MACLISE, DANIEL (1806-187o), Irish painter, was born at Cork, the son of a Highland soldier. For two years he worked in a bank before going to study in the Cork school of art. In 1825' he happened to see Sir Walter Scott, who was travelling in Ireland, in a bookseller's shop, and he made a surreptitious sketch of the great man, which he afterwards lithographed. The sketch was exceedingly popular, and the artist received many commis sions for portraits. He refused to accept help for the purpose of study but, by economy, saved enough to enable him to leave for London. There he made a lucky hit by a sketch of the younger Kean, which, like his portrait of Scott, was lithographed and published. He entered the Academy schools in 1828, and carried off the highest honours. In 1829 he exhibited for the first time in the Royal Academy. Later he painted chiefly subject and historical pictures, with occasional portraits. In 1835 the "Chiv alric Vow of the Ladies and the Peacock" procured his election as associate of the Academy, of which he became full member in 1840.
He designed the illustrations for several of Dickens's Christ mas books, and between 183o and 1836 contributed to Fraser's Magazine, under the pseudonym of Alfred Croquis, a remarkable series of portraits of the literary and other celebrities of the time, afterwards published as the Maclise Portrait Gallery (1871). In 1858 Maclise commenced work on the "Meeting of Wellington and Blucher," on the walls of Westminster Palace. It was begun in fresco, a process which proved unmanageable. Maclise then studied in Berlin the new method of "water-glass" painting, and carried out the subject and its companion, the "Death of Nelson," in that medium. He died on April 25, 187o.
A memoir of Maclise, by his friend W. J. O'Driscoll, was published in 1871.