ANDREW PLIMER

This unusually large portrait of a lady by Andrew Plimer shows a woman dressed in fashionable,
but impractical white. Although this outfit gave a relaxed appearance, the loose draping of the fabric – also highly risque – was a nod to the Neoclassicism currently in vogue in the later 1790s.

Plimer received his artistic training at the hands of Richard Cosway, who may also have funded
Plimer’s lessons in draughtsmanship with an engraver, John Hall of Soho. Plimer established himself as an independent artist in 1785, and in the following year began to exhibit at the Royal Academy. He married Joanna Louisa Knight (1774-1861) in 1801, with whom he had four
daughters and a son who died in infancy. Plimer gave lessons to his sister-in-law, Mary Ann Knight (1776-1851), who became a successful artist in her own right. The most successful and active years of his career were between 1787 and 1810, when he lived in Golden Square, Soho.

He left London later that decade, however, travelling to Exeter, where he lived until 1818 when
he returned to London. Work, however, did not come easily to Plimer in this period and he left
the city again in the 1820s to travel the country, having exhibited his last works at the Royal Academy in 1819. Moving through Devon, Cornwall, Dorset, Wales and Scotland, Plimer continued to work but increasingly struggled to find clients. These difficulties were exacerbated by his waning eyesight which meant that around 1830 he was finally forced to give up work for good. When he died in Brighton in 1837, his obituaries remembered him as a great artist, but of the distant past.