Abraham Wivell
English painter (1786-1849)
Abraham Wivell (1786 – 29 March 1849) was a British portrait painter, writer and pioneer of fire protection, credited with inventing the first effective fire escape system. After working as a hairdresser, Wivell established himself as a society portrait painter before concentrating his efforts on fire safety measures.
Art
Born in Marylebone, London, Wivell was forced to work from an early age after his father died leaving his mother in poverty. He worked on a farm from the age of six, and did various jobs in London as a child. In 1799, he was apprenticed to a wigmaker, which at the time was part of normal hairdressing. After completing his seven-year apprenticeship, he set up his own hairdressing salon.
Initially an amateur artist, he advertised his skills by showing portrait miniatures he had painted in his hairdressing shop window. By this means he gained commissions for portrait drawings and paintings, aided by the support of Joseph Nollekens and James Northcote. A drawing he created of Caroline of Brunswick, wife of King George IV, appealed to the queen herself, who gave Wivell a personal sitting. His link to the queen soon helped him achieve fame as an artist.
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This entry incorporates text from “Abraham Wivell” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.