Cooke sc.

HUMPHREY REPTON, ESQ.

THIS ingenious artist, who has acquired high celebrity as an architect and landscape gardener, was born in 1752, at Bury St. Edmund's. His father gave him a good education, and early imbued him with a taste for those beauties of nature which he afterwards so diligently studied, and so successfully imitated and improved in the exercise of his profession. At an early period of life he settled in the county of Norfolk, where he formed an intimacy with the late right hon. William Windham. When this able, but eccentric statesman, was appointed secretary of state for Ireland, in 1783, Mr. Repton offered to accompany him to that kingdom, and accordingly was placed in an official situation, "which was rather honourable than lucrative." The subsequent change of the ministry occasioned the recall of the secretary, and caused also the dismissal of his friend. Mr. Repton being now under the necessity, from the increase of his family, of seeking some permanent occupation, determined upon attempting to turn his taste for drawing and architecture to a profitable account. With this view, he removed to the neighbourhood of London, and soon succeeded in obtaining admirers and employers. About the year 1791, he was engaged by lord Darnley, to undertake some improvements in the old palace of Cobham Hall, and in the surrounding grounds, and acquitted himself in a manner highly creditable to his talents, and much to the

Cooke sc.

HUMPHREY REPTON, ESQ.

97L

50L

20L

(These charts are for monitor calibration only)

Yale Center for British Art, 2010