John Simpson

The recorded working language is English. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are portrait and genre. Places of work recorded in the authority are Portugal and London. Work by John Simpson is recorded in the collections of Art Institute of Chicago, Tate, National Galleries Scotland, Royal Museums Greenwich and National Portrait Gallery.

• Name — John Simpson • Birth Name — John Philip Simpson • Born — 1782 • Birthplace — London, England • Died — 1847 1782 • Occupation — Painter • Notable Works — The Captive Slave (1827) John Philip Simpson (1782 – 1847) was an English painter who specialised in portrait painting.

Simpson was born in London in 1782 and was a student at the Royal Academy and for some years an assistant to Sir Thomas Lawrence, PRA. He obtained some success as a portrait-painter, and eventually a very large practice. From 1807 to his death he was a frequent exhibitor at the Royal Academy and other exhibitions. In 1834 he received a commission to go to Portugal, and painted portraits at Lisbon, where he was appointed painter to the queen of Portugal.

Late 19th-century biographer Sidney Lee was of the opinion that Simpson was "rather a skillful portraitist than an artist and that his portraits are not without power, but lack instinct and penetration." One of John Burnet, the engraver, is in the National Portrait Gallery. William IV and many notable persons in his day sat to him. Simpson died at Carlisle House, Soho, in 1847. Simpson left two sons, who practised as artists, of whom Charles Simpson died young in 1848, having contributed a few landscapes to the London exhibitions. The other, Philip Simpson, was a student at the Royal Academy, and obtained some success for small domestic subjects from 1824 to 1857. One of these, called ‘I will fight,’ exhibited in the Suffolk Street Gallery in 1824, is in the Townshend collection at the South Kensington Museum. • Illustration — The Captive Slave

• Illustration — Peter Heywood, 1822 • Illustration — Frederick Marryat, 1826 • Illustration — Clarkson Frederick Stanfield, 1829 • Illustration — Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, 1832 • Illustration — Herbert Taylor, 1833 • Illustration — Pedro I of Brazil, 1834 • Illustration — Maria II of Portugal, 1837 • Illustration — Charles Napier, 1841

Simpson's painting The Captive Slave was acquired by the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008 — it had not been displayed to the public for 180 years. Reviewer Martin Postle concludes: