Sandby, PAUL, 'the father of the water-colour school,' was born in 1725 at Nottingham, where he and his brother Thomas, afterwards an architect and R.A., kept a school for some years. In 1741 Paul obtained a post in the military drawing department at the Tower of London; and in 1746-52 he was draftsman of the survey of the Scottish Highlands, which was one result of the rebellion of 1745. Settling at Windsor, he made some seventy-six drawings of Windsor and Eton; and he subsequently made a series of drawings of castles in
Wales. He was a member of the St Martin's Lane Academy, of the Incorporated Society of British Artists, and an original member of the Royal Academy, to whose exhibitions he regularly contributed water-colour landscapes. Appointed drawing-master to the Woolwich Military School, he became famous as a fashionable teacher of painting. His drawings of Scottish scenery were published as etchings by himself, his Welsh views in aquatint; and he was known also as a caricaturist. His water-colours are outlined with the pen, and only finished with colour; his perspective is good, and his architectural drawings admirable. But his landscapes are 'tinted imitations of nature.' He died 9th November 1809. Thomas, born 1721, died 1798. See W. Sandby, Thomas and Paul Sandby (1892).