John Butts

John Butts (died 1764) was an Irish landscape painter.

Life

Butts was born and educated in Cork, Ireland, He painted landscapes somewhat in the style of Claude Lorrain, and worked as an art teacher, his pupils in Cork including James Barry. In around 1757, at the age of about 30, he moved to Dublin, where he continued to work as a landscape and figure painter, and was also employed as a scene-painter at the Crow Street Theatre.

He spent much of his life in poverty. Barry, in a letter written soon after Butts' death, described him as "an unfortunate man, who with all his merit never met with any thing but cares and misery, which I may say hunted him into the very grave. His cast of genius was very much that of Claude's, whom he resembles without any imitation more than anybody that I know of".

He died in 1764.