Author: TAYLOR, John
Biography:
TAYLOR, John (1735-1806: ODNB)
He was born on 12 Aug. 1735 and baptised on 24 Aug. at Christ Church, Philadelphia, the second son of British-born Colonel Abraham Taylor (1702-72), merchant adventurer and sometime collector of customs, and Philadelphia Gordon (1709-93), daughter of Patrick Gordon, deputy governor of Philadelphia, who had married in 1733. Almost nothing is known of his education or training as a painter. His parents moved to Bath, England around 1762. He married Rebecca Luther (1741-1821) on 4 June 1763 at Clifton, Bristol. They had three sons and four daughters. In 1766 he and his father purchased a house at 22 The Circus, Bath. (Thomas Gainsborough lived at no. 17; Richard Graves (q.v.) wrote encomiums to Taylor and Gainsborough in Euphrosyne (1780), 1: 130-2.) Tobias Smollett thought him “the best landscape-painter now living” (The Expedition of Humphry Clinker [1771], 1: 111-12). On 16 May 1783, Benjamin Franklin wrote to the Dutch painter Jan Ingenhousz, that “our Geniuses all go to Europe. In England at present the best History-Painter, West; the best Portrait-Painter, Copley; and the best Landscape-Painter, Taylor at Bath, are all Americans.” David Garrick praised his paintings in his poem “Upon seeing Mr. Taylor’s pictures of Bath” (Poetical Works [1785], 2: 516). James Boswell recorded going to see his paintings in Bath in 1776 as did Hester Thrale in 1780. He later lived variously at Hot Wells, Bristol, and Grosvenor Square, London. His daughter Harriet Taylor (1768-1794) died on 15 Nov. 1794 at Bath and is the subject of several memorial poems, gathered in the volume listed here, which was printed in only twenty signed copies for private circulation. He died at his residence, 4 Duke Street, Bath, on 8 Nov. 1806. His wife Rebecca died on 16 July 1821 at Hot Wells, Bristol. They were both buried at Holy Trinity, Newton St. Loe, near Bath. Twenty-five of his landscape paintings were sold at Christie’s in March 1840 and five landscapes by him are in the Royal Collection. (ODNB 10 Jan. 2024; ancestry.co.uk 10 Jan. 2024; findmypast.co.uk 10 Jan. 2024; Burke [1838], 4: 8-9; Bath Chronicle 13 Nov. 1806; Oracle and Daily Advertiser 17 Nov. 1806; Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Founders Online, founders.archive.gov) AA