Author: Chandler, John Westbrooke
Biography:
CHANDLER, John Westbrooke (c. 1763-1807: ODNB)
He was probably born on 1 May 1763, the natural son of Francis Greville, earl of Warwick, and an unknown mother. Nothing is known of his life and education before he enrolled in the Royal Academy school in 1784. (All of Francis Greville’s legitimate children were amateur artists and one, George Greville, became a noted art collector.) Early in his career Chandler specialised in portraits and he exhibited these at the Royal Academy from 1787 to 1791. By 1791 he was living at Warwick castle where his brother, George Greville, 2nd earl of Warwick, was his patron at least until his bankruptcy in the early 1800s. In the late 1790s Chandler painted a portrait of William Godwin (q.v.), now at Tate Britain. The preface to his Sir Hubert (1800) is addressed from Golden Square, near Regent Street, London; the dedicatory poem is to George Greville. Chandler was rumoured to have moved to Scotland and to have died there in about 1804 but there is evidence he lived in Stroud, Gloucestershire, where he painted landscapes, and notices in the Staffordshire Advertiser and Morning Advertiser give the year of his death in Stafford as 1807. Chandler is believed to have written a popular broadside ballad, “The Beggar Girl.” (ODNB 8 Nov. 2023; Paul Hawkins Fisher, Notes and Recollections of Stroud, Gloucestershire [1871]; Morning Advertiser 15 July 1807; Adam Busiakiewicz, “John Westbrooke Chandler (1763/4-1807): With a Checklist of Known Works,” The British Art Journal 20 [2019], 82-89) SR