced the technique of English watercolour artists in particular, for example Francis Towne.