Thomas Stothard
Encyclopedia
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
painter, illustrator and engraver.
Life and work
Stothard was born in LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, the son of a well-to-do innkeeper in Long Acre, London. A delicate child, he was sent at the age of five to a relative in Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
, and attended school at Acomb, and afterwards at Tadcaster
Tadcaster
Tadcaster is a market town and civil parish in the Selby district of North Yorkshire, England. Lying on the Great North Road approximately east of Leeds and west of York. It is the last town on the River Wharfe before it joins the River Ouse about downstream...
and at Ilford
Ilford
Ilford is a large cosmopolitan town in East London, England and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Redbridge. It is located northeast of Charing Cross and is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan. It forms a significant commercial and retail...
, Essex. Showing talent for drawing he was apprenticed to a draughtsman of patterns for brocade
Brocade
Brocade is a class of richly decorative shuttle-woven fabrics, often made in colored silks and with or without gold and silver threads. The name, related to the same root as the word "broccoli," comes from Italian broccato meaning "embossed cloth," originally past participle of the verb broccare...
d silks in Spitalfields
Spitalfields
Spitalfields is a former parish in the borough of Tower Hamlets, in the East End of London, near to Liverpool Street station and Brick Lane. The area straddles Commercial Street and is home to many markets, including the historic Old Spitalfields Market, founded in the 17th century, Sunday...
. In his spare time, he attempted illustrations for the works of his favourite poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
s. Some of these drawings were praised by Harrison, the editor of the Novelist's Magazine. Stothard's master having died, he resolved to devote himself to art.
In 1778 he became a student of the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
, of which he was elected associate in 1792 and full academician in 1794. In 1812 he was appointed librarian after serving as assistant for two years. Among his earliest book illustrations are plates engraved for Ossian
Ossian
Ossian is the narrator and supposed author of a cycle of poems which the Scottish poet James Macpherson claimed to have translated from ancient sources in the Scots Gaelic. He is based on Oisín, son of Finn or Fionn mac Cumhaill, anglicised to Finn McCool, a character from Irish mythology...
and for Bell
Robert Bell
Robert Bell or Rob Bell may refer to:* Robert Bell , British politician* Robert Bell , Irish journalist & editor* Robert Bell , Canadian legislator* Robert Bell , Canadian legislator...
's Poets. In 1780, he became a regular contributor to the Novelist's Magazine, for which he produced 148 designs, including his eleven illustrations to Peregrine Pickle and his graceful subjects from Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison.
From 1786, Thomas Fielding, a friend of Stothard's and engraver, produced engravings using designs of Stothard, Angelika Kauffmann, and of his own. Arcadian scenes were especially esteemed. Fielding realized these in colour, using copper engraving, and achieved excellent quality. Stothard's designs had an exceptional aesthetic appeal.
He designed plates for pocket-books, tickets for concerts, illustrations to almanac
Almanac
An almanac is an annual publication that includes information such as weather forecasts, farmers' planting dates, and tide tables, containing tabular information in a particular field or fields often arranged according to the calendar etc...
s, and portraits of popular actors. These are popular with collectors for their grace and distinction. His more important works include illustrations for:
- Two sets for Robinson CrusoeRobinson CrusoeRobinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe that was first published in 1719. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a fictional autobiography of the title character—a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and...
, one for the New Magazine and one for Stockdale's edition - The Pilgrim's ProgressThe Pilgrim's ProgressThe Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come is a Christian allegory written by John Bunyan and published in February, 1678. It is regarded as one of the most significant works of religious English literature, has been translated into more than 200 languages, and has never been...
(1788) - Harding's edition of GoldsmithOliver GoldsmithOliver Goldsmith was an Irish writer, poet and physician known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield , his pastoral poem The Deserted Village , and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man and She Stoops to Conquer...
's Vicar of Wakefield (1792) - The Rape of the LockThe Rape of the LockThe Rape of the Lock is a mock-heroic narrative poem written by Alexander Pope, first published anonymously in Lintot's Miscellany in May 1712 in two cantos , but then revised, expanded and reissued under Pope's name on March 2, 1714, in a much-expanded 5-canto version...
(1798) - The works of Solomon GessnerSolomon GessnerSolomon Gessner was a Swiss painter and poet. His writing suited the taste of his time, though by some more recent standards it is “insipidly sweet and monotonously melodious.” As a painter, he represented the conventional classical landscape.-Biography:He was born in Zürich...
(1802) - William CowperWilliam CowperWilliam Cowper was an English poet and hymnodist. One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. In many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry...
's Poems (1825)
The Decameron
His figure-subjects in Samuel Rogers
Samuel Rogers
Samuel Rogers was an English poet, during his lifetime one of the most celebrated, although his fame has long since been eclipsed by his Romantic colleagues and friends Wordsworth, Coleridge and Byron...
's Italy (1830) and Poems (1834) demonstrate that even in old age, his imagination remained fertile and his hand firm.
Art historian Ralph Nicholson Wornum
Ralph Nicholson Wornum
Ralph Nicholson Wornum was an English artist, art historian and administrator. He was Keeper and Secretary of the National Gallery of London from 1855 until his death.-Early life:...
estimated that Stothard's designs number five thousand and, of these, about three thousand were engraved. His oil pictures are usually small. His colouring is often rich and glowing in the style of Rubens, who Stothard admirered. The "Vintage," perhaps his most important oil painting, is in the National Gallery
National Gallery, London
The National Gallery is an art museum on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media...
. He contributed to John Boydell
John Boydell
John Boydell was an 18th-century British publisher noted for his reproductions of engravings. He helped alter the trade imbalance between Britain and France in engravings and initiated a British tradition in the art form...
's Shakespeare Gallery
Boydell Shakespeare Gallery
The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery in London, England, was the first stage of a three-part project initiated in November 1786 by engraver and publisher John Boydell in an effort to foster a school of British history painting...
, but his best-known painting is the "Procession of the Canterbury Pilgrims," also in the National Gallery, the engraving from which, begun by Luigi
Luigi Schiavonetti
Luigi Schiavonetti , Italian reproductive engraver and etcher, was born at Bassano in Venetia.After having studied art for several years he was employed by Testolini, an engraver of very indifferent abilities, to execute imitations of Bartolozzi's works, which he passed off as his own...
and continued by Niccolo Schiavonetti and finished by James Heath
James Heath (engraver)
James Heath was an English engraver. He enjoyed the patronage of George III and successive monarchs, and was an associate engraver of the Royal Academy.-Life and work:...
, was immensely popular. The commission for this picture was given to Stothard by Robert Hartley Cromek, and was the cause of a quarrel with his friend William Blake
William Blake
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
. It was followed by a companion work, the "Flitch of Bacon," which was drawn in sepia
Sepia
-Marine life:* Sepia , a genus of cuttlefish* Cephalopod ink, a dark pigment released into water by Sepia cuttlefish-Media and entertainment:* Sepia , an African Americans focused Photojournalism magazine...
for the engraver but was never carried out in colour.
In addition to his easel pictures, Stothard decorated the grand staircase of Burghley House
Burghley House
Burghley House is a grand 16th-century country house near the town of Stamford, Lincolnshire, England...
, near Stamford in Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...
, with subjects of War, Intemperance, and the Descent of Orpheus in Hell (1799-1803); the mansion of Hafod
Hafod
Hafod is a district of the city of Swansea, Wales and lies just outside the city centre in the north of the city. It falls within the Landore ward....
, North Wales, with a series of scenes from Froissart
Jean Froissart
Jean Froissart , often referred to in English as John Froissart, was one of the most important chroniclers of medieval France. For centuries, Froissart's Chronicles have been recognized as the chief expression of the chivalric revival of the 14th century Kingdom of England and France...
and Monstrelet
Enguerrand de Monstrelet
Enguerrand de Monstrelet , French chronicler, belonged to a noble family of Picardy.In 1436 and later he held the office of lieutenant of the gavenier at Cambrai, and he seems to have made this city his usual place of residence...
(1810); the cupola
Cupola
In architecture, a cupola is a small, most-often dome-like, structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome....
of the upper hall of the Advocates' Library
Advocates' Library
The Advocates' Library is a law library belonging to the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh, founded in 1682. Until 1925 it was the deposit library for Scotland, after which the role was taken on by the National Library of Scotland....
, Edinburgh (later occupied by the Signet Library), with Apollo and the Muses, and figures of poets, orators, etc. (1822); and he prepared designs for a frieze and other decorations for Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace, in London, is the principal residence and office of the British monarch. Located in the City of Westminster, the palace is a setting for state occasions and royal hospitality...
, which were not executed, owing to the death of George IV
George IV of the United Kingdom
George IV was the King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and also of Hanover from the death of his father, George III, on 29 January 1820 until his own death ten years later...
. He also designed a shield presented to Duke of Wellington
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, KG, GCB, GCH, PC, FRS , was an Irish-born British soldier and statesman, and one of the leading military and political figures of the 19th century...
by the merchants of London, and executed a series of eight etchings from the various subjects that adorned it. In the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
is a collection, in four volumes, of engravings Robert Balmanno made of Stothard's works.
Further reading
- Bray, Anna Elizabeth. Life of Thomas Stothard, R. A., with personal reminiscences: Volume 1, Volume 2 (London, J. Murray, 1851).
- Dobson, AustinHenry Austin DobsonHenry Austin Dobson , commonly Austin Dobson, was an English poet and essayist.-Life:He was born at Plymouth, the eldest son of George Clarisse Dobson, a civil engineer, of French descent. When he was about eight, the family moved to Holyhead, and his first school was at Beaumaris in Anglesey...
. Eighteenth Century Vignettes, volume 1 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1892). - Coxhead, A. C.. Thomas Stothard, R.A., an Illustrated Monograph (London: A.H. Bullen, 1906). Contains a short biographical chapter, and an accurately dated summary of the various books and periodicals illustrated by Stothard.
External links
- Thomas Stothard online
- Works by Stothard (Government Art Collection)
- Paintings by Thomas Stothard (Bridgeman Art Library)