William Armfield Hobday

William Armfield Hobday (1771 – 17 February 1831) was an English portrait painter and miniaturist whose clientele included royalty and the Rothschild family.

Hobday was born in Birmingham, the eldest of 4 sons of Samuel Hobday (1746–1816), a rich Birmingham spoon manufacturer. Showing a capacity for drawing, he was sent to London when still a boy, and articled to an engraver named William Barney, with whom he remained for six years, studying at the same time in the Royal Academy schools. He then established himself in Charles Street, near the Middlesex Hospital, as a painter of miniatures and watercolour portraits, and commenced to exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1794. He was fortunate in soon securing a fashionable clientele, married Elizabeth Ivory (from Worcester), and in 1800 moved to Holles Street, Cavendish Square, where, supported largely by his father, he lived for a short time in a recklessly expensive manner.

In 1804 he left London for Bristol, where for some years he was largely employed in painting the portraits of officers embarking for the Peninsular War. Though Hobday earned large sums, he continued to be extravagant and in financial difficulties. In 1817, after the war ended, Hobday returned to the capital, and took a large house in Broad Street, hoping to renew his earlier artistic and social connections. In this he was disappointed even though patronised by N. M. Rothschild, for whom he painted a family group at the price of a thousand guineas. In 1821 he moved to 54 Pall Mall, which had large galleries attached to it and, after a disastrous speculative venture in a panoramic exhibition, called the "Poecilorama" at the Egyptian Hall, opened these galleries for the sale of pictures on commission. Though supported by all the leading English and many French artists, the venture proved a complete failure, and in 1820 Hobday went bankrupt.

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