Page:Dictionary of Artists of the English School (1878).djvu/133

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for whom the managers of the theatre gave a benefit.

DALTON. Richard, draftsman and engraver. Born about 1720, at Deane, in Cumberland, of which place his father was the rector. He was apprenticed to a coach painter in Clerkenwell. After quit- ting his master he went to Rome to study art, with the intention to practise as a por- trait painter. Here meeting Lord Charle- mont, he agreed to accompany him to Greece in 1749. Upon his return he was appointed librarian to the Prince of Wales. In 1763 George III. sent him to Italy to make a collection of drawings, medals, &c., and on his return appointed him keeper of the royal drawings and medals, an office for which he was well fitted. On the death of Knapton in 1778 his Majesty appointed him surveyor of the royal pictures. He never possessed much power as an artist or contributed to the Academy Exhibitions, though he was an exhibitor with the Society of Artists at Spring Gardens. He drew and engraved some views to illustrate his travels, and made some engravings from the Holbein drawings in the royal collection. He published a collection of prints from the antique statues, a few of which, some dated 1744, he etched himself. He also published the 'Ceremonies and Manners of the Turks,' and there is by him an etching ad vivum of Sir Joshua Reynolds when young. He was an active, but not, it is said, an estimable man. He was a member of the Artists' Committee appointed in 1755 to establish a royal aca- demy. He was also treasurer and director of the Society of Artists in 1765, but did not long hold that office. He died at his apartments in St James's Palace, Feb- ruary 7, 1791.

DAMER. The Hon. Anne Seymour, amateur. She was the only child of Field-Marshall the Right Hon. Henry Seymour Conway, brother to the first Marquess of Hertford, and was born 1748. She married, in 1767, the Hon. John Darner, the eldest son of the first Lord Milton, but her mar- riage proved unhappy. Her eccentric, restless husband shot himself in 1776, and from that time his childless widow devoted herself to the study of art, to which she became enthusiastically attached, and was distinguished by her attainments as a sculptor. She was taught by Ceracchi— who was afterwards guillotined in Paris as an accomplice in a plot to assassinate Buonaparte—and by the elder Bacon, and travelled in France, Italy, and Spain for her improvement She was a frequent honorary exhibitor at the Royal Academy from 1785 to 1818. She modelled her designs herself, and also, it is admitted, worked on the marble with her own hands; but the finish of her work in this material shows that she must have been assisted by a skilled artist. Her best works are a statue of George III, 8 ft. high, at the Register Office, Edinburgh ; her own statue, and a bust of Sir Joseph Banks, at the British Museum; and the colossal heads of the 'Thames' and 'Isis ' at Henley Bridge. She executed also many clever busts— that of the Countess of Aylesbury, her mother, in Sundridge Church, Kent, and of Viscountess Melbourne, at Panshanger. She was mistress of the French and Italian languages, and had some knowledge of Latin; and was distinguished by her talent as an amateur actress. She was also a determined politician of the Liberal school. She died in Upper Brook Street in her 80th year, on May 28, 1828, and by her own desire was buried at Sundridge, with her sculptor's tools and apron and the ashes of a favourite dog in her coffin. Lord Orford, her cousin, left her Strawberry Hill, where she resided till 1810, with a legacy of 20001. a year for its maintenance. In her early travels she had made notes of what she had seen, with the intent to pub- lish them ; but on her death these, her cor- respondence with Lord Orford, and her other papers and correspondence, including her father's letters—which she had also purposed to publish—were, by her order, destroyed.

DANBY, Francis, A.R.A., landscape painter. Was born November 16, 1793, near Wexford, the son of a small proprietor and farmer in that neighbourhood. When he was of an age to be trained to some oc- cupation his family had removed to Dublin, and he had lost his father. He became a student in the Royal Dublin Society's Schools, and, showing a great desire to follow art, he obtained the approval of his widowed mother. He studied for a time with O'Connor, and in 1812 exhibited at Dublin his first picture, 'Landscape, Even- ing.' In 1813, accompanied by George Petrie, the future president of the Hiber- nian Academy, both having made some small savings, determined to visit London. O'Connor was also of the party; but their means were soon exhausted, and they started on foot, penniless, for Bristol, on their way home. By the sale of some drawings there he enabled his friend O'Connor to return to Dublin; but he determined to remain, and up to 1824 ap- pears to have resided at Bristol.

He exhibited in 1817 his first work at the Royal Academy ; in 1821, his "Disappoint- ed Love;' in 1822, 'Clearing up after a Shower;' and in 1824, his 'Sunset after a Storm at Sea.' His 'Upas, or Poison-tree of Java,' a highly poetic work, appeared in the British Institution in 1820, and is now in the South Kensington Museum. In

1825 he exhibited at the Academy 'The

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