Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 54.djvu/440

 historical draughtsman to the Society of Antiquaries. In 1816 he was deputed by the society to make drawings of the Bayeux tapestry, and during his stay in Normandy discovered in a cellar at the abbey of Fontevrault effigies of several of the Plantagenet sovereigns. In 1818 the drawings of the tapestry were completed, and in the year following Stothard laid them before the Society of Antiquaries together with a valuable paper on the date of the tapestry (see Archæologia, xix. 184). In this essay Stothard for the first time pointed out that the tapestry might be contemporary with the events it depicted without being the work of [q. v.], queen of William of Normandy, with whom it was traditionally associated, and conclusively proved, from the accuracy of the costumes, that it could not be a work of twelfth-century date, as had been contended by the Abbé de la Rue (cf., Norman Conquest, 1869, iii. 367). On 2 July of the same year Stothard was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and his drawings were published between 1821 and 1823 in the society's ‘Vetusta Monumenta’ (vol. vi. plates 1–17). Stothard was killed on 28 May 1821 by a fall from a ladder while he was making drawings of a stained-glass window in the church at Beerferris in Devonshire. He was buried at Beerferris. In February 1818 he married Anna Eliza, daughter of John Kempe, bullion-porter at the mint. She afterwards married [q. v.], and was well known as a writer under her name of [q. v.]

Besides the works mentioned, Stothard illustrated his wife's ‘Letters written during a Tour through Normandy,’ London, 1820, 8vo. A portrait engraved from a miniature painted by Alfred Chalon is prefixed to Mrs. Stothard's ‘Memoirs’ of her husband.



STOTHARD, THOMAS (1755–1834), painter and book-illustrator, the son of a publican, was born at the Black Horse Inn, Long Acre, London, on 17 Aug. 1755. His father was a native of Stutton, near Tadcaster, and his mother, whose maiden name was Reynolds, came from Shrewsbury. They removed from Stutton to London in 1750. Being delicate, Stothard was sent to his uncle at York, who placed him with an old lady, named Stainburn, at Acomb, where he copied some prints by Strange and Houbraken. At eight years old he was sent to two old aunts at Stutton, and went to a day school at Tadcaster. When thirteen his father brought him to London and sent him to a boarding-school at Ilford, Essex, where he was half starved, and took dancing lessons from the father of the celebrated clown, Joseph Grimaldi. His father died in 1770, leaving a provision for his mother and 1,200l. to himself. His mother lived at Stepney Green, and Stothard was apprenticed to a draughtsman of patterns for flowered silks in Spital Square, Spitalfields. The fashion for these silks declining, he employed his leisure in making designs from Homer and Spenser, being encouraged thereto by his master, who died before his apprenticeship was out. He appears to have remained with his master's widow after this, as it was at her house that his drawings attracted the attention of Mr. Harrison, the publisher of the ‘Novelist's’ and the ‘Poetical’ magazines, who gave him his first commission for an illustration, but he was not regularly engaged by Harrison till about 1779. Meanwhile he gave up the pattern business and entered the schools of the Royal Academy (1777). In this year he exhibited at the Society of Artists two Welsh landscapes, and ‘A Battle’ from Homer. He was then living at Mr. Somner's (or Sumners) near The Blind Beggar, at Bethnal Green. About this time he formed a friendship with [q. v.], with whom he took lodgings in the Strand in 1778, when he commenced to exhibit at the Royal Academy, sending a picture of ‘The Holy Family.’ He added to his slender income by painting small family portraits, and frequently visited the studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds, from whom and from Richard Wilson, the landscape-painter, he received encouragement and advice.

In 1779 Stothard commenced his career as an illustrator of books, being employed to illustrate ‘Ossian’ and Hervey's ‘Naval History.’ But his principal employers were Bell and Harrison, and in this year his numerous designs for Bell's ‘Poets’ and Harrison's ‘Novelist's Magazine’ began to be published. The first of the latter was a scene from ‘Joseph Andrews’ (dated 1 Dec.), and in the following year he made no less than 148 drawings for this publication, for which he was paid a guinea apiece. He also made many drawings for the ‘Ladies' Magazine’