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620 Painting John Hoppner (1758 — 1810) was at one time a fashion- able portrait painter and a rival of Sir Thomas Lawrence. Three of his portraits are in the National Gallery. Sir William Beechy (1753 — 1839) was very celebrated in his time as a portrait-painter. His picture of George III. at a Review, now at Hampton Court, gained him the honour of knighthood and the Royal Academicianship. William Blake (1757 — 1827), a painter, poet and en- graver, became a visionary enthusiast, and charmed many of his admirers with his wild imagination. John Opie (1761 — 1807), successful both with por- traits and historic subjects, is chiefly known by his Assas- sination of David Rizzio — a powerful conception, full of dramatic energy, but somewhat carelessly executed — and by his William Siddons in the National Gallery. George Morland (1763 — 1804) was a landscape and animal painter of great merit, whose works are faithful and happy renderings of simple English country scenes, such as the well-known Reckoning in the South Kensington Museum. Morland deserves special recognition as one of the first English painters to do for English peasants what was so ably done by the great Dutch masters for the lower classes of Holland ; but his hasty and often careless execution does not bear comparison with the careful finish of the masters of the Dutch school. His masterpiece, Inside of a Stable, is in the National Gallery. He was a dissipated man, and died in misery. Abraham Cooper (1787 — 1868) was one of the most successful animal painters of his day.