London Atelier of Representational Art (original) (raw)

Daniel Maclise was born on 25 April 1806 in Cork, Ireland, the son of a Presbyterian Highland soldier, who became a shoemaker. His education was of the simplest kind, but he was eager for culture, fond of reading and anxious to become an artist. His father however, in 1820 placed him in Newenham’s Bank, where [...]

Daniel Maclise was born on 25 April 1806 in Cork, Ireland, the son of a Presbyterian Highland soldier, who became a shoemaker. His education was of the simplest kind, but he was eager for culture, fond of reading and anxious to become an artist. His father however, in 1820 placed him in Newenham’s Bank, where he remained for two years. Daniel then left to study at the Cork School of Art. In 1825 the famous author Sir Walter Scott was travelling in Ireland and young Maclise having seen him in a bookseller’s shop, made a surreptitious sketch of the great man, which he afterwards had lithographed. It was exceedingly popular and the artist became celebrated enough to receive commissions for portraits, which he executed in pencil, with careful treatment of detail and accessory. Various influential friends perceived the genius and promise of young Maclise and were anxious to furnish him with the means of studying in the metropolis, but with rare independence, he refused all aid and by careful economy saved a sufficient sum to enable him to set out for London. There he made a lucky hit by his sketch of The Younger Kean, which like his portrait of Scott, was lithographed and published. He entered the RA Schools in 1828 and carried off the highest prizes available in that establishment. In 1829 he exhibited there for the first time and gradually began to confine himself exclusively to subject and historical pictures, varied occasionally by portraits such as Campbell and Miss Landon and other of his friends in the literary world. In 1833 he exhibited two pictures which greatly increased his reputation and in 1835 the Chivalric Vow of the Ladies and the Peacock which procured his election as ARA. He followed up their success with his Merry Christmas in the Baron’s Hall (1838). Maclise was elected RA in 1840 and the years that followed were occupied with a long series of figure pictures, deriving their subjects from history and tradition and from the works of Shakespeare, Goldsmith and Le Sage. John Forster introduced Maclise to Charles Dickens in December 1836 and Maclise went on to design illustrations for several of Dickens’s Christmas books. An indication of the depth of their friendship may be taken from the following story: In 1837 Maclise painted the Portrait of Sir Francis Sykes and His Family and it was exhibited in that year’s RA Exhibition. Subsequently, Sykes responded to his discovery of Maclise in bed with Lady Sykes by threatening him with legal action. Dickens came to Maclise’s aid by including a villain named Bill Sikes in his 1838 book Oliver Twist. Maclise’s portrait Charles Dickens (1839) may be found in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. Between the years 1830 and 1836 Maclise contributed to Fraser’s Magazine under the pseudonym Alfred Croquis, a remarkable series of portraits of the literary and other celebrities of the time character studies, etched or lithographed in outline, and touched more or less with the emphasis of the caricaturist, which were afterwards published as the Maclise Portrait Gallery (1871). In 1858 Maclise commenced one of the two great monumental works of his life, the Meeting of Wellington and Blücher at Waterloo in the Palace of Westminster. He initially commenced the massive task using fresco, a technique which proved unsuitable. He wished to resign the task, but encouraged by Prince Albert, studied the new method of water-glass painting in Berlin and carried out the subject and its companion, the Death of Nelson in that medium, completing the latter in 1864. The intense application which he gave to these great historic works and various circumstances connected with the commission had a serious effect on his health. He began to shun the company in which he had formerly delighted. His old buoyancy of spirit and zest for life was gone and in 1865, when he was offered the post of PRA, he declined the honour. He died of pneumonia on 25 April 1870. Maclise’s works are distinguished by powerful intellectual and imaginative qualities, but most of them are marred by harsh and dull colouring, by metallic hardness of surface and texture and by frequent touches of the theatrical in the action and attitudes of the figures. A considerable number of his portraits, many of them of considerable historical significance may be found in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. However, his enduring fame as an artist rests most securely on his two remarkable works in the Royal Gallery of the Palace of Westminster.