John Glover POWS

1767 - 1849

John Glover was born at Houghton-on-the-Hill in Leicestershire, England, the son of farmers, who reputedly ate mustard regularly to keep himself healthy. By 1794, Glover was practising as a drawing-master in Lichfield, helped to establish himself by the Countess of Harrington. He moved to London in 1805, becoming a member of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours and President in 1807. He was very successful there and at the Royal Academy as a painter of Italianate romantic landscapes of Britain, including Scotland and the Lake District, where he lived for a time near Ullswater, and he became known as the English Claude. A number of his classicising landscapes were in beautifully, and minutely rendered monochrome washes, as if painted using a Claude glass, a common device used to reflect and compose the landscape. In later life, Glover emigrated to Van Diemen’s Land and became a pastoralist during the early colonial period. He has been dubbed the father of Australian landscape painting.