The date of birth of Paul Sandby is not known, it is only certain that he was baptized in 1731 in Nottingham. In 1745 he moved to London and followed his brother Thomas (1721 - 1798) in the military drawing department in the Tower of London. After the rebellion of the Jacobites in 1745, Sandby assisted in the military survey of the new road to Fort George and the north and west of the Highlands. He was even promoted to chief designer of the company. During the six years he worked on the survey, Sandby began to paint his first watercolored pictures of bridges, fortifications and the Scottish landscape.
After leaving the station with the survey crew, Sandby spent time with his brother, who had been appointed deputy ranger at Windsor Great Park. Sandby painted pictures of Windsor - castle, city, landscape. The works of that time made him a sought after artist, who was praised by Thomas Gainsborough (1727 - 1788) as the best landscape painter of his time.
Sandby also made numerous etchings of his own works and those of other artists. These include the twelve etchings of the series The Cries of London from 1760. The unusually wide range of Sandby's work also includes caricatures, which he published anonymously in 1753/54 and then sporadically from 1762 under his name. In 1760 Sandby also exhibited for the first time at the Society of Artists, which he regularly repeated over the next eight years, until 1768 by Sandby and 27 other artists, the Royal Academy was founded. In the following years, Sandby made several trips to Wales, making more paintings of land and people.
© Meisterdrucke