King Cophetua And The Beggar Maid By Daniel Maclise Editorial Image

Daniel Maclise RA was an Irish history, literary and portrait painter, and illustrator, who worked for most of his life in London, England.Maclise was born in Cork, Ireland, the son of Alexander McLish, a tanner or shoemaker, but formerly a Scottish Highlander soldier. His education was of the plainest kind, but he was eager for culture, fond of reading, and anxious to become an artist. His father, however, placed him in employment, in 1820, in Newenham's Bank, where he remained for two years, before leaving to study at the Cork School of Art. In 1825 it happened that Sir Walter Scott was travelling in Ireland, and young Maclise, having seen him in a bookseller's shop, made a surreptitious sketch of the great man, which he afterwards lithographed. It became very popular, and led to many commissions for portraits, which he executed, in pencil.