HOWARD, HENRY, R.A., professor of painting in the Royal Academy, was born on the 31st of January 1769. He was a pupil of Philip Reinagle, R.A., and was admitted a student at the Royal Academy in March 1788. As a student his success was very decided ; and it was his fortune, for the first time in the history of the insti tution, to receive on the same occasion, December 10th 1790, two of the highest premiums-the first silver medal for the best drawing from the life, and tho gold medal for the best historical painting; and he at the same time received the special commendations of the president, Sir Joehna Reynolds, fur the excellence of his historical design. In the following year he visited Italy, and at Rome he and Flaxmau pursued their studies in conjunction.
On his return to England Mr. Howard was employed to make drawings for the Dilettanti Society, and designs for book-plates ; be also painted some portraits. Ills first contributions to the Royal Academy, !Knee. and Anchises' and the Planets drawing Light from the Sun' (1796), were much admired by persons of classic tastes; and from this time for more than half a century Mr. Howard continued, without a single intermission, to send to each annual exhibition some paintings almost invariably of the classes of which these may be taken as the types. In fact the enormous number of pictures which he xecutod, though illustrating themes from the Scriptures, and from Greek, Roman, Italian, and English history, poetry and mythology, have all or nearly all the same character, for which perhaps there is no word so descriptive as that of His figures are almost always well drawn; of elegant proportions; have the established chus.io' contour and expression, or absence of expression ; are clothed, or partly clothed, in the same conventional drapery' which nymphs and goddesses, whatever their position, wear eo easily and gracefully in pictures and statues', despite the ordinary laws of gravity, which however may fairly be regarded as not applying to such beinse; and they are so arranged as to sfford a pieasing flow of line and an agreeable conformity to the rules of pictorial composition; while the colouring, if not rich and glowing, is cha.sto and harmonious. They were in fact good 'academic' pictures, and they are no more. Always strictly a' tentive to the proprieties, there is nothing in any one of his works, whether it be a' Venus rising from the Sea,' a ' hove animating the Statue of Pygmalion,' or a cold ' Primeval Hope,' that can by any chance give the slightest shock to the nerves of tho most susceptible— who is not shocked by any representation of undraped female beauty. But if his "bevies of fair forma "are never like those of Etty trembling en the verge of the voluptuous, they never like then are buoyant with the exuberance of life and youthful vigour—never exhibit tho free abandon of riant enjoyment and unrestrained spontaneous action.
They are works to be looked at with a certain quiet admiration of the artiste skill, not to seize the attention and linger in the memory. In a word, they are works of taste, not of genius.
Mr. Howard was elected an associate of tho Royal Academy in 1801 ; in 1808 he became) an academician ; and in 1811 be was appointed secretary to the Academy, an office he held till his death, though for some years previously its active duties were performed by an assistant. lie died on the 5th of October 1847.
The titles of a few of his pictures will sufficiently indicate the range and character of his subjects. Of his scriptural paintings, the moat ambitious are 'Christ Blessing Little Children,' placed as an altar. piece in the chapel in Little Berwick Street ; 'the Angel appearing to St. Peter in Prison ;' and 'Aaron staying the Plague.' The great bulk of his pictures as already mentioned are however those in which the subjects were chosen with a view to afford the opportunity of painting the nude female form; and to this class his best pictures belong. The most admired of there is his 'Birth of Venus,' painted in 1829. Others are 'The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche," l'roaer pine,' and like stock subjects; but a large number consists of figures' floating in the air with such titles as the 'Pleiades.' the ' Solar System,' the 'Circling Hours,"Morning,"Night,' &c. Beside numerous pictures from Spenser, his favourite poet, Milton, Shakapere (espe cially the 'Midsummer Night's Dream ') &o., be painted many as 'Fairies on the Sea-shore,' with merely fancy titles; and he also painted many portraits. •It deserves to be mentioned as illustrative of his life-long devotion to his art, that not only did be continuo to paint pictures for the Academy exhibitions up to the year of his death, but that on the occasion of the first cartoon competition in 1843, he did not shrink from entering the lists, though then seventy three years of age, and in the rude encounter with the young artists fresh from the schools, his cartoon, Man besot by contending Passions,' carried cif one of the premiums of 100l.
In 1814 Mr. Howard won the prize for a medal for the Patriotic Society, and thenceforward he was generally employed in preparing the designs for the medals and great seals required by the govern ment. He also made numerous designs for works to be executed in silver, chiefly for the Immo of Rundell and Bridge. Frank Howard, the son of Mr. Howard, is well known as an able designer, and the author of several elementary works on art. To a brief memoir of his father, contributed by him to the Athensenrn ' for November 13, 1847, we are indebted for most of the facts in this notice.