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Lot Essay
Born in Aberdeen, John Phillip came to London and entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1837. He soon became a member of The Clique, a coterie of Royal Academy students who saw themselves, in time-honoured fashion, overturning academic conventions. Other members included William Powell Frith, Henry Nelson O'Neill, Augustus Egg, and Richard Dadd. Phillip was to marry Dadd's sister in 1846.
In 1839, Phillip returned to Aberdeen, where he remained for the next seven years. His early pictures were genre scenes in the Wilkie tradition, but in 1851 he paid the first of three visits to Spain, where he began to specialise in the series of Spanish subjects which were to earn him the soubriquet 'Spanish' Phillip. He died in 1867 at the age of fifty.
In 1839, Phillip returned to Aberdeen, where he remained for the next seven years. His early pictures were genre scenes in the Wilkie tradition, but in 1851 he paid the first of three visits to Spain, where he began to specialise in the series of Spanish subjects which were to earn him the soubriquet 'Spanish' Phillip. He died in 1867 at the age of fifty.