William Mulready

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William Mulready (April 1, 1786 - July 7, 1863) was an Irish genre painter living in London. He is best known for his romanticizing depictions of rural scenes.

William Mulready was born in Ennis, County Clare. Early in his life, in 1792, the family moved to London, where he was able to get an education and was taught painting well enough so that he was accepted at the Royal Academy School at the age of fourteen.

Many of his early pictures show landscapes, before he started to build a reputation as a genre painter from 1808 on, painting mostly everyday scenes from rural life. Besides this, he also illustrated books. His paintings were very popular in Victorian times. His first painting of importance, "Returning from the Ale House," now in the Tate Gallery, London, under the title "Fair Time," appeared in 1809.

In 1815 he was elected a member of the Royal Academy. In the same year, he also was awarded the French "Légion d'honneur". Mulready's most important pictures are in the South Kensington Museum and in the Tate Gallery. In the former are 33, among them "Hampstead Heath" (1806); "Giving a Bite" (1836); "First Love" (1839); "The Sonnet (1839); "Choosing the Wedding Gown" (1846); and "The Butt" ("Shooting a Cherry") (1848). In the latter are five, including a "Snow Scene." In the National Gallery, Dublin, are "Young Brother" and "The Toy Seller." His "Wolf and the Lamb" is in royal possession.

He died at the age of 77 in Bayswater, London and is buried in the nearby Kensal Green Cemetery where a monument to his memory was erected.

[edit] See also

• List of people on stamps of Ireland

[edit] Publications

• Stephens, Memorials of Mulready (London, 1867)

[edit] External links

• William Mulready

[edit] Artistic

• County Clare Library Famous Artist Born in Ennis
• Emory University's Shakespeare Illustrated Mulready's Seven Ages of Man
• National Portrait Gallery, London Portraits of, and by, William Mulready
• Tate Collection, UK Works by William Mulready

[edit] Philatelic

• 1d Mulready Letter Sheet
• 2d Mulready Letter Sheet
• Mulready Stationery Envelopes, Letter Sheets, Parodies and Exhibit Pages
• National Postal Museum, Washington, D.C. Stamps That Changed the World

[edit] Other

• Kensal Green Cemetery Tour Find the Mulready Tomb