Francis Wheatley

The British painter Francis Wheatley, son of a tailor, received formal training in painting, including at the Royal Academy of Arts. He received his first awards at an early age and developed throughout his life into one of Britain's most famous portrait and landscape painters. His exciting private life temporarily puts his artistic work in the background. His ambitious career was thrown off course when he ran away with the wife of a contemporary artist. He flees with her from the urban environment of London to rural Ireland. The social conventions of the time sharply condemn such behaviour.