Daniel Maclise, Painter

(b. 1806, d. 1870)

Painter

From A Dictionary of Irish Artists 1913

Daniel Maclise, R.A. Drawing in pencil and water-colour, done by Himself in 1829; in the National Gallery of Ireland.

In June, 1795, the regiment of Elgin Fencibles, commanded by the Earl of Elgin, left Perth on its way to be quartered in Ireland. In March, 1797, it arrived in Cork. Serving in its ranks as a private soldier was one Alexander McLeish, and when the regiment left Cork he remained and set up in a small way as a leather-cutter in a little shop in South Main Street. Within a year of his coming to Cork the Scottish soldier had found himself a wife who, from her name, was probably also Scottish or of Scottish descent. His marriage is recorded in the register of the Presbyterian church in Princes Street under date 24th December, 1797: "I married Alex. McLish, soldier, Elgin Fencible Regt., to Rebecca Buchanan daughter of Mrs. Buchanan, Almshouse, with consent of his officers and her friends in the presence of his sergeant and other witnesses. T. D. Hincks." The register further records the baptisms of seven of his children, including that of Daniel, the future artist: "1806, Feb. 2, Daniel McLish son of Alexr. and Rebecca." O'Driscoll, in his "Memoir," gives the date of the painter's birth as 25th January, 1811, a date followed by other biographers. Maclise himself gave this date, or at least tacitly sanctioned it, as indeed he did the misstatements concerning his parentage. The register of the Royal Academy records the entrance as a student on 20th April, 1828, of "Daniel McClise," and his age is put down as 20, which would agree with neither the record of baptism or with O'Driscoll's statement. His brother Alexander is recorded as having been born in August, 1811. Daniel received a good education at a day-school in Cork, and in 1820 was placed in Newenham's Bank; but he soon left it to devote himself to the study of art. As a child he had shown a love and aptitude for drawing, and he now applied himself to studying from the casts in the Cork Institute, and after a time he opened a studio in Patrick Street, where he did small pencil portraits. He also attended the lectures given by Dr. Woodroffe and acquired a good knowledge of anatomy and the structure of the human form. He was encouraged and helped in his endeavours by Richard Sainthill, who allowed him the use of his extensive library and introduced him to Crofton Croker, for whom he did a series of illustrations for the second edition of the "Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland."

He was first brought prominently into notice by a portrait of Sir Walter Scott, taken during the novelist's visit to Cork in 1825. This was a sketch made while Scott was examining books in Bolster's bookshop. The drawing, which was afterwards lithographed, is now in the Forster collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum. In the same year, 1825, he made a sketching tour in Wicklow, afterwards resuming his practice in portraiture in Cork. His portraits were generally in pencil, about 9 by 7 inches. At first he paid great attention to the backgrounds and accessories which he elaborated and worked out with the most scrupulous care, but he afterwards did his likenesses as simple vignettes. Several of his portraits were exhibited in the Mechanics' Institute in Cork in 1828, after he had gone to London. He was so successful with his little portraits that he was able to save money, and in 1827 found himself in a position to carry out his long-cherished desire to go to London. He arrived there on 18th July, 1827, and took lodgings in Newman Street. Introductions brought by him gained him the acquaintance of many prominent literary men, which his charm of manner and disposition made into lasting friendship; and soon after his arrival he gave a proof of his talent by a clever sketch of Charles Kean as Norval in Douglas, which was lithographed, and brought him some money. In April, 1828, he entered the schools of the Royal Academy and carried off the silver medals in the life school and painting school and, in 1831, the gold medal for his "Choice of Hercules." During that period he had many commissions for portrait drawings which brought him both reputation and profit.

Daniel Maclise, R.A. Pencil drawing, by Thomas Bridgford, R.H.A.; in the National Gallery of Ireland.

In 1829 he made his first appearance as an exhibitor in the Academy, with his drawing of "Malvolio affecting the Count,"—not the picture of the same subject in the Vernon collection at South Kensington,—and in 1830 he had seven drawings, including portraits of "Miss L. E. Landon," "Thomas Campbell" and "Mrs. S. C. Hall." He had six works in 1831 and five in 1832, including his first oil picture "Puck disenchanting Bottom." In this year he made an excursion to Oxford and then wandered through the midland counties and Wales to Holyhead, whence he went to Dublin, and with Crofton Croker visited his native city of Cork. The Cork Society of Arts presented him with a gold medal inscribed: Alumno suo Danieli Maclise Egregie in pictura merenti Societatis Artium Corcagiensis Sep. 26, 1832." On his return to London he painted his "Snap-apple Night" which was in the Academy in 1833, a picture which materially enhanced his reputation. The subject was suggested by a scene in the house of Father Horgan at Blarney, and in it the painter introduced portraits of his sisters and of Sir Walter Scott, Croker and Father Horgan. In the exhibition catalogues his name appeared as "D. McClise" down to 1834, then as "D. MacClise," and in 1835 he finally adopted the form "Maclise." In 1834 he exhibited another picture of an Irish subject, "The Installation of Captain Rock," and in 1835 his picture of "The Chivalric Vow of the Ladies and the Peacock"—which made a deep impression and divided artistic admiration with Turner's "Burning of the Houses of Parliament," Landseer's "Favourites" and Etty's "Phoedria and Cymochles"—secured him his election as an Associate of the Academy. Maclise moved his residence in 1829 to Charles Street, Middlesex Hospital, where he remained until 1837, when he went to 14 Russell Place, Fitzroy Square, his home until he moved to 4 Cheyne Walk a few years before his death.

In 1836 he had two pictures in the Academy, "Macbeth and the Weird Sisters," and "An Interview between Charles I and Oliver Cromwell." About this period he did a number of drawings for annuals and for books: J. Barrow's "Tour round Ireland," published in 1836, contained four illustrations "drawn and etched by D. Maclise, A.R.A.,"—"An outside Jaunting-car in a Storm," "Interior of a Cottage," "Funeral Procession of an Informer," and "Patron's Day at Ronogue's Well, Cork." Hall's "Ireland, its Scenery and Character," published in 1841, has two wood-cuts after his drawings, "The Wren Boy" and "Tossing Pan-cakes on Shrove Tuesday"; and etchings by him are in an edition of Carleton's "Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry." In 1830 he began his celebrated series of character portraits contributed to "Fraser's Magazine," under the pseudonym of "Alfred Croquis," which continued until 1838. They were chiefly drawn on stone, but in some instances were etched or engraved. These portraits of many of the celebrated literary personages of the day show an extraordinary insight into character, and give an impression of absolute truthfulness as likenesses, as for instance the portraits of Scott and Coleridge and Croker, the amusing plate of Miss Landon, or the grim and tragic satire of Talleyrand. The series, of which most of the original drawings are in the Forster collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum, was published, with three additional portraits, in book-form as "Gallery of Illustrious Literary Characters," edited by Professor W. Bates, and with biographical and critical sketches by William Maginn. Maclise also illustrated Lord Lytton's "Pilgrims of the Rhine," and did 116 designs for an edition of Moore's "Melodies," published by Longmans in 1846, which were beautifully engraved by F. Becker. He designed the Swiney Cup for the Society of Arts, the Turner medal for the Royal Academy, and the medal for the International Exhibition of 1862.

Maclise had now become firmly established as a painter and his career was henceforward one of unbroken prosperity; he was welcomed in the best literary and artistic society in London and enjoyed the friendship of many of its leading members and particularly of Dickens and Forster. In 1837 he had seven pictures in the Academy, including his "Bohemian Gipsies" which was afterwards in the Gillott collection, and five in 1838, including "Olivia and Sophia fitting out Moses for the Fair," and "Merry Christmas in the Baron's Hall," now in the National Gallery of Ireland. His "Scene from the Burletta of Midas" and "The Second Adventure of Gil Blas," shown in 1839, were both purchased by the Queen. In 1840 he was elected a Member of the Royal Academy and exhibited his "Banquet Scene in Macbeth," "A Scene from Gil Blas" and "A Scene from Twelfth Night, Malvolio in Olivia's Garden," now in the Vernon collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and a "Portrait of Charles Dickens." Between 1840 and 1859 some of his best works were seen on the Academy walls: "The Play Scene in Hamlet" in 1842, "Noah's Sacrifice" in 1847, "Caxton's Printing Office" in 1851, "Alfred in the camp of Guthrum the Dane" in 1852, "The Marriage of Strongbow and Eva" in 1854, a picture now in the National Gallery of Ireland; and "Peter the Great in Deptford Dockyard" in 1857. "Waterfall at St. Nighton's Keive, neair Tintagel," exhibited in 1843, and now in the Forster collection at South Kensington, was the result of a tour in Cornwall with Dickens, Forster and Stanfield.

In 1844 Maclise was a competitor in the exhibition in Westminster Hall for the decoration of the Houses of Parliament, and was one of the six artists selected for the work. He commenced his designs for "The Meeting of Wellington and Blucher" and "The Death of Nelson" in 1858, and began the work in fresco; but he found so many difficulties in carrying out the undertaking that he resigned the task. At the request of Prince Albert he went to Berlin in 1859 to inquire into the water-glass process, and then took up the work in that method. He completed the "Wellington and Blucher" in December, 1859, and the "Death of Nelson" in 1864. For each of these he received £3,500. He also painted the "Spirit of Chivalry" and "The Spirit of Justice," which are both in an obscure position behind the Strangers' Gallery in the Throne Room of the House of Lords. During the period he was engaged upon these works he toiled unremittingly in "that gloomy Hall," as he termed it, in Westminster Palace, throwing himself with unresting energy into carrying out the ideas he had conceived, but discouraged and plagued by official interference, delay and apathy, and his sensitive nature wrung by petty slights. His health suffered, and he was depressed by the little fame these great works brought him—the finest historical pictures painted in England—and the little appreciation they received. The death, too, in 1865, or his sister Isabella, who had lived with him, was a blow from which he never recovered, and he gradually contracted habits of seclusion, withdrawing himself from the society in which he had shone, and living in solitude. When the Presidency of the Academy was offered to him on the death of Eastlake in 1866, he refused it, as he did also the offer of a knighthood.

In 1866 he again began to exhibit, sending to the Academy "Here Nelson Fell," a small version of the fresco, and a "Portrait of Dr. Quain." Other pictures were "The Sleep of Duncan" and "Madeleine" in 1868, and "King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid," the last two purchased by Mr. John Wardell of Dublin. In 1870 he made his last contribution with his picture of "The Earls of Desmond and Ormond." Besides exhibiting in the Royal Academy Maclise sent works to the British Institution, and a few of his pictures were seen in the Royal Hibernian Academy which gave him its membership, which he held until 1864 when he resigned.

Maclise died at his residence 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, from an attack of acute pneumonia, on 25th April, 1870, and was buried at Kensal Green. He was never married, but lived with his sister Isabella. He had also had living with him until their deaths his father and mother. He had three brothers, Joseph, who practised as a surgeon in London; William, a surgeon in the Army, and Alexander; and two sisters, Anna, who married Percival Weldon Banks, and Isabella who died unmarried. After the artist's death a sale of his sketches and drawings and of the other contents of his studio was held at Christie's.

Maclise was tall and handsome in person; he had a great fascination and charm of manner which with his kindly, generous nature and lovable disposition made him a universal favourite. On the occasion of the Academy Banquet which took place on the day of his funeral his old friend Charles Dickens delivered a feeling and impressive eulogy upon him: "Of his genius in his chosen art I will venture to say nothing here; but of his prodigious fertility of mind and wonderful wealth of intellect I may confidently assert that they would have made him, if he had so minded, at least as great a writer as a painter. The gentlest and most modest of men, the freest as to his generous approbation of young aspirants, and the frankest and largest-hearted as to his peers, incapable of a sordid or ignoble thought, gallantly maintaining the true dignity of his vocation, without a grain of self assertion, wholesomely natural at the last as at the first, in art a man, in simplicity a child, no artist of whatsoever denomination, I make bold to say, ever went to his rest leaving a golden memory more free from dross or having devoted himself with a truer chivalry to the art-goddess he served."

As an artist Maclise rose to the front rank of his contemporaries and long enjoyed a great popularity. But even during his life the estimation of his works had begun to wane, and his reputation now rests upon his portraits and his two great historical pictures in the House of Lords. He excelled as a draughtsman, though he wanted freedom of hand, and his expression of form and line was cold and academic. His pictures were cleverly composed and grouped but showed an extravagance, an exaggerated mannerism and false sentiment, with the attitudes of his figures forced and strained, and an unreality and often an almost repulsive ugliness and vulgarity, which his ingenuity of invention and the care with which he painted the details and accessories of his pictures could not redeem. He had little real sense of colour, his pictures show a leathery texture and a hard and metallic smoothness, and they are wanting in breadth and in atmospheric effect. This last defect and his insistency on details in the distance arose probably from his extraordinarily acute and long sight which made him see distant objects with great minuteness. His merits and his defects may be seen in the two pictures in the National Gallery of Ireland. He was careful and conscientious, but his art came easy to him, he had never to plod at his work, and he took life merrily and easily.

His portrait of himself, drawn in 1829, is in the National Gallery of Ireland, where is also the drawing by Thomas Bridgford which was reproduced in the "Dublin University Magazine" in 1847, Vol. XXIX. The National Portrait Gallery has his portrait by E. M. Ward.

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