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John Butts (died 1764) was an Irish landscape painter.

Life

Butts was born and educated in Cork, Ireland, He painted landscapes somewhat in the style of Claude Lorrain, [1] and worked as an art teacher, his pupils in Cork including James Barry.[2] In around 1757, at the age of about 30, he moved to Dublin, where he continued to work as a landscape and figure painter, and was also employed as a scene-painter at the Crow Street Theatre.[3]

He spent much of his life in poverty.[3] Barry, in a letter written soon after Butts' death, described him as "an unfortunate man, who with all his merit never met with any thing but cares and misery, which I may say hunted him into the very grave. His cast of genius was very much that of Claude's, whom he resembles without any imitation more than anybody that I know of".[4]

He died in 1764.[3]

References

Sources

• Strickland, Walter S. (1913). A Dictionary of Irish Artists (National Library of Ireland online ed.).

Attribution:

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Bryan, Michael (1886). "Butts, John". In Graves, Robert Edmund (ed.). Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers (A–K). Vol. I (3rd ed.). London: George Bell & Sons.

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