Andrew Plimer

United Kingdom · 1763–1837

Andrew Plimer was a British artist, whose brother was Nathaniel Plimer, also a painter of miniatures. Although originally stated in the Dictionary of National Biography to have been born in Bridgwater, Somerset, he has been more recently established to have been born in Wellington, Shropshire, where he was baptised on 29 December 1763, younger son of Nathaniel Plimer (born 1726), a clockmaker, and his wife, variously named as Mary Elizabeth or Eliza. He and older brother Nathaniel trained as clockmakers but both ran away from home and travelled for over two years in Wales and the west of England with a troupe of Gypsies. About 1781 they settled in London where Andrew took up work as a manservant to Richard Cosway, who later trained him in portrait painting. Plimer specialised in portrait miniatures.