• Born: 7 Oct 1761, Boston MA
• Christened: 11 Oct 1761, Boston MA
• Died: 25 May 1831, London England

  General notes:

Artist
While well known for his portraits of British aristocracy, he was born and raised in Boston, where he studied briefly with portraitists John Singleton Copley and Gilbert Stuart. Traveling to England for further artistic training, he joined the studio of Benjamin West, an American expatriate who had become a leading painter in London, and in 1782 became the first American to enroll in the school of the Royal Academy. When he opened his own studio two years later, his first major commissions were portraits of Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, the John Adams family, and other American officials in London. By the end of the decade he had been named the official portraitist to the Duke of York and to the Duke of Clarence, the king's second and third sons; he also painted portraits of the Prince of Wales and King George III.