Stanfield, Clarkson RA

1793

1867

Clarkson Stanfield was born in Sunderland. Showing an aptitude for drawing, he was apprenticed to a heraldic painter in Edinburgh at the age of twelve, but he ran away two years later and, in 1808, persuaded his father to let him go to sea in a collier. In 1812 he was press-ganged into the Royal Navy, but his artistic talents didn’t go to waste; he kept a sketch-book and painted scenery for naval amateur theatricals. He left the sea at the age of 25 and devoted himself full-time to scenery painting. While working in Edinburgh he met David Roberts, then a scenery painter. Both moved to London and, from 1822, Stanfield started working at Drury Lane. In 1834 he gave up scenery painting and devoted himself more or less entirely to easel canvases, although he later carried out some work for Macready and Charles Dickens’s private theatricals. Stanfield exhibited his first picture at the Royal Academy in 1820 and, in 1823, became a Founder Member of the Society of British Artists. He also showed with the British Institution. He exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy for the remainder of his life and was elected Academician, in 1835. He travelled a great deal abroad and most of his marine and landscape paintings are of European subjects. He had formed a life-long friendship with David Roberts, and his other friends included Thackeray, Dickens, Macready and Landseer. Stanfield became an original member of the Garrick Club in 1831, and David Roberts, with Stanfield’s sponsorship, was elected in 1835. Both were involved with the paintings and decoration of the Garrick Club’s King Street premises; Stanfield helped to look after the frames of the Mathews Collection. Stanfield resigned his membership in 1865.