Thomas Stothard

Thomas Stothard (17 August 1755 – 27 April 1834) was a British painter, illustrator and engraver. His son, Robert T. Stothard was a painter (fl. 1810): he painted the proclamation outside York Minster of Queen Victoria's accession to the throne in June 1837.

Early life Stothard was born in London, the son of a well-to-do innkeeper in Long Acre. A delicate child, he was sent at the age of five to a relative in Yorkshire, and attended school at Acomb, and afterwards at Tadcaster and at Ilford, Essex. Showing talent for drawing, he was apprenticed to a draughtsman of patterns for brocaded silks in Spitalfields. In his spare time, he attempted illustrations for the works of his favourite poets. Some of these drawings were praised by James Harrison, the editor of the Novelist's Magazine. Stothard's master having died, he resolved to devote himself to art.

Career In 1778 Stothard became a student of the Royal Academy, of which he was elected associate in 1792 and full academician in 1794. In 1812 he was appointed librarian to the Academy after serving as assistant for two years. (1810); and the cupola of the upper hall of the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh (later occupied by the Signet Library), with Apollo and the Muses, and figures of poets, orators, etc. (1822). He prepared designs for a frieze and other sculptural decorations for Buckingham Palace, which were not executed, owing to the death of George IV. He also designed a shield presented to the Duke of Wellington by the merchants of London, and executed a series of eight etchings from the various subjects that adorned it.

Personal life Stothard married Rebecca Watkins (d. 1825) in 1783. They had eleven children, of whom six – five sons and one daughter – survived infancy. They lived in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, until 1794, when they moved to a house at 28 Newman Street, Fitzrovia of which Stothard had bought the freehold. His wife died in 1825. His sons included Thomas, accidentally shot dead in about 1801; the antiquarian illustrator Charles Alfred Stothard, who also predeceased his father; and Alfred Joseph Stothard, medallist to George IV.

Stothard died on 27 April 1834, and was buried in Bunhill Fields burial ground in north London.

In literature

Stothard's painting of Erato (one of the Muses) is given a poetical illustration by Letitia Elizabeth Landon in her "Poetical Catalogue of Pictures", in the Literary Gazette (1823). Another of his paintings, The Fairy Queen Sleeping, is poetically examined in a similar fashion in her "Poetical Sketches of Modern Pictures" in The Troubadour (1826).