the monument to Garrick in Westminster Abbey. He also designed transparencies—one for Rundle & Bridge on the occasion of the jubilee of George III (1810), and two in 1814 to celebrate the peace. One of the latter was for the ‘Temple of Concord’ in Hyde Park, and the other for a fête at Carlton House.
In 1815 Stothard went over to Paris with Chantrey and others, and visited the Louvre before the dispersion of Napoleon's spoils. In 1817 and 1818 respectively he exhibited ‘San Souci’ and ‘Fête Champêtre,’ in which the influence of Watteau is perceptible. They were followed in 1819 by the illustrations to ‘Boccaccio’ (published 1825) already referred to. In 1821 he exhibited ‘The Vintage’ (now in the National Gallery), a refined Bacchanalian composition with figures of larger size than he usually introduced into his easel pictures. It was in this year that he sustained a severe shock from the sudden death of his son, Charles Alfred. This is said to have had a permanent effect on his spirits, but in the next year he executed his most important decorative work, if we except the staircase at Burghley. Between 4 June and 1 Aug. 1822 he painted the cupola of the upper hall of the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh (now occupied by the Signet Library), with Apollo, the muses, orators, and poets, for which he received three hundred guineas or more. In 1824 appeared ‘Venus with Cupid, attended by the Graces,’ his last contribution of importance to the exhibitions of the Royal Academy. In 1825 his wife died, and in 1826 he lost his lifelong friend, Flaxman, who had in early life been attracted to him by the sight of some of his book illustrations in a shop window. His last important designs were for the decoration of the drawing-room, the great staircase, and the throne-room of Buckingham Palace. The subjects for the first were allegorical, and for the others the wars of the roses. They were to have been executed in sculpture, but with the death of George IV in 1830 the scheme fell through. In spite of failing strength he still went on working, his principal effort being the drawing for ‘The Flitch of Bacon,’ a companion to the ‘Canterbury Pilgrims,’ which was engraved by J. H. Watt, and published in 1832. He continued to walk out alone, in spite of his weakness and deafness, till the close of the autumn of 1833, when he was knocked over by a carriage. He sustained no apparent injury from the accident, but he never recovered from the effects of it, and died without any actual disease at his house, 28 Newman Street, on 27 April 1834. He was buried in Bunhill Fields.
Stothard married, in 1783, Rebecca Watkins, by whom he had in all eleven children, of whom six survived infancy. The eldest son, Thomas, was accidentally shot by a schoolfellow when sixteen. The next son, Charles Alfred [q. v.], is noticed separately. The third son, Henry, who was intended for a sculptor, gained the first medal in the antique school at the Royal Academy, and was a pupil of Flaxman; but, having been incapacitated by paralysis, he had to give up his profession, and in 1840, through Queen Adelaide, gained admission to the Charterhouse, where he died on 26 Feb. 1847, aged 56. A younger son, Alfred Joseph, was known as a medallist; he executed medallions of George IV, Byron, Canning, and Sir Walter Scott, exhibiting twenty works at the academy between 1821 and 1845; he died on 6 Oct. 1864, aged 71.
The works of art in the painter's possession at his death were sold at Christie's in June 1834. They included a hundred of his pictures in oil and upwards of a thousand sketches, which realised about 1,900l. The enormous number of his designs, which are estimated at five thousand (Mrs. Bray says ten thousand), is enough to prove his industry, and it is recorded that even on his wedding day he attended the academy schools, and casually asked a fellow-student to come home and dine with him and his bride in order to celebrate that event. He was a great reader, and never tired of observing nature; and he was fond of hunting butterflies, whose wings he studied for their beautiful arrangements of colour. Stothard's life appears to have been as pure and blameless as the art to which it was devoted. His disposition was retiring, and he did not seek society; but he was justly esteemed by his fellow-artists and his few intimate friends. He paid visits to Archdeacon Markham and other of his friends; he went once to Paris; but his art supplied him with sufficient pleasure to the end of his life. As Leigh Hunt said of him in his last days, ‘an angel dwelt in that tottering house amidst the wintry bowers of white locks, warming it to the last with summer fancies.’
Stothard was not much regarded as a painter in his lifetime; he sent comparatively few pictures to the academy, and most of these were very small; but as a colourist he was always pure, and sometimes lovely. It was as an illustrator and ‘embellisher’ of books that he attained a place which is second to none for invention and for grace. He followed in the wake of Cipriani and
