page_title: George Vincent (painter)
section_title: Boyhood
hierarchical_section_title: George Vincent (painter) / Life / Boyhood
caption_attribution_description: English: View from the Upper Close of Norwich Cathedral
context_page_description: George Vincent was an English landscape artist. He is considered to be one of the most talented of the Norwich School of painters, who worked or lived in Norwich during all or part of their working lives from around 1800 to 1880. Vincent's work was founded on the style of John Crome, also of the Norwich School, and the Dutch School of landscape painting.
  The son of a weaver, he was educated at Norwich Grammar School and afterwards apprenticed to Crome. From 1811 until 1831 he exhibited annually at the Norwich Society of Artists, showing more than 100 pictures, mostly of Norfolk landscapes and marine works. He exhibited at the Royal Academy, the British Institution, and elsewhere. By 1818 he had relocated to London, marrying the supposedly wealthy daughter of a surgeon in 1821. He was successful in obtaining the patronage of wealthy clients, but then began to struggle financially. The purchase of a grand house in London, combined with a tendency to drink, exacerbated his financial problems, and in 1824 he was incarcerated in the Fleet Prison for debt.
context_section_description: Little is known of George Vincent's childhood. He was born at Norwich in Norfolk, the son of James Vincent and Mary Freeman, and was baptised by his parents on 27 June 1796, at St John the Baptist's Church, Timberhill, Norwich. Two years earlier another son named George had died in infancy. James Vincent was a weaver who manufactured shawls. His first wife Mary died in 1800. On his mother's side George was a cousin of Sir William Jackson Hooker, a renowned botanical illustrator who in 1841 became the Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. James Vincent lived at one time in St. Clement's Church Alley, close to the River Wensum in the city.
  According to an 1885 article from the Eastern Daily Press, the young Vincent enjoyed drawing with charcoal. He was educated at Norwich Grammar School, where he became good friends with John Berney Crome and his brother Frederick, along with James Stark, whose father, a dyer, would have known Vincent's father through his business connections.
caption: Norwich Grammar School, where several members of the Norwich School of painters, including George Vincent, were educated.
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