FRANCIS

See also:

• FRANCIS DANBY (1793-1861)

DANBY (1793-1861)  , English painter, was born in the south of Ireland on the 16th of November 1793 . His father farmed a small property he owned near Wexford, but his death caused the family to remove to Dublin, while Francis was still a schoolboy . He began to practice drawing at the Royal Dublin Society's schools; and under an erratic young artist named O'Connor he began painting landscape . Danby also made acquaintance with George Petrie, and all three left for London together in 1813 . This expedition, undertaken with very in-adequate funds, quickly came to an end, and they had to get home again by walking . At Bristol they made a pause, and Danby, finding he could get trifling sums for water-colour drawings, remained there working diligently and sending to the London exhibitions pictures of importance . There his large pictures in oil quickly attracted attention . " The Upas Tree " (1820) and " The Delivery of the Israelites " (1825) brought him his election as an associate of the Royal Academy . He left Bristol for London, and in 1828 exhibited his " Opening of the Sixth Seal " at the British Institution, receiving from that body a prize of 200 guineas; and this picture was followed by two others from the Apocalypse . He suddenly left London, declaring that he would never live there again, and that the Academy, instead of aiding him, had, somehow or other, used him badly . Some insurmountable domestic difficulty overtook him also, and for eleven or twelve years he lived on the Lake of Geneva, a Bohemian with boat-building fancies, painting only now and then . He returned to England in 1841, when his sons, James and Thomas, both artists, were growing up .

Other pictures by him were " The

Golden Age " and " The Evening Gun," the first begun before he left England, the second painted after his return; he had taken up his abode at Exmouth, where he died on the 9th of February 1861 .