Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 14.djvu/267

 purity of their colour, their pearly greys, and the effects of sunlight. Among his brother artists he was called an impressionist. He was a constant exhibitor also at the Royal Academy. During his artistic career he designed a studio for F. W. Topham, a nest of studios for his son, and the country schools of the Drapers' Company for H. Williams.

He was an amiable and unselfish man, always ready to help a brother artist in his work, possessed of brilliant and fascinating conversation, most abstemious in his living, of untiring industry, and so devoted to his art that he was painting in his studio three days before his death. Considering that he did not begin to study painting till he was thirty-four, and died before completing his forty-eighth year, he may be said to have been prematurely cut off in a career that promised brilliant success; as it is, there are few water-colour galleries that are not enriched with some of his works.

[Private information; official books and catalogues of the two societies of painters in water-colours; books of the Royal Institute of British Architects and Royal Acad. Catalogues.]  DEARE, JOHN (1759–1798), sculptor, born in Liverpool 26 Oct. 1759, was the son of a tax collector and jeweller of Castle Street. As a boy he had shown an aptitude for sculpture, and when sixteen was apprenticed to Thomas Carter of 101 Piccadilly, London, for whom he carved mantelpieces and monuments. After a few years of great application he was able to set up in rooms of his own, and obtained work from some of the best men of his time. At twenty he carried off the first gold prize medal granted by the Royal Academy for a design in bas-relief, ‘Paradise Lost,’ which was exhibited in the Liverpool Exhibition of 1784. In the spring of 1785 he was sent to Rome by the king and the Royal Academy, and settled there. His works were eagerly bought by both English and French collectors. In 1795 he sold three chimneypieces to the Prince of Wales, and executed a bust of Prince Augustus Frederick. Sir Richard Worseley had a fine ‘Marine Venus’ from his chisel; but his best work is said to be a bas-relief in the possession of Sir George Corbett, ‘Edward and Eleonora,’ the original model of which was given to the Royal Institution in Liverpool. There is also in that town a bas-relief over the dispensary modelled by Deare. He had married a beautiful Roman girl, and it has been said that the commander of the French troops in Rome, falling in love with his wife, imprisoned Deare, and caused his death. Mr. Charles Grignon, in whose arms Deare expired, informed Smith that he caught a fatal cold by sleeping on a block of marble of peculiar shape, expecting to get inspiration in his dreams for carving it. He died at his house in Rome 17 Aug. 1798, and was buried near the Pyramid of Caius Cestius.

[J. T. Smith's Nollekens and his Times; Smithers's Liverpool, 1825; Early Art in Liverpool; The Kaleidoscope, vol. iv. new ser. pp. 293, 294.]  DEARE, JOSEPH (1804?–1835), sculptor, born about 1804, was the nephew of John Deare (1759–1798) [q. v.] Writing in 1828, Smith says that Deare, ‘after having gained the whole series of silver medals in the Royal Academy, had, like his uncle, John Deare, the honour of receiving the gold medal (in 1825) for the best model of an original design of “David and Goliah,” a cast of which may be had at his father's house, No. 12 Great St. Helen's.’ He exhibited at the Royal Academy exhibitions from 1826–32 ten works, all groups in marble or portrait busts. Up to the latter date his address was in London, but he is supposed about this time to have gone to reside in Liverpool, where he had a studio in the old excise office, Hanover Street, and practised as a portrait painter, probably in addition to his own profession. In endeavouring to enter this studio by climbing a wall late one night, he fell and died of his injuries soon after, 5 Aug. 1835.

[J. T. Smith's Nollekens and his Times; Royal Academy Catalogues; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists of the English School; private information.]  DEAS, DAVID (1807–1876), naval medical officer, son of Francis Deas, provost of Falkland, Fifeshire, who died in 1857, by his marriage with Margaret, daughter of David Moyes, was born at Falkland in September 1807, educated at the high school and university of Edinburgh, and having become a licentiate of the College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1827, entered the royal navy 7 June 1828 as an assistant-surgeon. He saw much service, and was promoted to be a surgeon 2 July 1836, and before his return to England in 1842 took part in the operations on the coast of Syria. He was advanced to the rank of deputy-inspector of hospitals and fleets 24 June 1854, and in the Britannia was present at the engagement with the sea defences of Sebastopol on 17 Oct. On 1 March 1855 he was gazetted inspector-general and served in the Royal Albert until the conclusion of the war with Russia. From June 1857 until 1859 he had medical charge of the