Henry thomas alken biography of abraham

English painter

Henry Thomas Alken (12 October 1785 – 7 April 1851) was an English painter and engraver chiefly known as a caricaturist and illustrator of sporting subjects and coaching scenes.^[1] His most prolific period of painting and drawing occurred between 1816 and 1831.

Life

Alken was born on 12 October 1785 in Soho, Westminster, and baptised on 6 November at St James's Church, Piccadilly. He was the third son of Samuel Alken, a sporting artist. Two of his brothers were George and Samuel Alken the Younger, also an artist. In 1789, the Alken family moved from Soho to 2, Francis Street East, Bedford Square.

Young Henry first studied under his father and then with the miniature painter John Thomas Barber Beaumont (1774–1841), also known as J. T. Barber.^[2] In 1801, Alken sent a miniature portrait of Miss Gubbins to the Royal Academy Exhibition. He exhibited a second miniature at the Royal Academy before abandoning miniature