Richard Evans (portrait painter)

[1] When young he was a close friend of the Birmingham-born artist David Cox, who would lend ink landscape drawings to Evans, who was short of money, so that he could make copies to sell.

[6] In the same year he went to Haiti where he became head of the new school of drawing and painting set up by King Henri Christophe at his palace of Sans-Souci.

In 1821 he was in Rome, making copies of Raphael's arabesque decorations in the Vatican loggia for John Nash's gallery in Regent Street[10][11] and the following year he returned there, this time in the company of his friend William Etty, another a former pupil of Thomas Lawrence.

[16] They travelled separately for a while, Evans basing himself in Rome, but also visiting Milan, while Etty spent seven months in Venice.

[18] Evans and Etty were reunited in Florence in the summer of 1823 [19] and after spending two months in Venice finally left for England in October.

[20] While In Rome Evans experimented with fresco-painting, and on leaving the city gave one of his attempts – depicting Ganymede feeding the Eagle – to the servant who cleaned his studio.

Years afterwards he found it hanging in the South Kensington Museum, displayed as a genuine antique fresco from a tomb in the neighbourhood of Rome.