James Northcote (1746-1831),

• Was a British painter born in Plymouth.
• Northcote was apprenticed to his father, Samuel Northcote, a watchmaker.
• In 1769 he left his father's work and set up as a portrait painter.
• Four years later he went to London and was admitted as a pupil into the studio and house of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
• At the same time he attended the Royal Academy schools.
• In 1777  he went to study in Italy.
• On his return to England, three years later, he revisited his native county, then settled in London, where John Opie and Henry Fuseli were his rivals.
• He was elected associate of the Academy in 1786, and full academician in the following spring.
• Among the productions of Northcote's later years are the Entombment and the Agony in the Garden, besides many portraits, and several animal subjects, such as Leopards, Dog and Heron, and Lion.
• Northcote's works number about 2000, and he made a fortune of £40,000.
• He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1787.
• He became a corresponding member, living abroad, of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands in 1809.
• He sponsored the admission in 1829 of Thomas Sewell Robins to the Royal Academy Schools. 
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