Daniel Maclise

• Name — Daniel Maclise • Born — 25 January 1806 • Birthplace — Cork, Ireland • Died — 25 April 1870 • Place of death — Chelsea, England • Known for — History painting; Portrait painting • Illustration — Maclise's Spirit of Chivalry, oil on canvas, 50 x 33 5/8 inches (127.00 x 85.60 cm), Private collection. • Illustration — A detail of the engraving of Maclise's 1842 painting The Play-scene in Hamlet, portraying the moment when the guilt of Claudius is revealed.

Maclise was born in Cork, Ireland, the son of Alexander McLish (also McLeish, McLish, McClisse or McLise), a Scotsman who had come to Ireland with the army and subsequently become a tanner and shoemaker. His education was of the plainest kind, but he was eager for culture, fond of reading, and anxious to become an artist. His father, however, placed him in employment, in 1820, in Newenham's Bank, where he remained for two years, before leaving to study at the Cork School of Art. In 1825, Sir Walter Scott was travelling in Ireland, and Maclise, having seen him in a bookseller's shop, made a surreptitious sketch of him, which he afterwards lithographed. The print became very popular, and led to many commissions for portraits, which he executed in pencil. Various influential friends recognised Maclise's genius and promise, and were anxious to furnish him with the means of studying in London; but refusing all financial assistance, he saved the money himself and arrived in the capital on 18 July 1827. There he made a sketch of Charles John Kean, the actor, which, like his portrait of Scott, was lithographed and published, making the artist a considerable sum. He entered the Royal Academy schools in 1828, eventually being awarded the highest prizes open to students.

Maclise exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1829 at Somerset House. Gradually he began to confine himself more exclusively to subject and historical pictures, varied occasionally by portraits – such as those of Lord Campbell, novelist Letitia Landon, Dickens, and other of his literary friends. In 1833, he exhibited two pictures which greatly increased his reputation, and in 1835 the Chivalric Vow of the Ladies and the Peacock procured his election as associate of the Academy, of which he became full member in 1840. 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. He also designed illustrations for several of Dickens's Christmas books and other works. Between the years 1830 and 1836 he contributed to Fraser's Magazine, under the pseudonym of 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). During the rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament in London in 1834–1850 by Charles Barry, Maclise was commissioned in 1846 to paint murals in the House of Lords on such subjects as Justice and Chivalry. In 1858, Maclise commenced one of the two great monumental works of his life, The Meeting of Wellington and Blücher after the Battle of Waterloo, on the walls of Westminster Palace. It was begun in fresco, a process which proved unmanageable. The artist wished to resign the task, but, encouraged by Prince Albert, he studied in Berlin the new method of water-glass painting, and carried out the subject and its companion, The Death of Nelson, in that medium, completing the latter painting in 1864. Maclise's vast painting of The Marriage of Strongbow and Aoife (1854) hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. It portrays the marriage of the main Norman conqueror of Ireland "Strongbow" to the daughter of his Gaelic ally. The painting is said to relate Maclise's nationalist feelings and his knowledge of ancient, Irish, civilization. By the grand staircase of Halifax Town Hall, which was completed in 1863, there is a wall painting by Maclise. The intense application which he gave to these great historic works, and various circumstances connected with the commission, had a serious effect on the artist's health. He began to shun the company in which he formerly delighted, his old buoyancy of spirits was gone, and when, in 1865, the presidency of the Royal Academy was offered to him he declined the honour. He died of acute pneumonia on 25 April 1870 at his home 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. • Illustration — Maclise photographed by William Lake Price, 1857 His works are distinguished by powerful intellectual and imaginative qualities, but, in the opinion of William Monkhouse, a late Victorian critic, somewhat 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. His fame rests most securely on his two greatest works at Westminster. A memoir of Maclise, by his friend William Justin O'Driscoll, was published in 1871.

The works of Maclise in portraiture were celebrated in 1972 at an exhibition in the National Portrait Gallery.

The Crawford Art Gallery in Cork, Ireland, Maclise's native city, held a major exhibition of his works, Daniel Maclise: Romancing the Past (28 October 2008 - 14 February 2009), opened by David Puttnam.

• Illustration — Portrait of William Harrison Ainsworth, 1834 • Illustration — The Installation of Captain Rock, 1834 • Illustration — Henry VIII's First Meeting with Anne Boleyn, 1835 • Illustration — The Chivalric Vow of the Ladies of the Peacock, 1835 • Illustration — Merry Christmas in the Baron's Hall, 1838 • Illustration — A Scene from Gil Blas, 1839 • Illustration — Portrait of Charles Dickens, 1839 • Illustration — Robin Hood and His Merry Men Entertaining Richard the Lionheart in Sherwood Forest, 1839 • Illustration — The Banquet Scene in Macbeth, 1840 • Illustration — Malvolio and the Countess, 1840 • Illustration — The Sleeping Beauty, 1841 • Illustration — The Play Scene in Hamlet, 1842 • Illustration — The Origin of the Harp, 1842 • Illustration — Waterfall at St Nighton's Kieve, 1842 • Illustration — Portrait of Catherine Dickens, 1847 • Illustration — Macready as Werner, 1850 • Illustration — Caxton Showing the First Specimen of His Printing to King Edward IV, 1851 • Illustration — The Marriage of Strongbow and Aoife, 1854 • Illustration — Peter the Great at Deptford Dockyard, 1857 • Illustration — King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, 1869

He also worked under the name Alfred Croquis. The authorities additionally record the headings D. Maclise, Alfred Croquis, D. M'Clise, Daniel McLise and maclise d. His recorded language was English.

Daniel Maclise worked in history painting. His work is associated with Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He belonged to Royal Academy of Arts and Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts.

Works recorded as notable number 2: The Death of Nelson and The Marriage of Strongbow and Aoife. His recorded genres are history and portrait.

Daniel Maclise is recorded as painter, draftsperson, lithographer and graphic artist.