Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/473

 S T A S T A 449 STANFIELD, WILLIAM CLARKSON (1794-1867), marine painter, was born of Irish parentage at Sunderland in 1794. As a youth he was a sailor, and during many long voyages he acquired that intimate acquaintance with the sea and shipping which was admirably displayed in his subsequent works. In his spare time he diligently occupied himself in sketching marine subjects, and so much skill did he acquire that, after having been incapacitated by an accident from active service, he received an engagement, about 1818, to paint scenery for the "Old Royalty," a sailor's theatre in "VVellclose Square, London. Along with David Eoberts he was afterwards employed at the Cobourg theatre, Lambeth; and in 1826 he became scene-painter to Drury Lane theatre, where he executed some admirable work, especially distinguishing himself by the production of a drop-scene, and by decorations for the Christmas pieces for which the house was celebrated. Meanwhile he had been at work upon some easel pictures of small dimensions, and was elected a member of the Society of British Art- ists. Encouraged by his success at the British Institution, where in 1827 he exhibited his first important picture Wreckers off Fort Eouge and in 1828 gained a premium of 50 guineas, he before 1830 abandoned scene-painting, and in that year made an extended tour on the Continent. He now produced his Mount St Michael, which ranks as one of his finest works; in 1832 he exhibited his Opening of New London Bridge and Portsmouth Har- bour commissions from William IV. in the Royal Academy, of which he was elected an associate in 1832 and an academician in 1835; and until his death on the 18th of May 1867 he contributed to its exhibitions a long series of powerful and highly popular works, dealing mainly with marine subjects, but occasionally with scenes of a more purely landscape character. Among these may be named the Battle of Trafalgar (1836), executed for the United Service Club ; the Castle of Ischia (1841), Isola Bella (1841), among the results of a visit to Italy in 1839; French Troops Fording the Margra (1847), the "Victory" Bearing the Body of Nelson Towed into Gibraltar (1853), the Abandoned (1856). He also executed two notable series of Venetian subjects, one for the banqueting-hall at Bowood, the other for Trentham. He was much employed on the illustrations for The Picturesque Annual, and published a collection of lithographic views on the Rhine, Moselle, and Meuse; and forty of his works were en- graved in line under the title of "Stanfield's Coast Scenery." Four of his engraved pictures are in the National Gallery, and his works may also be studied in the Soiith Kensington Museum. A large collection of his productions were included in the Eoyal Academy's Winter Exhibition for 1870. The whole course of Stanfield's art was powerfully influenced by his early practice as a scene-painter. But, though there is always a touch of the spectacular and the scenic in his works, and though their colour is apt to be rather dry and hard, they are large and effective in handling, powerful in their treatment of broad atmospheric effects, and telling in composition, and they evince the most complete knowledge of the artistic materials with which their painter deals. STANHOPE, CHARLES STANHOPE, THIRD EARL (1753- 1816), was born on 3d August 1753, and educated under the opposing influences of Eton and Geneva, devoting himself whilst resident in the Swiss city to the study of mathematics, and acquiring from the associations con- nected with Switzerland an intense love of liberty. He contested the representation of the city of Westminster without success in 1774, when only just of age; but from the general election of 1780 until his accession to the peerage on the 7th of March 1786 he represented through the influence of Lord Shelburne the Buckinghamshire borough of High Wycombe, and during the sessions of 1783 and 1784 he gave his support to the administration of William Pitt, whose sister Lady Hester Pitt he married on 19th December 1774. When Pitt ceased to be inspired by the Liberal principles of his early days, his brother-in- law severed their political connexion and opposed with all the impetuosity of his fiery heart the arbitrary measures which the ministry favoured. Lord Stanhope's character was without any taint of meanness, and his conduct was marked by a lofty consistency never influenced by any petty motives ; but his speeches, able as they were, had no weight on the minds of his compeers in the upper chamber, and, from a disregard of their prejudices, too often drove them into the opposite lobby. He was the chairman of the " Revolution Society/' founded in honour of the Revolution of 1688, the members of which in 1790 expressed their sympathy with the aims of the French republicans. He brought forward in 1794 the case of Muir, one of the Edinburgh politicians who were trans- ported to Botany Bay, and in 1795 he introduced into the Lords a motion deprecating any interference with the internal affairs of France. In all of these points he was hopelessly beaten, and in the last of them he was in a " minority of one " a sobriquet which stuck to him throughout life, whereupon he seceded from parlia- mentary life for five years. The lean and awkward figure of Lord Stanhope figured in a host of the caricatures of Sayers and Gillray, reflecting on his political opinions and his personal relations with his children. His first wife died on 20th July 1780, and he married on 17th March 1781 Louisa, daughter and sole heiress of the Hon. Henry Grenville (governor of Barbados in 1746 and ambassador to the Porte in 1762), a younger brother of the first Earl Temple and George Grenville. Through his union with this lady, who survived until March 1829, he was doubly connected with the family of Grenville. By his first wife he had three daughters, one of whom was Lady Hester Stanhope (see below), and his second wife was the mother of three sons. Lord Stanhope died at the family seat of Chevening, Kent, on 15th December 1816. Earl Stanhope was elected a fellow of the Royal Society so early as November 1772, and devoted a large part of his income to experiments in science and philosophy. He invented a method of securing bxiildings from fire (which, however, proved impracticable), the printing press and the lens which bear his name, and a monochord for tuning musical instruments, suggested improvements in canal locks, made experiments in steam naviga- tion in 1795-97, and contrived two calculating machines. "When he acquired an extensive property in Devonshire, he projected a canal through that county from the Bristol to the English Channel and took the levels himself. Electricity was another of the subjects which he studied, and the volume of Principles of Electricity which he issued in 1779 contained the rudiments of his theory on the " return stroke " resulting from the contact with the earth of the electric current of lightning, which were afterwards amplified in a contribution to the Philosophical Transactions for 1787. His principal labours in literature consisted of a reply to Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution (1790) and an Essay on the rights of juries (1792), and he long meditated the compilation of a digest of the statutes. His scientific theories, his mechanical experiments, and his studies in music absorbed all his thoughts, and for them he neglected his wives and his children. His youngest daughter, Lady Lucy Rachael Stanhope, eloped with Mr Thomas Taylor of Sevenoaks, the family apothecary, and her father refused to be reconciled to her, an inconsistency in a republican which subjected him to a caricature from Gillray. Lady Hester Stanhope abandoned her home and went to live with her mother's relations. Lord Stanhope's high qualities were marred by an impracticable disposition. STANHOPE, LADY HESTER LUCY (1776-1839), the eldest child of the third Earl Stanhope (noticed above), by his first wife Lady Hester Pitt, eldest daughter of the first earl of Chatham, lived for the earlier part of her life amid the surroundings of a noble mansion, or in close com- munion with her uncle William Pitt, the most prominent minister of his age, and on his early death withdrew whilst still young to brood over the past in the solitudes of Pales- tine. She was born on 12th March 1776, and dwelt at her father's seat of Chevening in Kent until early in 1800, when his excitable and wayward disposition drove her to her grandmother's house at Burton Pynsent. A year or XXII. - 57