Francis Cotes, Portrait Painter
(b. about 1725, d. 1770.)
Portrait Painter
From A Dictionary of Irish Artists 1913
Was born in London about 1725. His father, Robert Cotes, an apothecary in Cork Street, Burlington Gardens, had been Sheriff of the city of Galway in 1711; and Mayor in 1716 and 1717, but as a result of some charges preferred against him in the Irish House of Commons, he left Ireland and settled in London.* He married in London Elizabeth, daughter of Francis Lynn, Secretary of the Royal Assurance Co. Francis Cotes was a pupil of George Knapton, the portrait painter, and became eminent for his portraits in crayons inspired by the works of Rosalba, and for his portraits in oils. He exhibited forty-eight works with the Society of Artists, beginning in 1760, and was one of the original members of the Royal Academy, to which he contributed fifteen pictures. He died on the 19th July, 1770, at Richmond, where he was buried. Cotes as a portrait painter, both in crayons and oils, was one of the first of his time. Not a few of his pictures have been and still are sold as the work of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and his merits as an artist, after a long period of neglect, have begun to be better appreciated. A list of his portraits is given in the "Gentleman's Magazine" for 1786.
*See "The case of Robert Cotes, Esq., Mayor, and John Staunton, Esq., Recorder, of Galway, on behalf of themselves and the majority of the Corporation of Galway, in answer to a petition preferred to the Honourable House of Commons by Thomas Simcockes and Edmund Barrett, Aldermen." Dublin: printed in the year MDCCXVII.
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