Francis William Topham

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Francis William Topham

Francis William Topham (

Córdoba
) was an English watercolourist and engraver.

Life

His early in life he was articled to an uncle who was a writing engraver. Around 1830 he came to London, and at first found employment in engraving

coats-of-arms. He then entered the service of Messrs. Fenner & Sears, engravers and publishers. Moving employment to James Sprent Virtue, he engraved landscapes after William Henry Bartlett and Thomas Allom.[1]

Topham first visited Ireland in 1844 and 1845, with

Douglas Jerrold and Bulwer Lytton's Not so bad as we seem. Towards the end of 1852 he went for a few months to Spain in search of the picturesque.[1]

In the winter of 1876 Topham again went to Spain, dying in

Córdoba in 1877, and was buried in the Protestant cemetery there.[1]

Works

Topham's earliest exhibited work was The Rustic's Meal, which appeared at the

Society of Painters in Watercolours, to which he contributed a Welsh view near Capel Curig, and a subject from the Irish ballad of Rory O'More. His earlier works consisted chiefly of representations of Irish peasant life and studies of Wales and her people. These were diversified in 1850 by a scene from Dickens' Barnaby Rudge.[1]

West India Dock (Import), 1837 engraving by Topham

Topham also made designs for Fisher, Son & Co.'s edition of the

Mrs. S. C. Hall's Midsummer Eve, 1848, Robert Burns's Poems, Thomas Moore's ‘'Melodies and Poems, Dickens's ‘'A Child's History of England, and other works.[1]

Spanish Gypsies

The earliest of Topham's Spanish subjects appeared in 1854, when he exhibited Fortune Telling — Andalusia, and Spanish Gypsies 29,5 x 38,5 cm. These paintings were followed by The Andalusian Letter-Writer and The Posada in 1855, Spanish Card-players and Village Musicians in Brittany in 1857, Spanish Gossip in 1859, and others, mainly Spanish. In the autumn of 1860 he paid a return visit to Ireland, and in 1861 exhibited The Angel's Whisper and Irish Peasants at the Holy Well. In 1864 he began to exhibit Italian drawings, sending Italian Peasants and The Fountain at Capri, and in 1870 A Venetian Well.[1]

At the Holy Well by Francis William Topham

Four of Topham's drawings, Galway Peasants, Irish Peasant Girl at the foot of a Cross, Peasants at a Fountain, Basses-Pyrénées, and South Weald Church, Essex, went to the

South Kensington Museum. Several of his drawings were engraved:[1]

Family

While with Fenner & Sears, Topham met Henry Beckwith the engraver, and married his sister Mary Anne Beckwith in 1832. They had ten children. Their son Frank William Warwick Topham (1838–1924) became known as a painter.[1][2]

Lord Monk Bretton, a semi-Yorkshire man, by Topham's son, as seen in the Royal Academy, 1897.

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Lee, Sidney, ed. (1899). "Topham, Francis William" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 57. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  2. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/27552. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)

External links

Media related to Francis William Topham at Wikimedia Commons

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Lee, Sidney, ed. (1899). "Topham, Francis William". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 57. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

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