BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY: CONTAINING AN HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL ACCOUNT OF THE LIVES AND WRITINGS OF THE MOST EMINENT PERSONS IN EVERY NATION; PARTICULARLY THE BRITISH AND IRISH; FROM THE EARLIEST ACCOUNTS TO THE PRESENT TIME. A NEW EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED BY ALEXANDER CHALMERS, F. S. A. VOL. XVIII. LONDON: PRINTED FOR J. NICHOLS AND SON; F. C. AND J. RIVINGTON; T. PAYNE; A NEW AND GENERAL BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY. HOARE OARE (WILLIAM), an ingenious and amiable English artist, was born about the year 1707, at Eye, near Ipswich, in Suffolk. His father was possessed of considerable property, holding a farm of large extent in his own hands. William shewing very early a disposition to study, was sent to a school at Faringdon in Berkshire, where the master enjoyed a high reputation for classical learning. The pupil, eagerly availed himself of every opportunity of improvement, and in the course of a few years attained such a degree of proficiency as to assist his master occasionally in the tuition of the other scholars. To these acquirements he added no indifferent skill in drawing, which was also taught in the school; and he soon distinguished himself above his competitors in the prize exhibitions, which took place once a year. Indulging the bent of his mind to this art, he solicited and obtained his father's permission to follow his studies in painting with a professional view. For this purpose, after having completed the school courses with great credit to himself, he was removed to London, where he was placed under the care of Grisoni, an Italian painter of history, the best, and perhaps the only one, which that time afforded. Grisoni, however, was at the best a very poor painter, and the example of his works was little calculated to produce eminence in his scholar. But he was a man of sound judgment and benevolent disposition, and it is probable that the sense of his own insufficiency induced him to persuade young Williant to seek a more satisfactory guidance in the pursuit to which he devoted himself so earnestly. The schools of Italy appeared to him the place to which a learner should resort for the means of accomplishment in his art. William VOL. XVIII. B |