Joseph Farrington

Farrington was an English landscape painter and topographical draughtsman and is chiefly remembered for his detailed diaries, which provide an invaluable insight into the London art world of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Farrington was born in 1741, and died in 1821. He was influential in attracting tourists to the English Lake District in the early nineteenth century, as one of the group of artists which descended on the area at the time in search of the picturesque. His views of the Lakes were engraved and published in book form in 1789 and 1816. Farrington was part of a group of Romantic artists and writers whose portrayal of the wild and rugged landscape transformed public opinion towards the area. Whilst previously the region had been looked upon as a barren and inhospitable wilderness, it was now portrayed as an area of outstanding beauty, and the crowds duly followed.

Joseph Farrington Images:
The Fishing Match