Thomas Worlidge

Best known as an innovative etcher, Thomas Worlidge also painted in oils. By the early 1740s his working life was divided between London and Bath. He received his earliest artistic training from the Genoese émigré Alessandro Grimaldi (whose daughter, Arabella, became his first wife) and from the engraver Louis-Philippe Boitard. Worlidge's imitations of Rembrandt in etching and dry-point were highly popular and sold well. Sir Edward Astley, briefly the owner of Arthur Pond's famous collection of Rembrandt prints, appears to have been his major patron, and Worlidge's etching of 1762, Sir Edward Astley as Jan Six, after Rembrandt. He died on 23 September 1766 at his home in Hammersmith.