James Pearson, Glass Painter
(d. 1805)
Glass Painter
From A Dictionary of Irish Artists 1913
Was born in Dublin, but learned his art in Bristol, and passed his whole art career in England. He executed a number of important works in glass, among them a window at Brazenose College, Oxford, of "Christ and the Four Evangelists," from cartoons by J. H. Mortimer, completed in 1776; "The Raising of the Brazen Serpent" for the great window in Salisbury Cathedral at the east end of the choir, done in 1781 also from designs by Mortimer, presented to the Cathedral by the Earl of Radnor; and a window over the altar in Aldersgate Street church. He copied in glass, 8 by 5 feet, James Barry's "Portrait of the Prince of Wales in the character of St. George," "in which the lead and iron was entirely concealed, and the whole appeared without joining or divisions as an entire plate of glass" ("Dublin Chronicle, 17th December, 1791). He also did a "Birth of Venus," after Barry; and the cartoons of Raphael "in the largest pieces of glass that ever passed through the fiery ordeal of the furnace" ("Dublin Chronicle," ut supra). Pearson exhibited at the Society of Artists between 1775 and 1777. He died in 1805. His wife, Eglinton Margaret, daughter of Samuel Patterson, book auctioneer in King Street, London, and originator of the Darien scheme, assisted him in his work and was a clever artist. She gained a reputation for her copies of Raphael's cartoons, of which she made two sets, and was engaged upon a third; but too close application to her work undermined her health, and she died on 14th February, 1823.