A contemporary of the Scoresbys was John Jackson, R.A.  He was the son of a tailor of Lastingham and was born at that very remote village on the 31st May 1778.  As a boy he showed a predilection for portrait-painting in the sketches he made of his companions, although his father discouraged his efforts in that direction, not wishing to lose his boy’s services as an apprentice to the tailoring business.  When he was about nineteen he had the good fortune to be introduced to Lord Mulgrave who brought him to the notice of the Earl of Carlisle and soon after we find him studying the great collection of pictures at Castle Howard.

Jackson’s first attempt at a painting in oils was a copy of a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds lent to him by Sir George Beaumont.  Lastingham was unable to supply him with proper materials, but he managed to obtain some very rough paints and brushes from the village house-painter and glazier, and with these crude materials made such an admirable copy that Sir George or Lord Mulgrave or both together advised him to go to London, promising him L50 a year during the time that he was working as a student.  From this time his progress was rapid.  In 1804 he exhibited at the Royal Academy for the first time, in 1815 he was elected an associate and in 1817 he received the full honours of the Academy.  Although he was a Wesleyan Methodist, Jackson was broad-minded in his religious opinions, for he made a copy of Correggio’s “Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane” (with the figures increased to life size) for Lastingham parish church.  The picture is now on the north side of the apse but its original position was above the communion table and in order to give the picture sufficient space and light the apse of Transitional Norman date was very roughly treated.  Jackson contributed L50 towards the alterations, but the restoration at a later date has fortunately wiped out these disfigurements.

Another boy destined to become a tailor was Francis Nicholson who was born at Pickering in 1753.  His father, who was a weaver, gave young Francis a good education in Pickering, and wisely abandoning the tailoring idea the boy was sent to Scarborough for instruction from an artist.  After three years he returned to Pickering and occupied himself in painting portraits and pictures of horses, dogs and game for local patrons.  Then followed a period of study in London, where Nicholson made great progress and eventually began to devote himself to water colours, for which in his long life he was justly famous, well deserving the name generally given to him as the “Father of water colour painting.”

William Marshall, the agricultural expert and writer to whom we owe the establishment of the Board of Agriculture was baptised at Sinnington on 28th July 1745.  He was in his own words “born a farmer” and used to say that he could trace his blood through the veins of agriculturists for upwards of four hundred years.  After fourteen years in the West Indies, he undertook, at the age of twenty-nine, the management of a farm near Croydon in Surrey.  It was there, in 1778, that he wrote his first book.  He showed the manuscript to Dr Johnson who objected to certain passages sanctioning work on Sundays in harvest time, so Marshall omitted them.  His greatest work was “A General Survey, from personal experience, observation and enquiry, of the Rural Economy of England.”