THOMAS

See also:

• THOMAS ROWLANDSON (1756–1827)

ROWLANDSON (1756–1827)  , English caricaturist, was born in Old Jewry, London, in July 1756, the son of a tradesman or city merchant . On leaving school he became a student in the Royal Academy . At the age of sixteen he resided and studied for a time in Paris, and he afterwards made frequent tours on the Continent, enriching his portfolios with numerous jottings of life and character . In 1775 he exhibited at the Royal Academy a drawing of " Delilah visiting Samson in Prison," and in the following years he was represented by various portraits and landscapes . Possessed of much facility of execution and a ready command of the figure, he was spoken of as a promising student; and had he continued his early application he would have made his mark as a painter . But by the death of his aunt, a French lady, he fell heir to a sum of 7000, plunged into the dissipations of the town and was known to sit at the gaming-table for thirty-six hours at a stretch . In time poverty overtook him; and the friendship and example of Gillray and Bunbury seem to have suggested caricature as a means of filling an empty purse . His drawing of Vauxhall, shown in the Royal Academy exhibition of 1784, had been engraved by Pollard, and the print was a success . Rowlandson was largely employed by Rudolph Ackermann, the art publisher, who in 1809-I1 issued in his Poetical Magazine "The Schoolmaster's Tour "—a series of plates with illustrative verses by Dr William Coombe . They were the most popular of the artist's works . Again engraved by Rowlandson himself in 1812, and issued under the title of the " Tour of Dr Syntax in Search of the Picturesque," they had attained a fifth edition by 1813, and were followed in 182o by " Dr Syntax in Search of Consolation," and in 1821 by the " Third Tour of Dr Syntax in Search of a Wife." The same Collaboration of designer, author and publisher appeared in the English " Dance of Death," issued in 1814—16, one of the most admirable of Rowlandson's series, and in the " Dance of Life," 1822 . Rowlandson also illustrated Smollett, Goldsmith and Sterne, and his designs will be found in The Spirit of the Public Journals (1825), The English Spy (1825), and The Humourist (1831) .

He died in London, after a prolonged illness, on the 22nd of

April 1827 . Rowlandson's designs were usually executed in outline with the reed-pen, and delicately washed with colour . They were then etched by the artist on the copper, and afterwards aqua-tintedusually by a professional engraver, the impressions being finally coloured by hand . As a designer he was characterized by the utmost facility and ease of draughtsmanship, and the quality of his art suffered from this haste and over-production . He was a true if not a very refined humorist, dealing less frequently than his fierce contemporary Gillray with politics, but commonly touching, in a rather gentle spirit, the various aspects and incidents of social life . His most artistic work is to be found among the more careful drawings of his earlier period; but even among the exaggerated caricature of his later time we find hints that this master of the humorous might have attained to the beautiful had he so willed . See J . Grego, Rowlandson the Caricaturist, a Selection from his Works, &c . (2 vols., r88o) .