Henry Howard (artist)

Henry Howard RA (31 January 1769 – 5 October 1847) was an early 19th-century British portrait and history painter.

He was born in London and after being educated at a school in Hounslow, he started studying with the painter Philip Reinagle in 1786. In 1788 he began attending the Royal Academy Schools and was awarded a silver medal for drawing from life and a gold medal for historical painting for his Caractacus Recognising the Dead Body of his Son.

In March 1791, Howard traveled to Italy, France, and Switzerland. In Rome, he met and studied sculpture with John Flaxman and John Deare. In 1792 he painted a Dream of Cain. While abroad he applied to the Royal Academy for a grant after the bankruptcy of his father. Two years later, he returned to Britain by way of Vienna and Dresden. He began instructing Reinagle’s daughter Jane in drawing and married her in 1803. Together they had four daughters and three sons. From 1806 they lived at 50 Newman Street, Westminster, until his death.

In the 1790s Howard painted and drew a variety of subjects from literature, portraits, and drawings of sculpture. In 1795 and 1796, he submitted five such pictures to the Royal Academy, including a sketch from Milton’s Paradise Lost. He illustrated Sharpe’s British Essayists and Du Roveray’s edition of Alexander Pope’s translation of Homer. He also contributed designs for Josiah Wedgwood's pottery. Between 1799 and 1802, he made a series of drawings of sculpture. One series was published by the Dilettanti Society and one was made for the collector Charles Townley, the sculptor John Flaxman, and the Society of Engravers.

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