Artist acquires a bit of English capital (12)
I believe the answer is:
gainsborough
'artist' is the definition.
(Gainsborough is an example)
'acquires a bit of english capital' is the wordplay.
'acquires' becomes 'gains' (gaining is a kind of acquiring).
'a bit of english capital' becomes 'borough' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'gains'+'borough'='GAINSBOROUGH'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for gainsborough that I've seen before include "English portrait and landscape painter, d. 1788" , "Artist" , "Thomas -, eighteen century English painter" , "Lincolnshire town -- 18th-century English painter" , "See 14" .)