Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 45.djvu/254

 occasionally employed by him was the punning one of a pike and ring. Among the authors whose works were entrusted to him were Coleridge, Joseph Ritson, Alexander Dyce (editions of Greene, Peele, and Webster), J. M. Kemble, Henry Shaw (the historian of art), Charles Richardson (the author of the English dictionary), Sir Harris Nicolas, and Joseph Hunter. In 1844 he issued reprints of the various versions of the Book of Common Prayer between 1549 and 1662 (6 vols. folio). These volumes are among the finest known specimens of typography. Other liturgical works followed. Pickering also strengthened his reputation by his Aldine edition of the English poets in fifty-three volumes; all were carefully edited by competent scholars. Two series projected by him were entitled respectively ‘Christian Classics’ (12 vols.) and ‘Oxford Classics;’ the latter included the works of Hume and Smollett, Gibbon, Robertson, and Dr. Johnson. Basil Montagu's edition of Bacon, Bailey's ‘Festus,’ the ‘Bridgewater Treatises,’ and Walton's ‘Angler,’ illustrated by Inskipp and Stothard, were among the most ambitious of his later efforts, independent of his serial ventures, and are remarkable for the delicate type and the admirable arrangement of the text on the page.

Pickering removed in 1842 to 177 Piccadilly, where he set up a dolphin and anchor as his sign, and there he remained till his death. His last days were troubled by illness and by pecuniary embarrassments due to the failure of a friend for whom he had stood security. He died at Turnham Green on 27 April 1854, and was buried at Kensal Green. The sale of his stock, which fetched high prices, enabled his representatives to pay his creditors 20s. in the pound. James Toovey took over the business in Piccadilly. He married in 1819 Mary Ann Gubbins (1796–1849), by whom he had five daughters and one son.

The only son, (1836–1878), a godson of Basil Montagu, was employed as a youth by James Toovey, and in 1858 began business as publisher and dealer in rare books at 196 Piccadilly. He sought to continue his father's traditions in both branches of his business, but his publishing ventures were few. His chief publications were: Mr. Swinburne's ‘Queen Mother’ and ‘Rosamund’ (1860), Locker's ‘London Lyrics’ (1862), John Hookham Frere's ‘Works’ (1872), Cardinal Newman's ‘Miscellaneous Writings’ (1875–7), and a facsimile reprint of Milton's ‘Paradise Lost’ (1st edit.), collated by himself. He died on 8 Feb. 1878, when the firm became extinct. A wife and two children—all his family—predeceased him in 1876.

[Gent. Mag. 1854, pt. ii. pp. 88, 272; Bookseller, 1878, p. 210; information most kindly furnished by Arthur Warren, esq.]  PICKERSGILL, HENRY WILLIAM (1782–1875), painter, was born in London on 3 Dec. 1782. He was adopted early in life by Mr. Hall, a silk manufacturer in Spitalfields, who sent him to a school at Poplar, and at the age of sixteen placed him in his own business. The war with France, however, caused a decline in the silk trade and in Mr. Hall's business, so that Pickersgill, who had already imbibed a love of painting and displayed some skill in draughtsmanship, determined to adopt painting as a profession. He was a pupil of George Arnald, A.R.A., from 1802 to 1805, when he was admitted as a student in the Royal Academy, having obtained an introduction to Fuseli, then keeper, through a surgeon who attended on him during a severe illness. Pickersgill at first painted, besides portraits, historical subjects or those from poetry and mythology. He exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy in 1806, sending a portrait of Mr. Hall, in 1808 one of himself, and in 1809 one of Mrs. W. Hall. Subsequently he devoted his time almost entirely to portrait painting. He was for over sixty years a constant and prolific exhibitor at the Royal Academy, where nearly four hundred paintings of his were shown at one time or another. He was elected an associate in 1822 and a royal academician in 1826. After the death of Thomas Phillips, R.A. [q. v.], in 1845, Pickersgill obtained almost a monopoly of painting the portraits of men and women of eminence in every walk in life. In this way he painted nearly all the most celebrated people of his time. He had a studio for some time in Soho Square, and latterly in Stratford Place, Oxford Street, where hardly a day passed without some person of distinction crossing his threshold. In the National Portrait Gallery there are portraits by him of Wordsworth, William Godwin, Jeremy Bentham, M. G. Lewis, Hannah More, George Stephenson, and Judge Talfourd. For Sir Robert Peel he painted Richard Owen, Cuvier, Humboldt, and Hallam; and for Lord Hill a portrait of General Lord Hill, and a full-length portrait of the Duke of Wellington. His portrait of Mr. Vernon passed, with Pickersgill's picture of ‘The Syrian Maid’ in the Vernon collection, to the National Gallery. There are numerous portraits by Pickersgill in the college halls at Oxford. His portrait of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (in the possession of Mr. Moulton Barrett) was in the Victorian Exhibition at the new gallery in 1892; and also those of Faraday (Royal In-