Edward Matthew Ward
1816–1879 · Victorian English history painter
Edward Matthew Ward (Pimlico, 1816 - Windsor, 1879) was a British painter of the Victorian period who specialised in historical genre. He is best known for his murals in the Palace of Westminster, which depict episodes of British history from the English Civil War to the Glorious Revolution.
As a youth he illustrated Rejected Addresses, written by his uncles James and Horace Smith, and in 1830 he won the silver palette of the Society of Arts. With support from David Wilkie and Francis Chantrey he entered the Royal Academy Schools. He belonged to The Clique, led by Richard Dadd, and saw himself as a follower of Hogarth and Wilkie. His early works, set in the eighteenth century, gave way to seventeenth-century episodes shaped by his friend, the historian Thomas Babington Macaulay, and to subjects from the French Revolution, such as Josephine signing the act of her divorce.
In the 1850s he clashed with the Pre-Raphaelites, especially Millais, whose style he considered un-British. His Charlotte Corday beat Millais's Ophelia for a prize at Liverpool, provoking much debate. This reputation led to a commission for eight scenes in the corridor leading to the House of Commons, which set Royalist and Parliamentary episodes of the Civil War face to face.
During the 1860s he continued producing Hogarthian versions of British history, such as Hogarth's Studio in 1739. Towards the end of the 1870s he suffered a painful illness and depression, and died by suicide in 1879. His legacy rests mainly on his parliamentary murals and on the popularity of historical painting in his time.
Works (15)
Painted by Edward Matthew Ward in 1853, this history picture captures the moment Joséphine signs her divorce from Napoleon, arranged so he could remarry and secure an heir. Ward sets the scene at the Tuileries Palace in December 1809, presenting her resignation as a painful sacrifice for France. Napoleon stands apart on the left, brooding, surrounded by members of the imperial court. The work was shown at the Royal Academy in London and is considered one of Ward's best-known historical scenes.
A portrait of the Irish painter Daniel Maclise, celebrated for his history paintings in the Victorian era, made in 1846 by fellow artist Edward Matthew Ward. Maclise moved in the circle of Charles Dickens, Clarkson Stanfield and Edwin Landseer, and Ward belonged to the group known as The Clique. Shown at the Royal Academy in 1847, it was later engraved for The Art Journal.
Macaulay is shown seated in his study at The Albany, in Piccadilly, while he was working on his major work, The History of England. He reportedly found the sittings tedious. The portrait is one of a series of seven paintings by Ward showing famous writers in their studies.
A history painting set in Change Alley, the financial street of London's City, at the height of the South Sea Bubble in 1720, shortly before the company's collapse. Ward adopts a satirical approach in the manner of Hogarth, presenting speculation as a crowded scene of greed and anxiety. Painted over a century later, it reflects the railway mania of the 1840s, giving it a moral reading of financial risk. It was shown at the Royal Academy in 1847.
Painted in 1841 by Edward Matthew Ward, this canvas recreates an episode of the French Revolution: in 1794 Napoleon, then a brigade general in the revolutionary army, was briefly jailed in Nice because of his ties to Robespierre's government, which had just fallen. Ward, a young artist associated with The Clique, built much of his career on historical scenes. The Duke of Wellington bought the picture for his London home, Apsley House, where it remains among several works depicting his former enemy. An 1845 version is held by the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath.
Painted in 1853, this canvas recreates the execution of James Graham, Marquess of Montrose, the Scottish Royalist leader, at the Mercat Cross in Edinburgh in 1650, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. He stands on the scaffold before being hanged by his Covenanter opponents. Ward conceived it as a companion to a scene of the Earl of Argyll, aiming for a balance between the two rival sides of the seventeenth century, in consultation with Thomas Babington Macaulay.
Painted in 1856 by the British artist Edward Matthew Ward, this canvas imagines a moment from the youth of the Romantic poet Lord Byron, drawn from his unrequited love for Mary Ann Chaworth. Byron stands outside Annesley Hall in Nottinghamshire, peering from the darkness into a brightly lit ballroom. The work was shown at the Royal Academy in 1856 and returned to exhibition decades later. It is now held by the Manchester Art Gallery.
Ward places the painter William Hogarth in his London studio at the height of his success. Hogarth has just finished his portrait of Captain Thomas Coram and, with him, hides behind the large canvas while visiting children from the Foundling Hospital comment on it. The work was shown at the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition of 1863.
Edward Matthew Ward's history painting shows a moment from Tudor England: the Earl of Leicester, a royal favourite, and his wife Amy Robsart, a marriage kept secret without Elizabeth I's consent. The setting is Cumnor Place, near Oxford. Ward drew on Walter Scott's novel Kenilworth, which dramatises their hidden romance and Robsart's mysterious death, though Scott places these events in the 1570s, somewhat later than they occurred. The work was shown at the Royal Academy in 1866.
Painted by Edward Matthew Ward in 1854, this large history canvas shows the Scottish Covenanter leader, the Earl of Argyll, sleeping peacefully in Edinburgh Castle on the eve of his execution. He had been condemned for leading the 1685 Argyll's Rising against James VII. Ward first intended the work for the rebuilt Houses of Parliament, but its size meant it could not be hung there. It was shown at the Royal Academy in 1854 and is paired with a companion piece on Montrose.
Where to see the work
- Royal Collection · 2
- National Portrait Gallery London · 2
- Salford Museum and Art Gallery Salford · 2
- National Gallery of Victoria City of Melbourne · 1
- Tate London · 1
- National Gallery London · 1
- Apsley House London · 1
- Manchester Art Gallery Manchester · 1
- York Art Gallery York · 1
- Southampton City Art Gallery Southampton · 1
Curiosities
A secret marriage
In 1843 Ward met Henrietta Ward, then eleven years old. They married secretly in May 1848 after an elopement aided by his friend William Wilkie Collins. Her mother never forgave the elopement and disinherited her. Collins may have drawn on this story for his 1852 novel Basil. Henrietta became a successful painter and, after her husband's death, a notable art teacher who wrote two memoirs about their life together.
A caricaturist in the family
His son Leslie became a popular caricaturist for Vanity Fair, signing his work with the pseudonym 'Spy'. He later also contributed to the journal The World. A son devoted to caricature contrasts with the seriousness of his father's large historical murals.