DANBY, JOHN (1757–1798), musician, was born (according to the date on his tombstone) in 1757, but nothing is known of his parentage or education. He was probably a member of the Yorkshire family of the same name. He seems to have been connected with the musical performances at Vauxhall and Ranelagh, for which many of his earlier songs were written. At this time he was living at 8 Gilbert's Buildings, Lambeth, but he afterwards moved to 26 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. On 6 March 1785 he was elected a member of the Royal Society of Musicians. Between 1781 and 1794 Danby gained ten prizes from the Catch Club for his glees and canons; his best known composition of the former class, ‘Awake, Æolian lyre,’ gained a prize medal in 1783. Danby, who was a catholic, held the post of organist to the chapel of the Spanish embassy, for which he wrote several masses, motets, and magnificats, which are preserved in the chapel music library. These works are mostly written for two or three parts, and are inferior to his glees, which are some of the best of their kind. During the latter part of his life he lost the use of his limbs, from having slept in a damp bed. A concert was given for his benefit at Willis's Rooms on 16 May 1798, but at half-past eleven the same night Danby died at Upper John Street, Fitzroy Square. He was buried near the south wall of the western part of Old St. Pancras churchyard. The inscription on his tombstone is now nearly illegible, but it was printed in Roffe's ‘British Monumental Inscriptions’ (i. No. 44), in the appendix to which a sketch of the grave is given.
Danby published several songs; the following are his most important works: Glees, book i. [op. 1 ?]; ‘La Guida alla Musica Vocale,’ op. 2; Glees, book ii. op. 3; book 3, op. 4; ‘La Guida della Musica Instrumentale,’ op. 5; Glees, op. 6. The last collection of glees was published posthumously by subscription for the benefit of his widow and four infant children.
[Grove's Dict. of Music, i. 429 a; Europ. Mag. xxxiii. 359; Gent. Mag. lxviii. i. 448; Georgian Era, iv. 521; Morning Herald, 18 May 1798; Danby's Works; information from the Rev. R. B. Sankey.]
DANBY, THOMAS (1817?–1886), painter, was the younger son of Francis Danby [q. v.] He followed his father to the continent about 1830, and, the latter being unable or unwilling to support him, young Danby, though only a lad of thirteen, earned his living by copying pictures at the Louvre. He thus became an earnest student of Claude, whose aerial effects he sought to imitate. Returning to England about the same time as his father, he first exhibited at the British Institution in 1841, and afterwards frequently at the Academy. He lived much with Paul Falconer Poole, and imbibed not a little of his romantic feeling for nature. The subjects of his landscapes were usually taken from Welsh scenery; his pictures for the most part were not, like his father's, ideal compositions, but actual scenes pervaded by a truly poetical spirit. ‘He was always trying,’ says the writer of the obituary notice in the ‘Times,’ ‘to render his inner heart's feeling of a beautiful view rather than the local facts received on the retina.’ He came, it is said, within one vote of election as A.R.A., but, failing eventually to attain Academy honours, devoted himself in his latter years chiefly to water-colour painting. He was elected an associate of the Society of Painters in Water-colours in 1867, and a full member in 1870: and until his death his contributions were among the chief ornaments of the society's exhibitions. He died of a chest complaint, terminating in dropsy, 25 March 1886.
[Times, 30 March 1886.]
DANBY, WILLIAM (1752–1833), miscellaneous writer, was the only son of William Danby, D.D., of Swinton Park, Yorkshire, by Mary, daughter of Gilbert Affleck of Dalham, Suffolk. He was the representative of that branch of the ancient family of Danby which acquired the lordship of Masham and Mashamshire in the reign of Henry VIII, by marriage with one of the heiresses of the Lords Scrope of Masham. In 1784 he served the office of high sheriff of Yorkshire. He almost entirely rebuilt his mansion of Swinton from designs by James Wyatt and John Foss of Richmond. It includes a handsome library and a richly furnished museum of minerals. Southey, in describing a tour which he made in 1829, says: ‘The most interesting person whom I saw during this expedition was Mr. Danby of Swinton Park, a man of very large fortune, and now very old. He gave me a book of his with the not very apt title of “Ideas and Realities,” detached thoughts on various subjects. It is a book in which his neighbours could find nothing to amuse them, or which they thought it behoved them to admire; but I have seldom seen a more amiable or a happier disposition portrayed than is there delineated’ (Life and Correspondence, vi. 78). Danby died at Swinton Park on 4 Dec. 1833. He was twice married: first to Caroline, daughter of Henry Seymour, and secondly to Anne Holwell, second daughter of William Gater; but left
