John Lindsay Lucas
English, 1807–1874
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John Lindsay Lucas was an English portrait painter.
Born in London on 4 July 1807, he was son of William Lucas, from a King's Lynn family, originally in the Royal Navy, then a writer and journalist; his mother was a Miss Callcott. He was apprenticed to Samuel William Reynolds, the mezzotint engraver, where Samuel Cousins was his fellow-pupil. At the end of his apprenticeship he set up as a portrait-painter.
Lucas was a member of the Clipstone Street academy, where he worked with William Etty and other artists. One of his earliest patrons and sitters was Henry Milton, who introduced him to Mary Russell Mitford, whose portrait he painted, and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1829. He then substituted a portrait of her father. A further portrait of her, he kept in his studio, and it was purchased after his death for the National Portrait Gallery.
One of the fashionable portrait-painters of his time, Lucas had a successful career. He died at his residence in St John's Wood, London, on 30 April 1874. Works in his posses
