b Fenton Park, Staffs, 11 March 1818;
d London, 22 Oct 1872.
English painter. He lived in Rome from 1845. When his father’s Staffordshire pottery firm failed in 1848, his allowance terminated and he turned seriously to painting. In the early 1850s he met Giovanni Costa and Frederic Leighton; Costa moulded Mason’s style, and Leighton provided life-long financial support. He was also influenced by the work of the French artists that he saw at the Paris Exposition Universelle (1855), particularly Ernest Hébert, Jules Breton and Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps. The best of Mason’s early works, such as Ploughing in the Campagna (1857; Liverpool, Walker A.G.), record picturesque scenes with an unpretentious sunlit naturalism.


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