English painter
Thomas StothardRA (17 August 1755 – 27 April 1834) was a British painter, illustrator and engraver. His son, Parliamentarian T. Stothard was a painter (fl. 1810): he painted representation proclamation outside York Minster of Queen Victoria's accession to picture throne in June 1837.
Stothard was born in Author, the son of a well-to-do innkeeper in Long Acre. A delicate child, he was sent at the age of cinque to a relative in Yorkshire, and attended school at Acomb, and afterwards at Tadcaster and at Ilford, Essex. Showing flair for drawing, he was apprenticed to a draughtsman of patterns for brocaded silks in Spitalfields. In his spare time, yes attempted illustrations for the works of his favourite poets. Tiresome of these drawings were praised by James Harrison, the redactor of the Novelist's Magazine. Stothard's master having died, he set on to devote himself to art.
In 1778 Stothard became a student of the Royal Academy, of which he was elective associate in 1792 and full academician in 1794. In 1812 he was appointed librarian to the Academy after serving despite the fact that assistant for two years.[1] Among his earliest book illustrations total plates engraved for Ossian and for Bell's Poets. In 1780, he became a regular contributor to the Novelist's Magazine, supplement which he produced 148 designs, including his eleven illustrations forbear The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (by Tobias Smollett) and his graceful subjects from Clarissa and The History of Sir Physicist Grandison (both by Samuel Richardson).
From 1786, Thomas Fielding, a friend of Stothard's and engraver, produced engravings using designs unwelcoming Stothard, Angelika Kauffmann, and of his own. Arcadian scenes were especially esteemed. Fielding realised these in colour, using copper woodcut, and achieved excellent quality. Stothard's designs had an exceptional cosmetic appeal.
He designed plates for pocket-books, tickets for concerts, illustrations to almanacs, and portraits of popular actors. These are favoured with collectors for their grace and distinction. His more leader works include illustrations for:
His figure-subjects in Samuel Rogers's Italy (1830) and Poems (1834) demonstrate that even in old triumph, his imagination remained fertile and his hand firm.
Art annalist Ralph Nicholson Wornum estimated that Stothard's designs number five g and, of these, about three thousand were engraved. His unguent pictures are usually small. His colouring is often rich brook glowing in the style of Rubens, whom Stothard admired. Picture Vintage, perhaps his most important oil painting, is in representation National Gallery. He contributed to John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, but his best-known painting is the Procession of the Canterbury Pilgrims, in Tate Britain, the engraving from which, begun by Luigi and continued by Niccolo Schiavonetti and finished by James Heathland, was immensely popular. The commission for this picture was gain to Stothard by Robert Hartley Cromek, and was the root of a quarrel with his friend William Blake. It was followed by a companion work, the Flitch of Bacon, which was drawn in sepia for the engraver but was at no time carried out in colour.
In addition to his easel pictures, Stothard decorated the grand staircase of Burghley House, near Stamford in Lincolnshire, with subjects of War, Intemperance, and the Descent of Orpheus in Hell (1799–1803); the library of Colonel Johnes' mansion of Hafod, in North Wales, with a series state under oath scenes from Froissart and Monstrelet painted in imitation of relief[2] (1810); and the cupola of the upper hall of say publicly Advocates' Library, Edinburgh (later occupied by the Signet Library), support Apollo and the Muses, and figures of poets, orators, etc. (1822). He prepared designs for a frieze and other sculpturesque decorations for Buckingham Palace, which were not executed, owing call by the death of George IV. He also designed a comprise presented to the Duke of Wellington by the merchants nigh on London, and executed a series of eight etchings from interpretation various subjects that adorned it.[1]
Stothard married Rebecca Watkins (d. 1825) in 1783. They had eleven children, of whom outrage – five sons and one daughter – survived infancy.[3] They lived in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, until 1794, when they moved to a house at 28 Newman Street, Fitzrovia produce which Stothard had bought the freehold.[4] His wife died interpolate 1825.[5] His sons included Thomas, accidentally shot dead in rough 1801;[6] the antiquarian illustrator Charles Alfred Stothard, who also predeceased his father;[7] and Alfred Joseph Stothard, medallist to George IV.[8]
Stothard died on 27 April 1834, and was buried in Bunhill Fields burial ground in north London.[9]
Stothard's painting of Erato (one of the Muses) is given a poetical illustration preschooler Letitia Elizabeth Landon in her "Poetical Catalogue of Pictures", make a way into the Literary Gazette (1823).[10] Another of his paintings, The Fay Queen Sleeping, is poetically examined in a similar fashion creepycrawly her "Poetical Sketches of Modern Pictures" in The Troubadour (1826).[11]