Later Victorian Portraits Catalogue

Painter and decorative artist; born 13 September 1829, in London. Studied at J.M. Leigh’s Art School and Royal Academy Schools 1851, then in Paris with P.H. Calderon at the atelier of François Edouard Picot and the École des Beaux-Arts; after selling his first work, a scene from Much Ado about Nothing (RA 1853), became known for Shakespearean subjects as well as history painting and later for studies of birds; he also produced book illustrations, decorative painting on porcelain and furniture, frescoes and Christmas cards, and wrote for the Spectator; member of the St John’s Wood Clique; exhibited RA 1853–97; elected ARA 1870, RA (1878); as a watercolourist exhibited with the Fine Art Society and the Old Water Colour Society, of which he became an associate; close friends, by whom he was dubbed ‘Marco’, included Calderon, W.W. Ouless, G.A. Storey, Alfred Parsons, V.C. Prinsep and Frederick Walker, whose sister married Marks’s brother.

Marks’s memoirs, Pen & Pencil Sketches, confirm his reputation as a congenial personality and important member of the St John’s Wood community, where he lived from 1862. [1] He enjoyed clowning, comic songs and preaching bogus sermons; but he disliked being referred to as a comic artist. G.D. Leslie noted that ‘gravity was the prevailing tone of Marco’s character’ and he is described as ‘high-spirited but prone to moods of melancholy and misanthropy’. [2]

Magdalene Keaney

Referencesback to top

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Bills, M., and V. Knight, eds, William Powell Frith: Painting the Victorian Age, London, 2006.

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Hacking, J., Princes of Victorian Bohemia: Photographs by David Wilkie Wynfield, exh. cat., NPG, London, 2000.

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Jones, S., and others, Frederic Leighton 1830–1896, exh. cat., Royal Academy, London, 1996.

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McMaster, J., ‘That Mighty Art of Black-and-White: Linley Sambourne, Punch and the Royal Academy’, British Art Journal, Autumn 2008, pp.62–76.

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McMaster, J., That Mighty Art of Black-and-White: Linley Sambourne, Punch and the Royal Academy, Edmonton, Canada, 2009.

Marks 1894
Marks, H.S., Pen & Pencil Sketches, 2 vols, London, 1894.

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Morris, E., and F. Milner, ‘And When Did You Last See Your Father?’, exh. cat., Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 1993.

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Ormond & Ormond 1975
Ormond, L., and R. Ormond, Lord Leighton, London, 1975.

Pennie 2004b
Pennie, A.R, ‘Marks, Henry Stacy (1829–1898)’, ODNB, Oxford, 2004; online ed., October 2007.

Radford 1901
Radford, E., ‘Marks, Henry Stacy (1829–1898), DNB, London, 1901.

Robinson [1892]
Robinson, R.W., Members and Associates of the Royal Academy of Arts, 1891. Photographed in their Studios by Ralph W. Robinson of Redhill, n.p., [1892].

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Snow, C.P., Trollope, London, 1975.

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Swanson, V.G., Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema: Painter of the Victorian Vision of the Ancient World, London, 1977.

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Walkley, G., Artists’ Houses in London 1764–1914, Aldershot, 1994.

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Wood, C., Victorian Panorama: Paintings of Victorian Life, London, 1976.

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Wood, C., William Powell Frith: A Painter & His World, Stroud, Glos., 2006.