Julius Caesar Ibbetson

More about Julius Caesar Ibbetson

Julius Caesar Ibbetson was born at Farnley Moor, nr. Leeds, in the midwinter of 1759. His unusual Christian names were given to him because of his Caesarean birth. He specialized in fairly small landscapes with figures and animals, and his style has been characterised as ‘more natural than de Loutherbourg's, and more civilized than Morland's’. In 1787–8 he was draughtsman on a British mission to China, during which he visited Java. Ibbetson lived for many years in the Lake District and these years were amongst his most productive – at least half of some 36 works he showed at the Royal Academy featured local subjects. He worked in watercolour as well as oil and also made etchings. In 1803 he published a manual on painting. Ibbetson is said to have been given to dissipation, but his work did not obviously suffer because of this. He died at  Masham, Yorkshire, in 1817.