Little is known of the family or early life of miniature and enamel painter John Howes. He entered the Royal Academy Schools on in 1770 and gained the Academy's silver medal two years later. He exhibited portraits, landscapes, and other subjects in enamel, as well as some miniatures, at the Royal Academy between 1772 and 1793, showing 32 works at the Academy in total. In 1777 he painted an enamel portrait of David Garrick from a drawing by decorative painter and draughtsman Giovanni Battista Cipriani, which was presented to the actor by the Incorporated Society of Actors of Drury Lane Theatre. Horatio [Horace] Walpole, Fourth Earl of Orford, is reported to have commented that the likeness was ‘very bad and unlike’.
