John Hamilton Mortimer (Eastbourne 1740-1779 London)

Banditti (bandits) became familiar to English painting after the mid-1700s. Mortimer, however, was the first English artist to make these lively figures the central subjects of his work, and by the early 1770s the subject of banditti, which hearkened to the anti-academic and dramatic work of Salvator Rosa, had become incredibly popular to a wide group of his contemporaries.