Читать книгу The Fatal Cup: Thomas Griffiths Wainewright and the strange deaths of his relations - John Price Williams - Страница 45

him towards the end. “I feel...round my neck the heart-breaking, feeble, kindly clasp of his fever-wasted arm - his faint whisper of entire trust in my friendship (though short)”.

As his literary efforts petered out, he turned much more to his painting, which flowered between 1821 and 1825, when he exhibited six paintings at the Royal Academy, then based in Somerset House in the Strand, where the summer exhibition was one of the highlights of the London social season.

In 1821 he showed the Romance from Undine, one of his favourite subjects. That year’s show was caricatured by Isaac and George Cruickshank in their etching “A shilling well laid out” which shows the fashionable crowds thronging the Great Room

The Royal Academy summer exhibitions at Somerset House were one of the social highlights of Georgian and Regency London. This Cruickshank caricature is of the 1821 exhibition in which Wainewright’s work was first shown.

British Museum

JOHN PRICE WILLIAMS

45