Francis Wheatley (1747–1801),

• Was an English portrait and landscape painter.
• Wheatley was born at Wild Court, Covent Garden, London.
• He studied at William Shipley's drawing school and the Royal Academy.
• He won several prizes from the Society of Arts.
• He assisted in the decoration of Vauxhall, and aided John Hamilton Mortimer in painting a ceiling for Lord Melbourne at Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire.

• He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1778, built up a good practice and was praised by the critics.

• But he fell in with extravagant company and was forced to flee his creditors: so he eloped to Ireland with Elizabeth Gresse, wife of a fellow artist John Alexander Gresse. 

• In the summer of 1779 he was in Dublin with Elizabeth, whom he passed off as his wife.
• The circumstances of his private life were revealed, and he returned to London.

• He produced small landscapes, portraits, or street scenes, and began to work in imitation of the French painter Jean-Baptiste Greuze.
• He was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1790, and an academician in the following year.

• In 1787 he married one of his most popular models, the young Clara Maria Leigh, who was also an artist.

• They had a daughter, also Clara Maria, born in 1788.

• After Wheatley died, his widow married the Irish actor Alexander Pope.

• Mrs Pope she was known as a painter of flowers and portraits.
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