Artist remembered as Blue Plaque unveiled

A Blue Placque was unveiled yesterday, as Grantham Mid-Lent Fair began it’s first session for three years.

It was unveiled in Market Place, on a building adjacent to the Conduit.

It is dedicated to Manuel Immanuel who was born about 1758 in London and was a well-known, nationally renowned and immensely talented artist, theatre designer, drawing master, miniaturist, antiquary and Hebrew scholar who was patronised by royalty and aristocracy alike. 

He was a member of the Royal Academy and spent many years living and working in the eastern counties of England, but settled in Grantham by 1814 as a drawing master. 

He specialised in oil painting on velvet, picturing life-sized animals including elephants and giraffes. His work included transparencies lit with lanterns and he also experimented with light and shadows, sometimes using a camera obscura. 

He was a founder member of the Grantham Doric Lodge of the Freemasons and members of the society were in attendance yesterday.

Grantham Civic Society secretary Ruth Crook said: “The reason that we are honouring him today is that he painted the opening of the mid-Lent fair in 1820 and the painting is now kept in the Lincolnshire Collection.”

He died in 1834 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery on Sherwood Street in Nottingham. 

His name has now largely been forgotten and references to him are sparse, so this blue plaque goes someway to redressing the balance.