Occupation educator Name Francis Cary | Died January 6, 1880 Education Henry Sass | |
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Known for running a school for artists | ||
Francis Stephen Cary (10 May 1808 – 6 January 1880) was an English painter and art teacher who succeeded Henry Sass as the head of Sass's art academy. Among his subjects was a portrait of Charles and Mary Lamb.
Life and work
Cary was born in Kingsbury in Warwickshire, a younger son of the Rev. Henry Francis Cary, (author, and translator of Dante) who was the local vicar. His brother Henry became a judge in New South Wales in Australia.
Cary was educated at home, chiefly by his father, before becoming a pupil of Henry Sass at the latter's well-known art academy in Bloomsbury, London. He later became a student at the Royal Academy and for a short time painted in the studio of Sir Thomas Lawrence. Lawrence died before he could have become a pupil.
In 1829, Cary studied in Paris and afterwards in Italy and in the Art School at Munich. In 1833, 1834 and 1836, he accompanied his father on a foreign tour. In the following years he exhibited several pictures at the Society of British Artists and other venues.
In 1841, he married Louisa, daughter of Charles Allen Philipps of St. Bride's Hill, Pembrokeshire. The following year he took over the management of Sass's Art School in Bloomsbury, founded by Henry Sass on the model of the Italian Bolognese School of painting. - the school at which he had previously studied. Cary exhibited 35 paintings at The Royal Academy between 1837 and 1876 and was a candidate in the Westminster Hall competitions for the decoration of the Houses of Parliament, held in 1844 and 1847.
In 1874, Cary retired to Abinger in Surrey, where he died on 6 January 1880. He left no family. In the early part of his life, through his father's social connections, he enjoyed much of the literary society of that day. He painted an interesting portrait of Charles and Mary Lamb. commissioned by John Mathew Gutch.