William Armfield Hobday
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[edit] Biography
William Armfield Hobday (1771–1831) was a portrait painter and miniaturist. He was the son of Samuel Hobday(1746–1816), a rich Birmingham spoon manufacturer. William Armfield Hobday's more important clients included the pioneer vaccinologist Dr Edward Jenner, King George IV of the United Kingdom (the portrait last being sold at Christie’s in 1911) and the Rothschild banking family of England (family portrait 1821). William Armfield Hobday first married Elizabeth Ivory of Worcester, and one of his sons by that marriage, known as George Armfield Smith (1808–1893), became a celebrated dog painter. George Armfield was married three times and had 13 children, largely by his third wife. One of his sons by that last marriage, also named George, followed in his father’s footsteps as a painter of animals, especially dogs. William’s daughter by his first marriage, Harriet Eliza, married Robert Lucas de Pearsall (1795–1856), the English composer. In 1831, William Armfield married Maria Pearce Ustonson (born Maria Pearce in Exeter in 1784),whose husband before William Armfield, Charles Ustonson (1775-1816), was the son of Onesimus Ustonson (died 1810), a fishing-tackle maker and supplier of Fleet Street, London, and the inventor of the first multiplying fishing reel.
[edit] External links
- [1] Detailed account of Hobday's life by his great-great grandson
- [2] A Brush with History - the portrait of Jenner at the Royal Society of Medicine
- [3] Hobday's paintings in the Rothschild archive
- [4] G.A. Smith's paintings and biography at Rehs Galleries
- [5] An article from the Independent concerning Onesimus Ustonson
