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William Parry - one of the most interesting and important, but least known, of 18th century British artists and of course the painter of Omai, Banks, Solander etc. William Parry was a son of John Parry - the greatest Welsh harpist of the 18th century. He trained as a portrait painter under Joshua Reynolds before returning to his native north Wales in the late 1760's. After a productive period painting portraits for various Welsh gentry families he travelled to Italy where he spent five years studying and copying paintings by Raphael and Correggio for his chief patron Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, 4th baronet of Wynnstay. Following his return to Britain in 1775, Parry divided his life between London, where he was a regular exhibitor at the newly-formed Royal Academy, and Wales, where, uniquely among Welsh painters of the period, he had established a healthy practice. Many of Parry's Welsh clients were members of &‘The Cycle of the White Rose'; the Jacobite society founded by the Williams Wynns in 1710. William Parry was a familiar figure in the artistic community of late 18th century London. Most crucially, he was also well known to many of the major gentry families of north Wales, especially those with connections to the Williams Wynns. Yet his reputation fell into obscurity after his death and he has never before been the subject of in-depth academic study. Parry's output as an artist appears to have been relatively small. Many of his paintings and drawings have been lost and the majority of those that have survived have been attributed to other important British artists of the period such as Wheatley, Opie and Wilson. A number of his most important surviving works have been re-identified in the course of researching this book and are published for the first time.

Papers of William Parry Colborne.

Papers of William Parry Colborne.