John Flower

Who was John Flower?

John Flower was an English landscape and architectural artist known to locals as "the Leicester artist".

Flower was born in Leicester, the son of John Flower, a wool comber, and his wife Mary, whose family had for generations owned the Castle Mill on the River Soar. The family became reduced in circumstances after the early death of his father and in 1806 he was apprenticed to a framework knitter, Benjamin Withers.

However, Flower's talent for drawing was noticed by a local doctor who gave him art lessons, and he was eventually taken under the wing of Mary Linwood who arranged for him to study art in London with Peter de Wint for a year.

On returning to Leicester he became a professional art teacher and landscape artist. In 1813, he married Francis Clark - they had 3 children, but only one, Elizabeth, survived to adulthood. By 1819, he was a member of the Unitarian church. He lived at several addresses in Leicester, eventually moving, in 1851, to a substantial house in Upper Regent Street designed by himself and architect Henry Goddard. He remained there for the rest of his life.