Royal Academy
Joseph Middleton Jopling (1831 – 10 December 1884) was an English watercolour painter. He was the son of Charles Jopling, a clerk in the Horse Guards, Whitehall, and Ann Middleton, and from the age of seventeen worked as a civil servant, like his father. Although apparently self-taught, he enjoyed early success as an artist, making his début at the Royal Academy exhibition in 1848. He showed regularly at the Academy for the rest of his life, mainly portraits and genre
Paintings that depict scenes of ordinary people going about their everyday lives. subjects.[1]
After a few years working in the Adjutant-General’s office, Jopling retired with a pension to take up painting full-time. He was an associate of the New Watercolour Society (later Institute of Painters in Water Colours) from 1859 until his resignation in 1876, and drew cartoons for the magazine Vanity Fair. On 24 January 1874 he married fellow artist, Louise Romer (1843–1933),[1] whose work rather overshadowed his own.[2]
Personal life
Jopling was an active member of the 3rd Middlesex Volunteers, and distinguished himself frequently in the National Rifle competitions at Wimbledon, winning the Queen’s Prize in 1861. During the last years of his life he suffered from epileptic fits, and died after a prolonged attack at his home in Chelsea on 10 December 1884, leaving behind his wife and their only son, Lindsay Millais Jopling, born in 1875.[1]
Jopling was a long-time friend of the painter John Everett Millais, one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood
Group of English artists formed in 1848 to counter what they saw as the corrupting influence of the late-Renaissance painter Raphael.. Millais’ son and biographer John Guille Millais said of Jopling that he was “a man of considerable talent whose progress in his profession was hindered only by his habitual laissez-faire and an inordinate love of amusement”.[1]
