John Cleveley the Elder
British artist (c.1712-1777)
John Cleveley the Elder (c. 1712 – 21 May 1777) was an English painter who specialised in marine art.
Life
Cleveley was born in Southwark. He was not from an artistic background, and his father intended him to follow the family trade of joinery, so he set up as a carpenter or shipwright in around 1742 at the Deptford Dockyard. Continuing his work in that area throughout his life (indeed, he is referred to as ‘carpenter belonging to His Majesty’s Ship Victory, in the pay of His M[ajest]ys Navy’ in letters of administration granted by the Admiralty in 1778 to his widow, probably when she was first fitting out), from about 1745 he also worked as a painter, mostly ship portraits, dockyard scenes of shipbuilding and launches, and some other marine views. They combined his knowledge of shipbuilding with accurate architectural and topographical detail. Apparently mostly self-taught, it is possible that dockyard ship-painters also gave him some training in this area. He toured East Anglia, and produced some paintings from notes made on that trip.
Works
Sixth-Rate on the Stocks, now in the National Maritime Museum, London.
The Royal Yacht Caroline (National Maritime Museum, London).
HMS Royal George off Deptford at the launch of HMS Cambridge, 1755, (though the former ship was only launched a year later, and would have been of too deep a draught to appear where it does) (National Maritime Museum, London).
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “John Cleveley the Elder” as british artist (c.1712-1777). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6226369. VIAF identifies the subject as 95747191. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1712, 1777, 1742 and 1778.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Cleveley the Elder” 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.