MULREADY, WILLIAM Irish subject painter, was born at Ennis, Co. Clare, on April 3o, 1786. When he was about five years old his father, a leather-breeches maker by trade, removed to London. In 1800 he was admitted a student of the Academy, and two years later he gained the silver palette of the Society of Arts. He was associated with John Varley, the eccentric water-colour painter and drawing-master, whom he assisted in the tuition of his pupils, who included Cox, Fielding, Linnell, William Hunt, and Turner of Oxford. At 18 he married a sister of Varley's, and at 24 he was the father of four sons. The marriage was unhappy, and the pair separated before many years. He "tried his hand at everything," as he said, "from a miniature to a panorama." He painted portraits, taught drawing, and up till 1809 designed illustrations to a series of children's penny books.
Mulready had a special aptitude for genre-painting, and in 1809 produced the "Carpenter's Shop," and in 1811 the "Barber's Shop," pictures influenced by the example of Wilkie and the Dutch painters. In 1813 he exhibited his "Punch," a more original and
spontaneous work, and two years later his "Idle Boys" procured his election as A.R.A. Next year he became R.A., and showed his "Fight Interrupted." It was followed by the "Wolf and the Lamb" (1820), the "Convalescent" (1822), "Interior of an Eng lish Cottage" (1828), "Dogs of Two Minds" (1830), the "Seven Ages" (1838), and in 1839 and 1840 by the "Sonnet and First Love," two of the most perfect and poetical of the artist's works. In 1840 he designed an allegorically covered postal envelope (the "Mulready envelope," soon discontinued) for Rowland Hill, and a set of illustrations to The Vicar of Wakefield, which were suc ceeded by his paintings of the "Whistonian Controversy" "Choosing the Wedding Gown" (1846), and "Sophia and Bur chell Haymaking" (1849). He died on July 7, 1863.