HOFLAND, THOMAS CHRISTOPHER, was born at Worksop, Nottinghamshire, December 25th, 1777. His father, an extensive cotton-manufacturer, removed to London in 1789, but tho business on which lie had entered failed, and young Holland at the age of eighteeu turned to landscape-painting asa profession. For some time he wise chiefly engaged in teaching drawing in London and its vicinity, wheu he removed to Derby to follow the same pursuit. There about 1S03 he married Mrs. boobs, a lady subsequently well known as an authoress, of whom a notice will ba found below. In 1811 he returned to London with a view to practise as a landscape-painter, but in order to secure an immediate maintenance be for some years painted numerous copies from the pictures exhibited at the British Gallery, of Claude, Poussin, Wilson, Gaineborough, and other eminent masters of the art, which met with ready purchasers, while his original works found few or none. A couple of night-scenes exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1812, obtained him some commissions, and he was enabled gradually to give up the wearisome toil of copying for bread. The literary labours of his excellent wife, it ought to be mentioned, tended in no small degree to remove his pecuniary difficulties.
Holland was steadily securing his position as an artist when ho unfortunately obtained the patronage of the late Duke of Marlborough, who, having lavished a great deal of money on hia seat of White Knights near Reading, was anxious to have a handsomely illustrated description of it. Ile fixed on Holland as the most suitable person to make the drawings, and his wife to write the descriptions; and unluckily the painter was further induced by the duke to make on his own account the engagements with the engravers. The consequence was, that not only did Holland receive no compensation for his own and his wife's labours, but he was called upon to meet the engravers' bills. This affair involved Ilofiaud in pecuniary embarrassments, which it required many years of economy to surmount ; but bie liabili ties were all eventually honourably discharged. From this time Hofiand resided in or near London, pursuing without any remarkable change of circumstance the even tenor of his way. Every summer or
autumn he made the accustomed sketching and angling tour, and every winter and spring he prepared his pictures for the annual exhi bitions. In his sixty-third year he visited Italy, but it was too late to derive professional improvement from hie studies there, though he made a large number of sketches, and on his return painted several pictures of Italian scenery.
The landscapes of Holland had few of the qualities which attract the popular gaze, and he bad to work his way to public favour slowly.
For the most part his pictures were taken from the rivers and lakes of Scotland and Cumberland, of Wales and Ireland; nod the quieter passages of our British river and lake scenery have probably never been given with a more genial appreciation of their true character istics, or a more poetic feeling of their gentler graces. Seldom did lie approach the grand or sterner phases of lakes and mountains, or the marvellous atmospheric phenomena occasionally to be witnessed among them, and when he did he'failed to convoy their meaning; but in his own chosen walk he produced landscapes which came home with peculiar freshness and enjoyment to everyone who had wandered among the scenes ha had rendered palpable on his canvass. Iiis style of painting was broad and nisacullne, free from all trickery and prettiness, but somewhat sombre in tone and colour, and wanting in firmness and vigour of touch. As hinted above, Ilofland was an enthusiastic angler, and he showed his knowledge as well as love of the 'gentle art' by publishing, in 1339, an elegantly-illustrated volume *sailed 'The British Angler's Manna' From its commencement, Holland was a member of the Society of British Artists, and one of the moat regular contributors to its annual exhibitions; but he also usually sent some pictures to the exhibition of the Royal Academy. In private, and still more in domestic life, he was of a very wayward temper, and somewhat too fond of society. Ito died on the 3rd of January 1843.