14 Facts About Daniel Maclise

Daniel Maclise was an Irish history painter, literary and portrait painter, and illustrator, who worked for most of his life in London, England.

Daniel Maclise's education was of the plainest kind, but he was eager for culture, fond of reading, and anxious to become an artist.

Daniel Maclise's father placed him in employment, in 1820, in Newenham's Bank, where he remained for two years, before leaving to study at the Cork School of Art.

In 1825 it happened that Sir Walter Scott was travelling in Ireland, and young Daniel Maclise, having seen him in a bookseller's shop, made a surreptitious sketch of the great man, which he afterwards lithographed.

Daniel Maclise entered the Royal Academy schools in 1828, eventually being awarded the highest prizes open to students.

Daniel Maclise exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy in 1829.

Daniel Maclise designed illustrations for several of Dickens's Christmas books and other works.

In 1858, Daniel Maclise commenced one of the two great monumental works of his life, The Meeting of Wellington and Blucher after the Battle of Waterloo, on the walls of Westminster Palace.

Daniel Maclise's vast painting of The Marriage of Strongbow and Aoife hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.

Daniel Maclise began to shun the company in which he formerly delighted, his old buoyancy of spirits was gone, and when, in 1865, the presidency of the Royal Academy was offered to him he declined the honour.

Daniel Maclise died of acute pneumonia on 25 April 1870 at his home 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea.

Daniel Maclise's works are distinguished by powerful intellectual and imaginative qualities, but, in the opinion of Monkhouse, a late Victorian critic, somewhat marred by harsh and dull colouring, by metallic hardness of surface and texture, and by frequent touches of the theatrical in the action and attitudes of the figures.

Daniel Maclise's fame rests most securely on his two greatest works at Westminster.

The Crawford Art Gallery in Cork, Ireland, Maclise's native city, held a major exhibition of his works, Daniel Maclise: Romancing the Past, opened by David Puttnam.