William Hoare RA (c. 1707 - 1792)

RA Collection: People and Organisations

The portrait painter William Hoare grew up in Suffolk and Berkshire before moving to London to join the studio of Italian painter Giuseppe Grisoni (1699 – 1769). Hoare accompanied his master when he returned to Italy in 1728. He spent ten years working in the studio of the history painter Francesco Imperiali (1679 – 1740) in Rome, forming friendships with young British aristocrats on the Grand Tour who would later become his patrons.

Hoare returned to England in the late 1730s. Despite making a pastel portrait of Frederick, Prince of Wales (1707 – 1751), Hoare struggled to make a living in London and soon moved to Bath, where his brother Prince (d.1769) was a sculptor. There was high demand for portraits in Bath, and Hoare’s paintings were popular in fashionable society. He produced portraits of politicians who visited Bath such as William Pitt the Elder (1707 – 1778) and Henry Pelham (1694 – 1754). He also received commissions for buildings in Bath including the Mineral Water Hospital (now the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases, which still holds a fine collection of Hoare’s works) and the Octagon Chapel.

Hoare remained in close contact with the London art world, and from 1761 exhibited with the Society of Artists, a key institution in promoting public interest in the arts. In 1769, despite initially declining to join, Hoare became a Founding Member of the Royal Academy after a personal request from King George III (1738 – 1820). He died in Bath in 1792.