Choose a mood and the room itself answers — the light cools or warms, the air changes pace, and only the works that carry that feeling step forward from the dark. Everything else recedes into shadow.
The Son of a House-Painter The lineage of Guy Head begins in Carlisle, where the son of a house-painter first encounters the tools of the trade. He does not remain a laborer of walls. Under the instruction of Captain John Bernard Gilpin, the boy learns the discipline of drawing. This technical foundation leads him to the Royal Academy, a move that places his developing hand in the orbit of Sir Joshua Reynolds. By 1779, the transition fr
om student to exhibitor is complete as he presents a portrait of a gentleman to the Academy, followed by another the following year. The scope of his output expands through the 1780s. He moves between the formal halls of the Royal Academy and the exhibitions of the Society of Artists at Spring Gardens. His subjects vary from the specific to the theatrical, including a portrait of Henderson the actor as Richard III and a landscape steep…