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Name
Opie, John RA
Birth date
1761
Death date
1807
Biography
Opie was born in St Agnes, Cornwall, son of the village carpenter. He was befriended by Dr John Wolcot (1738-1819), the ‘Peter Pindar’ who wrote the satiric “Lyric Odes to the Royal Academicians”. Wolcot brought Opie to London in 1781 declaring him to be ‘the Cornish Wonder.’ He quickly achieved a name for himself and was never short of portrait commissions. He exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy from 1782 until the year of his death and was elected a full member in 1788 at the age of 27. Waterhouse wrote that ‘he lacked the graces, but was one of the ablest English painters of his time.’