Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 18.djvu/431

 ] was generally esteemed a very useful member of society.’ He is denounced with great bitterness in a pamphlet of 1773 called ‘A Letter to Sir John Fielding, occasioned by his extraordinary request to Mr. Garrick for the suppression of the “Beggar's Opera.”’ A ‘letter of reconciliation’ to Garrick, referring apparently to this, is in the ‘Garrick Correspondence,’ ii. 169–70. A later quarrel with Garrick, arising out of the discovery of Henry Fielding's posthumous comedy, is noticed in Forster's ‘Oliver Goldsmith’ (2nd edit. ii. 56). Miles speaks of Fielding's ‘turbulent disposition,’ insomuch that he makes money by encouraging and then detecting criminals, and declares that eight out of ten of the persons executed at Tyburn owe their ruin to the ‘fatal and numerous examples of vice’ collected about Bow Street. He adds that Fielding was wicked enough to admit reporters and supply them with pen and ink, which cruelly exposes the criminals; and further that he receives fifty guineas a year from two papers for procuring them police advertisements. In ‘Bedford Correspondence’ (iii. 411) Fielding appeals to the Duke of Bedford against some false reports, and it is stated that the duke had considered him ‘irresolute’ on the occasion of the ‘Bloomsbury riots in 1765.’ In 1768 he published ‘Extracts from such of the Penal Laws as particularly relate to the peace and good order of the Metropolis …’ (described as a new edition), to which is appended ‘A Treatise on the Office of Constable,’ completed from papers left by Henry Fielding. Some cautions against common modes of theft appended to a ‘Brief Description of the Cities of London and Westminster …’ (1776) are also attributed to him; but he disclaimed the book (Public Advertiser, 6 Jan. 1777). Some ‘Regal Tables’ and ‘Hackney Coach Fares’ attributed to him in the British Museum Catalogue are by a bookseller, John Fielding of Paternoster Row, and in no way connected with him.

Fielding was concerned for some years in a ‘Universal Register Office.’ He seems to have started it with his brother, who added some curious puffs of it (afterwards suppressed) to the first edition of ‘Amelia.’ A ‘plan’ was published in 1752, and an eighth edition in 1755. It was intended as a sort of general agency for houses, servants, and various advertising purposes. Fielding was knighted in 1761, and died at Brompton Place 4 Sept. 1780.

A book called ‘Sir John Fielding's Jests’ (n. d.), published after his death, is a catchpenny production, which seems, however, to imply that he had a reputation for wit.

[Gent. Mag. 1761, p. 475, 1780, p. 1446; Fielding's pamphlets as above; Addit. MS. 5726 (letter of congratulation to Lord Bute, 26 June 1769); Lawrence's Life of Fielding, pp. 368, 372; Austin Dobson's Fielding, p. 194.]  FIELDING, NATHAN THEODORE (fl. 1775–1814), painter, was a native of Yorkshire, and resided near Halifax. He had a considerable local reputation, and was especially noted for his portraits of aged people. These he painted in Denner's well-known style, giving rigid attention to the natural display of every wrinkle of the skin, the glassy expression of the eyes, and other peculiarities. He subsequently came to London, and occasionally exhibited at the exhibitions of the Society of Artists and the British Institution. To the latter he sent in 1812 ‘The Botanist, with a Nondescript Fern,’ and ‘A Moonlight Seacoast.’ In 1814 he exhibited for the last time, sending ‘A Landscape—Morning.’ In 1801 he published a print of St. George's Church, Doncaster, which was aquatinted by his son Theodore. He occasionally etched, notably a portrait of Elias Hoyle of Sowerby in Yorkshire, at the age of 113, in 1793. Fielding had five sons, all artists, of whom four, Theodore Henry Adolphus, Antony Vandyke Copley, Thales, and Newton Smith, are separately noticed.

[Dodd's Manuscript Hist. of English Engravers; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Graves's Dict. of Artists, 1760–1880.]  FIELDING, NEWTON SMITH (1799–1856), painter and lithographer, born in London in 1799, was the youngest son of Nathan Theodore Fielding [q. v.] He exhibited at the Society of Painters in Water-colours, sending some views in 1815, and cattle pieces in 1818. He is best known for his paintings and engravings of animals. Besides painting in water-colours, he worked also in etching, aquatint, and lithography, and in the last named art he attained great proficiency. He went to Paris, where he resided until his death, on 12 Jan. 1856; he was much esteemed there, and taught the family of Louis-Philippe. In 1836 he published in London a set of ‘Subjects after Nature,’ and in Paris he published sets of lithographs of animals, and illustrations to various works. He also published: ‘Three Hundred Lessons; or, a Year's Instruction in Landscape Drawing, including Marine Subjects, with Hints on Perspective,’ 1852; ‘Lessons on Fortification, with Plates,’ 1853; ‘A Dictionary of Colour, containing Seven Hundred and Fifty Tints, to which is prefixed a Grammar of Colour,’ 1854; ‘What to Sketch with; or, Hints on the Use of Coloured Crayons, 