page_title: John Thirtle
section_title: Marriage
hierarchical_section_title: John Thirtle / Life / Return to Norwich and subsequent career / Marriage
context_page_description: John Thirtle was an English watercolour artist. Born in Norwich, where he lived for most of his life, Thirtle was a leading member of the Norwich School of painters, whose paintings of Norwich are considered to be outstanding in the history of watercolour painting.
  Thirtle was apprenticed to a London frame maker before returning home to Norwich. There he set up a successful frame-making business, whilst continuing to paint as well as working as a drawing-master, a printseller and a looking glass maker. In 1812 he married Elizabeth Miles, the sister-in-law of John Sell Cotman. He suffered from tuberculosis for much of his life, and his worsening health reduced his artistic output up to his death in 1839. He produced relatively little: his unpublished manuscript Treatise on Watercolour was probably for his own use, and he exhibited fewer than a hundred works of art. He was a member of the Norwich Society of Artists and for a time its vice-president, but in 1816 he was one of a number of artists who seceded from the Society to form a separate association, which dissolved after only three years.
context_section_description: On 26 October 1812 he married Elizabeth Miles of Felbrigg, whose father was "of some means", and whose sister Ann had married John Sell Cotman three years previously. John and Elizabeth were married at St. Saviour's, the church in Norwich where he had been baptised 35 years previously. The marriage produced a close association with Cotman that influenced Thirtle's artistic style. The two artists probably worked together when Cotman was producing drawings of the interior of Norwich Cathedral in around 1808, as similar drawings by Thirtle from this time have survived. The two Miles sisters were themselves amateur painters, having shown their work at the Norwich Society of Artists exhibition of 1811. There were probably no children produced from the marriage.
caption: Portrait of the Artist's wife, Elizabeth Miles (1816) Norfolk Museums Collections
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