Short answers, pulled from the story.
Joseph Farington (the 21st of November 1747 - the 30th of December 1821) was an English landscape painter and Royal Academician who is most valued today for the diary he kept from 1793 until his death. Historians rely on its sixteen volumes as a primary source for the London art world and the internal workings of the Royal Academy.
The Farington Diary is a daily record Farington kept from the 13th of July 1793 until his death in 1821, ultimately filling sixteen handwritten volumes. James Greig edited and published the diary in book form between 1922 and 1928; a second sixteen-volume edition followed between 1978 and 1984.
Farington joined the Royal Academy when it was founded in 1769. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1783 and a full Royal Academician in 1785, contributing works to its exhibitions every year until 1801.
Farington published Views of the Lakes of Cumberland and Westmorland in 1785 and a two-volume History of the River Thames with 76 aquatints in 1794. He also contributed topographical Views in Cornwall (1814) to the atlas Britannia depicta and edited the Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds in six volumes in 1819.
Farington died on the 30th of December 1821 after falling down the steps of St James' Church Didsbury in Manchester, where he had gone for a New Year's Eve service. He was staying at Parrs Wood House with his brother Richard at the time.
During the Peace of Amiens in 1802, Farington traveled to Paris with the artists Benjamin West, John Hoppner, and Johann Fuseli, among others. While there he visited the studios of Jacques-Louis David and François Gérard.