Ozias humphrey biography of alberta

18th/19th-century English painter

Ozias Humphry (or Humphrey) RA (8 September 1742 – 9 March 1810)^[1] was a leading English painter of portrait miniatures, later oils and pastels, of the 18th century. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1791, and in 1792 he was appointed Portrait Painter in Crayons to the King (i.e. pastels).

Name

Humphry is the spelling Ozias himself used in his signature^[2] on the backing card of his miniature of Charlotte, Princess Royal (1769; Windsor Castle). This is also the spelling given in the catalogues of the annual exhibitions of the Royal Academy from 1779 to 1795.^[3] The different spelling in the far more common form of Humphrey may originally well be due to a mistake but was already in use during his own lifetime. It appears thus in the Royal Academy catalogues for the years 1796 and 1797^[3] as well as in the writings of Horace Walpole and John Thomas Smith.^{[4 Ozias humphrey biography of alberta brown.}