Background
He was born in London on the 17th of August 1755, the son of a well-to-do innkeeper in Long Acre.
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He was born in London on the 17th of August 1755, the son of a well-to-do innkeeper in Long Acre.
Being 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 iir 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.
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.
Among his earliest book illustrations are plates engraved for Ossian and for Bell's Poets; and in 1780 he became a regular contributor to the Novelist's Magazine, for which he executed one hundred and forty-eight designs, including his eleven adthirable illustrations to Peregrine Pickle and his graceful subjects from Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison. He contentedly designed plates for pocket-books, tickets for concerts, illustrations to almanacs, portraits of popular players - and into even the slightest and most trivial sketches he infused a grace and distinction which render them of value to the collectors of the present time. Among his more important series are the two secs of illustrations to Robinson Crusoe, one for the New Magazine and one for Stockdale's edition, and the plates to The Pilgrim's Progress (1788), to Harding's edition of Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield (1792), (1792), to The Rape of the Lock (1798), to the works of Gessner (1802), to Cowper's Poems (1825), and to The Decameron; while his figure-subjects in the superb editions of Roger's Italy (1830) and Poems (1834) prove that even in latest age his fancy was still unexhausted, and his hand hardly at all enfeebled. He is at his best in subjects of a domestic or a gracefully ideal sort; the heroic and the tragic were beyond his powers. The designs by Stothard were estimated by R. N. Wornum to number five thousand, and of these about three thousand have been engraved. His oil pictures are usually small in size, and rather sketchy in handling. Their colouring is often rich and glowing, being founded upon the practice of Rubens, of whom Stothard was a great admirer.
In addition to his easel pictures, Stothard decorated the grand staircase of Burghley House, near Stamford in Lincolnshire, with subjects of War, Intemperance, and the Descent of Orpheus in Hell (1799–1803); the library of Colonel Johnes' mansion of Hafod, in North Wales, with a series of scenes from Froissart and Monstrelet painted in imitation of relief (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.
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Stothard married Rebecca Watkins in 1783. They had eleven children, of whom six – five sons and one daughter – survived infancy.