Joseph Highmore:70 Drawings

Joseph Highmore (1692 – 1780) was an English portrait and historical painter, illustrator and author who was stylistically associated with the English Rococo. Highmore’s style was affected by French Rococo artists, such as Philippe Mercier and Hubert Gravelot, who were established in London during the 1730s and 1740s. But their influence is traceable less in Highmore’s portraits than in his genre illustrations. In 1744 he painted a series of 12 illustrations for Samuel Richardson’s novel Pamela, which suggest comparison with William Hogarth’s Marriage à la Mode. Highmore’s work is less satirical and more refined than Hogarth’s, however. Joseph Highmore also wrote a book on Brook Taylor's theory of perspective (1763), and his collection of moral essays (1766) included a consideration of why artists were not the only proper judges of art.