Life

Fuller is said to have studied first in France under François Perrier

François Perrier

Francois Perrier was a French soldier and geodesist.Perrier was born at Valleraugue , , descended from a family of Protestants, of Cevennes. After finishing his studies at the Lyceum of Nimes and at St...

, probably at the new academy in Paris, under whom he acquired some style from copying the antique. But he was too fond of the tavern. He resided for some time at Oxford. In London Fuller was much employed in decorative painting, especially in taverns.

Fuller died in Bloomsbury Square

Bloomsbury Square

Bloomsbury Square is a garden square in Bloomsbury, Camden, London.- Geography :To the north of the square is Great Russell Street and Bedford Place, leading to Russell Square. To the south is Bloomsbury Way. To the west is the British Museum and Holborn tube station is the nearest underground...

, London, on 17 July 1672. He left a son, who, according to George Vertue

George Vertue

George Vertue was an English engraver and antiquary, whose notebooks on British art of the first half of the 18th century are a valuable source for the period.-Life:...

 was employed in torch-painting.

Works

He painted an altarpiece for Magdalen College, and also one for Wadham College; the latter, which represented ‘The Last Supper,’ between ‘Abraham and Melchizedek’ and ‘The Israelites gathering manna,’ was executed in a singular method, the lights and shades being just brushed over, and the colours melted in with a hot iron. Fuller perhaps invented this method himself, and Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was a man of letters, eldest son of Lancelot Addison...

 wrote a poem in praise of it. While at Oxford he painted numerous portraits, and also copied Dobson's ‘Decollation of St. John,’ altering the heads to portraits of his own immediate friends.

The Mitre tavern in Fenchurch Street, and the Sun tavern near the Royal Exchange were among those adorned by him with suitable paintings. He painted the ceiling on the staircase of a house in Soho Square, and a ceiling at Painter-Stainers' Hall. As a portrait painter Fuller had some real power, and his own portrait, in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, shows him in a curious head-dress. James Elsum wrote an epigram on it.

There is an original drawing for it in the Dyce Collection at the South Kensington Museum, and Fuller himself made a small etching of it. A portrait of Fuller, drawn by G. Vertue, is in the print room at the British Museum. Among other portraits painted by Fuller were Samuel Butler, the poet, Pierce, the carver, and John Ogilby

John Ogilby

John Ogilby was a Scottish translator, impresario and cartographer. Best known for publishing the first British road atlas, he was also a successful translator, noted for publishing his work in handsome illustrated editions.-Life:Ogilby was born in or near Killemeare in November 1600...

, the author (these two were in the Strawberry Hill

Strawberry Hill House

Strawberry Hill is the Gothic Revival villa of Horace Walpole which he built in the second half of the 18th century in what is now an affluent area of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames in Twickenham, London...

 Collection, and the latter has been engraved by William Camden Edwards

William Camden Edwards

William Camden Edwards was a Welsh engraver.-Biography:Edwards was born in Monmouthshire in 1777. Early in the nineteenth century he went to Bungay, Suffolk to engrave portraits and illustrations for the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, and similar works published by the Bungay printer Charles Brightly...

), Norris, the king's frame-maker (a picture much praised by Sir Peter Lely), Cleveland, the poet, Sir Kenelm Digby, and Latham, the statuary. Fuller painted five pictures on wood of some size, representing the adventures of Charles II after the battle of Worcester; these were presented to the parliament of Ireland, and subsequently were discovered in a state of neglect by Lord Clanbrassil, who had them repaired, and removed them to Tullamore Park, co. Down.

Isaac Fuller had also some skill as an etcher; he etched some plates of Tritons and mythological subjects in the style of Perrier. In 1654 he published a set of etchings entitled ‘Un libro di designare,’ which are very rare. He executed, with H. Cooke and others, the etchings in ‘Iconologia, or Morall Emblems,’ by Cæsar Ripa of Perugia, published by Pierce Tempest. In Dr. Thomas Fuller's ‘Pisgah-sight of Palestine’ there is a large folding plate of Jewish costumes, etched by Isaac Fuller. He perhaps also executed the plan of Jerusalem in the same book, on which the words ‘Fuller's Field’ occur in English.