William Clarkson Stanfield
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Clarkson Frederick Stanfield (Dec 3, 1793 – May 18, 1867), English marine painter, was born at Sunderland, the son of James Field Stanfield (1749/50-1824) an Irish-born author, actor and former seaman. Clarkson was named after Thomas Clarkson, the slave trade abolitionist, whom his father knew, and this was the only forename he used, although there is reason to believe Frederick was a second one.
Stanfield probably inherited artistic talent from his mother, who is said to have been an artist but died in 1801. He was briefly apprenticed to a coach decorator in 1806, but left owing to the drunkenness of his master's wife and joined a South Shield's collier to become a sailor. In 1808 he was pressed into the Royal Navy, serving in the guardship Namur at Sheerness. Discharged on health grounds in 1814 he then made a voyage to China in the Indiaman Warley and on return, with many sketches, was engaged in August 1816 as a decorator and scene-painter at the Royalty Theatre in Wellclose Square, London. Along with David Roberts he was afterwards employed at the Coburg theatre, Lambeth, and in 1823 he became a resident scene-painter at the Drury Lane theatre, where he rose rapidly to fame through the huge quantity of spectacular scenery which he produced for that house until 1834. He was especially known for the vast 'moving dioramas' which were highlights of Christmas pantomimes and certain other pieces.
He developed his skills as an easel painter - especially of marine subjects - at the same time, first exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1820 and, after only a few early interruptions, to his death. He was also a founder member of the Society of British Artists (from 1824) and its president for 1829, and exhibited there and at the British Institution, where in 1828 his picture Wreckers off Fort Rouge gained a premium of 50 guineas. He began touring in Britain and abroad in Europe in the 1820s and, having been elected Associate of the Royal Academy in 1832, abandoned scene-painting at Christmas 1834, shortly before becoming full Academician in February 1835. His elevation was in part a result of the interest of William IV who, having admired his St Michael's Mount at the Academy in 1831 (now in the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia), commissioned two works from him of the Opening of New London Bridge (1832) and The Entrance to Portsmouth Harbour. Both remain in the Royal Collection.
Until his death he contributed a long series of powerful and highly popular works to the Academy, both of marine subjects and landscapes from his travels at home and in France, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Ireland. Notable works include:
- the Battle of Trafalgar (1836), executed for the United Service Club
- the Castle of Ischia (1841), now in Sunderland Museum and Art Gallery
- Isola Bella (1841), among the results of a visit to Italy in 1839
- French troops Fording the Magra (1847)
- HMS The Victory Bearing the Body of Nelson Towed into Gibraltar after the Battle of Trafalgar (1853), painted for Sir Samuel Morton Peto at Somerleyton Hall, Suffolk (which is today open to the public)
- The Abandoned (1856; untraced since 1930)
He also executed two notable series of Venetian subjects, one for the former dining room at Bowood House, Wiltshire, for the 3rd Marquess of Landsdowne, the other for the Duchess of Sutherland at Trentham Park, Staffordshire. Neither house survives but some of Stanfield's work for Bowood can still be seen there (the present Bowood House and park, open to the public, is a conversion of the old stable block). He illustrated Heath's Picturesque Annuals for the years 1832-34, and in 1838 published a collection of lithographic views on the Rhine, Moselle and Meuse; forty subjects from both sides of the English Channel were also steel-engraved under the title of Stanfield's Coast Scenery(1836). Among literary works for which he provided illustrations were Captain Marryat's The Pirate and the Three Cutters (1836), Poor Jack(1840) and the lives and works of Lord Byron, George Crabbe, and Johnson, mainly in editions by John Murray.
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. John Ruskin considered his treatment of the sea and clouds of a very high order and called him the 'leader of our English Realists'. Wishing him to be sometimes 'less wonderful and more terrible' he also pointed out the superior merits of his sketched work, especially in watercolour, to the often contrived picturesque qualities of many of his exhibited oils and the watercolours on which published engravings were based.
Stanfield was admired not only for his art but his personal simplicity and a modesty. He was born a Catholic and became increasingly devout in middle life, after the loss in 1838 of his eldest son by his second marriage (to Rebecca Adcock) and then, in the 1850s, both the children of his first marriage (to Mary Hutchinson, who had died in childbirth). His eldest surviving son, George Clarkson Stanfield (1828-78) was also a painter of similar subjects, largely trained by his father. Stanfield died at Hampstead, London, and was buried in Kensal Green Roman Catholic Cemetery.
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
