Thomas Daniell RA (1749 – 19 March 1840) was an English landscape painter who also painted Orientalist themes. He spent seven years in India, accompanied by his nephew William, also an artist, and published several series of aquatints of the country. Thomas Daniell was born in 1749 in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey. His father was the landlord of the Swan Inn at Chertsey (where he was later succeeded by Thomas' elder brother William and his wife Sarah). Thomas began his career apprenticed to an heraldic painter and worked at Maxwell's the coach painter in Queen Street before attending the Royal Academy Schools. Although he exhibited 30 works – mainly landscapes and floral pieces – at the Academy between 1772 and 1784, Daniell found it difficult to establish himself as a landscape painter in Britain. Like many other Europeans at that time, Daniell was drawn to India by stories of the wealth and fame that awaited travellers to the newly accessible East, and in 1784 he obtained permission from the East India Company to travel to Calcutta to work as an engraver, accompanied by his nephew, William Daniell, as his assistant.