Possible reference for I Peel / Liner (uncertain of source!)
John Peel, Naylors Yard, Silver St, Golden Square, London 1819, 7 Naylors Yard 1820-1834, 17 Golden Square 1832-1843, 17 & 18 Golden Square 1844-1858, 12 Marlborough Row as carver and gilder 1849-1851. Artist, picture liner and restorer, picture framemaker and picture dealer, from 1849 also carver and gilder. In a discussion of picture lining in 1841 it was stated that ‘Peel of Golden-square has obtained quite a European reputation for the extraordinary skill with which this necessary and often very difficult process is effected (‘Pictures and Picture-dealers’, New Monthly Magazine and Universal Register, 1841, p.447, accessed through Google Book Search). Subsequently, in 1845 in Robert White’s translation of François Xavier de Burtin’s Treatise on the Knowledge Necessary to Amateurs in Pictures, it was claimed by White that ‘No person can surpass the London liners, one of whom, Mr. John Peel, of Golden Square, is too well known for the excellence of his work to need any encomium here’. John Peel (c.1785-1858) was born in Cumberland according to the 1851 census. By 1820, ‘Peel’ was active in lining pictures in London, working for John Linnell as the artist’s account books show, in which role he continued until 1827 or later, obtaining large canvases for him in September 1822 (Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 20 & 21-2000). Peel was first listed in London directories in 1822 as ‘picture liner, stretching and picture frame maker’ (Underhill), sometimes appearing in directories as an artist in the mid-1830s. He showed Gainsborough’s The Morning Walk (National Gallery) on his premises at 17 Golden Square before the picture was unsuccessfully offered for sale at Foster’s auction room (The Times 4 August 1834). In the records of the Sun Fire office he appears at 17 Golden Square as a picture dealer in 1838 (London Metropolitan Archives, Sun Fire Office policy registers, 559/1281621). His relationship with Joseph Peel, who traded as a picture dealer and restorer at 194 Strand from 1834 until he was made bankrupt in 1841 (London Gazette 17 December 1841), remains to be established; in 1841 Joseph Peel, whether the same man or not, was listed as a picture restorer at 4 Newall’s Buildings in Manchester. In censuses, John Peel was recorded as an artist in Golden Square in 1841 and as a picture restorer at 17 Golden Square in 1851, age 64, with his wife Mary. He held an account with the artists’ suppliers, Roberson, from 17 Golden Square in 1850 (Woodcock 1997). John Peel of Golden Square and Hayling Island, Hants and late of Cockermouth, Cumberland, died in 1858 at the age of 73 (The Times 1 June 1858), leaving effects worth under £2000. His collection of paintings was sold by Phillips on 6 July 1858. He was followed at 17 Golden Square by James Partington and William Turner, trading as Partington & Co (qv), picture liners, cleaners and restorers. Restoration work: Peel’s stamp is found impressed on the stretchers of pictures he lined, usually taking the form, I. PEEL LINER/ 17, GOLDEN SQRE, as found in oval format on Samuel Drummond’s Francis Place (National Portrait Gallery). Peel repaired Leighton's Cimabue’s Madonna carried in procession, 1856 (Oliver Millar, The Victorian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, 1992, p.161). Whether for the collector, William Holwell Carr or for the National Gallery itself, Peel lined Gaspard Dughet’s Landscape with a Shepherd and his Flock and its pair, Landscape with Buildings in Tivoli, both of which bear his stamp (National Gallery, see Wine 2001 pp.152, 156). Several pictures at the Wallace Collection were treated by Peel, from their stretcher stamps, I. PEEL/ LINER or I. PEEL LINER, including Jan Hackaert’s The Wooded Banks of a River, Canaletto’s Venice: the Canale di S.Chiara and the Canaletto studio Venice: a Regatta on the Grand Canal (Ingamells 1985 p.233, 242, Ingamells 1992 p.133). John Peel was in correspondence with the Daubuz family concerning the purchase and cleaning of pictures, c.1849-53 (Cornwall Record Office, Daubuz Family Papers, X230/34).
