Highmore was born on 13 June 1692, in London, the third son of Edward Highmore, a
coal merchant, and nephew of
Thomas Highmore,
Serjeant Painter to
William III. He displayed early his ability in art but was discouraged by his family from taking up art professionally, and began a legal training instead. At the ending of a
clerkship at the age of 17 (during which he continued to attend a drawing academy run by
Godfrey Kneller and lectures on anatomy by
William Cheselden), he abandoned his law career and started to work as a portrait painter in London. From 1720, he attended the St Martin's Lane Academy, where he was exposed to contemporary French art. On the revival of the
Order of the Bath in 1725, he was selected to paint the knights in full costume. In 1732, he visited the
Low Countries to study Rubens and van Dyck's works. Two years later he visited
Paris where he studied works in public and private collections. In the next few years he received patronage from the royal family, but during the 1740s he began to cater more to middle-class clients who appreciated his ability to capture a likeness in a single sitting and to create an informal composition. In 1762, Highmore sold the contents of his studio and retired to Canterbury, where he lived with his daughter and son-in-law. He subsequently published art historical and critical articles, including on Rubens' ceiling decorations in the
Banqueting House, Whitehall, London, colour theory and
Brook Taylor's theory of perspective. Highmore died on 3 March 1780, aged 87, in Canterbury. He was buried in sheep's wool (to comply with a
17th-century statute to encourage the wool trade) in the fifth bay of the south aisle of
Canterbury Cathedral. His wife
Susanna Highmore (née Hiller) was a poet, though little of her work was published. His son
Anthony Highmore (1719–99) was an artist, one of whose 15 children,
Anthony Highmore Jnr. (1758–1829), became a writer on legal affairs and a social activist. Joseph Highmore: 1692:1780 volumes I and II a PhD dissertation, 1975, by Alison Shepherd Lewis is at Harvard University, Fogg Museum, stack number HU 90 10796B ==Work==