kind. … Not yet twenty-one, yet her technical attainments, we are disposed to think, are nearly as great as those of any other vocalist in this country, with the slight reservations and allowances we shall make as we proceed. She is beautiful in her person and features … above the middle height, slender, and delicately formed; her dark hair and eyes give animation and contrast to a clear complexion, and sensibility illuminates every change of sentiment that she has to express. … Her compass is A to D or E, eighteen or nineteen notes.’ At that time her voice was not evenly produced. Her execution was facile, ‘no difficulties appal or embarrass her. Even in Rossini's most rapid passages she multiplies the notes in a way few mature singers would attempt.’ A plate is given to show her embellishments in Rossini's ‘Tu che accendi.’ ‘Her manner, exuberantly florid, is the fault of her age, and in some sort, of her attainment. … She imitates Catalani …’
Miss Paton's father had insisted on her breaking off an engagement with a young medical man named Blood, who went upon the stage for a short time under the name of Davis. Afterwards she became on 7 May 1824 the wife of Lord William Pitt Lennox [q. v.], but from him she freed herself by divorce in the Scottish courts in 1831. In the same year she married Joseph Woods, a tenor singer.
Her reputation as a dramatic singer was greatly enhanced when, in 1824, she took the part of Agatha in ‘Der Freischütz.’ A still greater triumph was her impersonation of Rezia in ‘Oberon,’ of which Weber conducted the sixteen rehearsals, besides the performance on 12 April 1826, two months before his death. ‘She was created for the part;’ ‘her enthusiasm for the music was great,’ he wrote; ‘she sang exquisitely even at the first rehearsal.’ The ‘Harmonicon’ declared that Miss Paton never sang with more ability and effect. From that time Miss Paton was considered at the head of her profession. She was not excelled by any contemporary in her mastery of the art of singing.
In 1831 she was engaged at the King's Theatre, where she sang in ‘La Cenerentola’ and other Italian operas. Returning to Drury Lane, she took the part in 1832 of Alice in ‘Robert le Diable.’ She then went to reside at Woolley Moor, Yorkshire, with her husband. In 1840 they visited America for the first time. After their return Mrs. Wood retired to a convent for a year, but she reappeared at the Princess's Theatre and at concerts, in which her husband was also engaged. They finally settled at Bulcliffe Hall, near Chapelthorpe, and it was there that Mrs. Wood died, on 21 July 1864, aged 62. She left a son, born in 1838.
Her sisters were singers. Isabella made her début at Miss Paton's benefit at Covent Garden, 1824, as Letitia Hardy. Eliza sang at the Haymarket in 1833.
[Burke's Landed Gentry, 1894 (Wood of Woolley Moor); Grove's Dict. ii. 672, iv. 745; Parke's Memoirs, ii. 203; Oxberry's Dramatic Biography, v. 19; Harmonicon, 1823, passim; Quarterly Musical Mag. v. 191; Weber's Life; Busby's Anecdotes, i. 46; Musical Recollections of the last Half Century, i. 68, 133; Aus Moscheles Leben, i. 120, 211; Clayton's Queens of Song, vol. ii.]
PATON, RICHARD (1716?–1791), marine painter, was born in London about 1716. He is said to have been of humble birth, and to have been found as a poor boy on Tower Hill by Admiral Sir Charles Knowles [q. v.], who took him to sea. For many years he held an appointment in the excise office, and at the time of his decease was one of the general accountants. How he acquired his art training is unknown. The earliest record of him as an artist is in 1762, when he exhibited with the Society of Artists two pictures, ‘The Action of Admiral Boscawen off Cape Lagos,’ engraved by William Woollett, and ‘The Taking of the Foudroyant, in the Mediterranean, by the Monmouth,’ which was etched by himself. These were followed from 1763 to 1770 by nineteen other works; but in 1771, after a very angry correspondence, he resigned his membership. About 1774 he painted four pictures representing the victory of the Russian fleet under Count Orloff over the Turkish fleet at Cheshme Bay in 1770, and soon afterwards five views of the royal dockyards, now at Hampton Court, in all of which the figures were painted by John Hamilton Mortimer, A.R.A. [q. v.] In 1776 he exhibited at the Royal Academy views of Rochester and of Deptford dockyard, and between that year and 1780 thirteen other pictures of naval engagements and marine subjects.
Three of his pictures are in Greenwich Hospital: ‘The Battle off Cape Barfleur between the French and Combined English and Dutch Fleets, 19 May 1692;’ ‘The Defeat of the Spanish Fleet near Cape St. Vincent by Admiral Rodney, 16 Jan. 1780;’ and ‘The Action off Sicily between the English and Spanish Fleets, 11 Aug. 1718.’ In the Guildhall, London, are four pictures by him of the defence and relief of Gibraltar, and another of the lord mayor proceeding by water to Westminster, in which the figures are by
