Clarkson Frederick Stanfield

Stanfield is noted for his close friendship with fellow artists of the Royal Academy Roberts, Edwin Landseer and Daniel Maclise as well as the writer Charles Dickens, with whom he often collaborated. He was widely known as Stanny to his friends and colleagues. He was the father of the painter George Clarkson Stanfield and the composer Francis Stanfield.

The recorded working language is English. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are marine art. Work by Clarkson Frederick Stanfield is recorded in the collections of Tate, National Gallery of Victoria, Victoria and Albert Museum, Yale Center for British Art and National Gallery.

• Honorific Suffix — RA RBA • Born — 3 December 1793 • Birthplace — Sunderland, County Durham, England • Died — 18 May 1867 • Place of death — Hampstead, London, England • Resting Place — Kensal Green Catholic Cemetery • Spouse — * Mary Hutchinson • Rebecca Adcock • Children — George Clarkson Stanfield Francis Stanfield • Parents — James Field Stanfield (father)

Stanfield was born in the port town of Sunderland in County Durham, the son of James Field Stanfield (1749–1824) an Irish author, actor and former seaman, and Mary Hoad, an artist and actress. Stanfield was likely to have inherited artistic talent from his mother, who is said to have been an accomplished artist, but died in 1801. His father remarried, to Maria Kell, a year later. Stanfield was named after Thomas Clarkson, the slave trade abolitionist, whom his father knew, and this was the only forename he used, although there is reason to believe Frederick was a second one. He was briefly apprenticed to a coach decorator in 1806, but left owing to the drunkenness of his master's wife and joined a South Shields collier to become a sailor. In 1808 he was pressed into the Royal Navy, serving in the guardship HMS Namur at Sheerness. Discharged on health grounds in 1814, he then made a voyage to China in 1815 on the East Indiaman Warley and returned with many sketches.

An accident forced Stanfield to leave active service, but during his voyages he had acquired considerable skill as a draughtsman. In August 1816 Stanfield was engaged as a decorator and scene-painter at the Royalty Theatre in Wellclose Square, London. Along with David Roberts he was afterwards employed at the Coburg Theatre in Lambeth, and in 1823 he became a resident scene-painter at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, where he rose rapidly to fame through the huge quantity of spectacular scenery and (moving) dioramas which he produced for that house until 1834. Stanfield abandoned scenery painting after Christmas 1834, though he made exceptions for two personal friends: he designed scenery for the stage productions of William Charles Macready, and for the amateur theatricals of Charles Dickens.

• Illustration — Mount St Michael, Cornwall, 1830 Stanfield partnered with David Roberts in several large-scale diorama and panorama projects in the 1820s and 1830s. The newest development in these popular entertainments was the "moving diorama" or "moving panorama." These consisted of huge paintings that unfolded upon rollers like giant scrolls; they were supplemented with sound and lighting effects to create a nineteenth-century anticipation of cinema. Stanfield and Roberts produced eight of these entertainments; in light of their later accomplishments as marine painters, their panoramas of two important naval engagements, the Bombardment of Algiers and The Battle of Navarino, are worth noting. An 1830 tour through Germany and Italy furnished Stanfield with material for two more moving panoramas, The Military Pass of the Simplon (1830) and Venice and Its Adjacent Islands (1831). Stanfield executed the first in only eleven days; it earned him a fee of £300. The Venetian panorama of the next year was 300 feet long and 20 high; gas lit, it unrolled through 15 or 20 minutes. The show included stage props and even singing gondoliers. After the show closed, portions of the work were re-used in productions of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and Otway's Venice Preserved. The moving panoramas of Stanfield and other artists became highlights of the traditional Christmas pantomimes.

• Illustration — Tilbury Fort - Wind Against Tide by Clarkson Stansfield, 1849 Stansfield's art was significantly influenced by his early practice as a scene-painter. But, though there are always aspects of the scenic in his works, and though their color is rather dry and hard, they are large and effective in handling, powerful in their treatment of broad atmospheric effects and telling in composition, and they evince the knowledge of the artistic materials with which their painter deals. The art critic John Ruskin considered his treatment of the sea and clouds of a very high order and called him the "leader of our English Realists." Wishing him to be sometimes "less wonderful and more terrible," Ruskin also pointed out the superior merits of his sketched work, especially in watercolour, to the often contrived picturesque qualities of many of his exhibited oils and the watercolours on which published engravings were based.

Stanfield was admired not only for his art but his personal simplicity and a modesty. He was born a Catholic and became increasingly devout in middle life, after the loss in 1838 of his eldest son by his second marriage (to Rebecca Adcock) and then, in the 1850s, both the children of his first marriage (to Mary Hutchinson, who had died in childbirth). His eldest surviving son, George Clarkson Stanfield (1828–1878) was also a painter of similar subjects, largely trained by his father. Another son, Francis Stanfield (1835–1914) was an English Catholic priest who is noted for having composed several notable hymns. His daughter Harriet married W. H. G. Bagshawe, son of Henry Bagshawe, and was mother of Joseph Ridgard Bagshawe, also a marine painter.

• Illustration — Bligh Sands, Sheerness, Indianapolis Museum of Art • Illustration — Lake Como (1825) • Illustration — The Banks of the Rhine in Cologne (1826) • Illustration — A Market Boat on the Scheldt (1826) • Illustration — On the Rhine, near Cologne, 1829 • Illustration — A View Near Devizes (1829) • Illustration — Portsmouth Harbour (1831), Royal Collection • Illustration — The Opening of New London Bridge (1832), Royal Collection • Illustration — The Anchor Brewery, 1832 • Illustration — Orford (1833) • Illustration — Venice from the Dogana (1833) • Illustration — The Canal of the Guidecca, and the Church of the Gesuati, Venice (1836) • Illustration — Beilstein on the Moselle (1837) • Illustration — The Coast of Normandy near Gonville, France (1837) • Illustration — On the Scheldt near Leiskenshoeck (1837) • Illustration — Sands near Boulogne (1838) • Illustration — A View of Vietri in the Gulf of Salerno (1840) • Illustration — Ships at Sea (1841) • Illustration — The Castle of Ischia from the Mole, Italy (1841) • Illustration — The Morning after the Wreck (1844) • Illustration — Oude Scheld – Texel Island (1844) • Illustration — The Capture of the El Gamo (1845) • Illustration — On the Dogger Bank (1846) • Illustration — The Battle of Roveredo (1846) • Illustration — Coast Scene Near Genoa (1846) • Illustration — The Royal Yacht Passing St Michael's Mount (1846) • Illustration — French Troops Fording the Margra (1847) • Illustration — On the Zuyder Zee (1847) • Illustration — In the Gulf of Venice (1848) • Illustration — Macbeth and the Witches (1850) • Illustration — Trajan's Arch, Ancona (1851) • Illustration — Oxwich Bay (1851) • Illustration — The Harbour of La Rochelle (1852) • Illustration — The Last of the Crew (1853) • Illustration — View of the Pic du Midi d'Ossau in the Pyrenees (1854) • Illustration — A Dutch Barge and Merchantmen Running out of Rotterdam (1856) • Illustration — The Fortress of Savona (1858) • Illustration — On the Coast of Brittany (1858) • Illustration — Stack Rock, County Antrim (1861) • Illustration — Shakespeare Cliff, Dover, 1849 (1862), Royal Museums Greenwich • Illustration — The Morning after Trafalgar (1863)

The authorities additionally record the headings Clarkson Stanfield, William Stanfield, William Stanfield-Clarkson, William Clarkson Stanfield and Stanfield. His recorded language was English. He was the child of James Field Stanfield. 2 children are recorded: George Clarkson Stanfield and Francis Stanfield.

Clarkson Frederick Stanfield is recorded as painter and artist. Recognition and collections.