Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 35.djvu/230

Maclise (then a widow), who had married Perceval Weldon Banks, a barrister, and one of the ‘Fraser’ staff. He was introduced by Maclise between Southey and Thackeray in the famous banquet scene of the Fraser Gallery. In 1870 he exhibited his last picture, ‘The Lords of Desmond and Ormond.’

Before this was seen on the walls of the Academy he himself was no more. He died on 25 April 1870, at his house, 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, after a short attack of acute pneumonia, and was buried at Kensal Green on the day of the Academy dinner. His old friend Dickens, who felt the shock greatly, and was soon to follow him to the grave, was present at the dinner, and made a speech, in which he paid a warm and eloquent tribute to the talents and the worth of Maclise. ‘Of his genius,’ he said, ‘in his chosen art, I will venture to say nothing here; but of his prodigious fertility of mind, and wonderful wealth of intellect, I may confidently assert that they would have made him, if he had so minded, at least as great a writer as a painter. The gentlest and most modest of men, the freest as to his generous appreciation of young aspirants, and the frankest and largest-hearted as to his peers, incapable of a sordid or ignoble thought, gallantly sustaining the true dignity of his vocation, without a grain of self-assertion, wholesomely natural at the last as at the first, “in wit a man, simplicity a child,” no artist of whatsoever denomination, I make bold to say, ever went to his rest having a golden memory more free from dross, or having devoted himself with a truer chivalry to the art-goddess he served.’

Though the reputation of his genre and dramatic pictures has declined from the height which it reached in his lifetime, this is not the case with his portraits or his great epical compositions. As a draughtsman, in the clear and definite expression of form, he was a master, scarcely rivalled by any British artist. His line was somewhat cold and strict, but full of spirit and expression, as elastic and as firm as steel. It was rather that of a sculptor or an engraver, than a painter, preserving precision and completeness of outline at all costs. His painting, though very dexterous, was hard, his colour crude, and his pictures are deficient in atmosphere and in the rendering of texture; his leaves are like malachite, his hair like silk ribbon, and his blood like sealing-wax. His composition was generally admirable, if too obvious. In such works as his great mural paintings, his finer qualities were indispensable, and his defects of minor importance, so that whether they are regarded technically or intellectually, they are the finest of his works, the most complete expression of the best of the artist and the man. They are now widely acknowledged to be the greatest historical paintings of the English school, and D. G. Rossetti went even further when he wrote, ‘These are such “historical” pictures as the world perhaps had never seen before’ (see a very interesting paper by this artist in Academy, 15 April 1871). Engravings of these paintings and lithographs of Maclise's, and also drawings of ‘The Norman Conquest,’ were issued by the Art Union of London.

Among his book illustrations were those to Tennyson (1860), to Bürger's ‘Leonore,’ to Moore's ‘Irish Melodies,’ Lytton's ‘Pilgrims of the Rhine,’ and frontispieces to some of Dickens's Christmas books.

Maclise designed the Swiney Cup for the Society of Arts, the medal for the International Exhibition of 1862, and the Turner medal for the Royal Academy. For this he refused payment, and was presented by the Academy with a piece of plate (1860). His diploma picture at the Royal Academy is ‘The Wild Huntsman.’

A portrait of Maclise aged 35, by E. M. Ward, R.A., is in the National Portrait Gallery, London.  MACLONAN, FLANN (d. 896), Irish historian and poet, was a native of northern Connaught, and belonged to the family afterwards known as MacGilla Cheallaigh, who were a sept of the Ui Fiachrach, the descendants of Fiachra, son of Eochaidh Muighmheadhoin, king of Ireland in the fourth century. His father was Lonan, son of Conmach, who was fifth in descent from that Guaire, king of Connaught, whose hospitality was so famous that to this day 'go fial Guaire,' 'as generous as Guaire,' is a common expression in Ireland. Flann wrote a poem on the five sons of Eochaidh Muighmheadhoin, which is remarkable as containing one of the few descriptions of poisoning in the bardic relations. Crimthann is killed by a sweet drink given to him by his sister Mongfind, who wishes her own son to be king. The oldest copy of this poem is that in the 'Book of Leinster,' a manuscript of the twelfth century. He afterwards migrated to Munster, and was there murdered in 896 at Loch Dachaech, co. 