Edward Matthew Ward, , (14 July 1816 – 15 January 1879) was a British painter who specialised in historical genre. He is best known for his murals in the Palace of Westminster depicting episodes in British history from the English Civil War to the Glorious Revolution.
Contents
Life
Early career
Ward was born in Pimlico, London. As a youth, he created illustrations for the well-known book Rejected Addresses, written by his uncles James and Horace Smith. He also illustrated the papers of Washington Irving.
In 1830, he won the "silver palette" from the Society of Arts. With support from David Wilkie and Francis Leggatt Chantrey, he became a student at the Royal Academy Schools. In 1836 he travelled to Rome, where in 1838 he gained a silver medal from the Academy of St Luke for his Cimabue and Giotto, which in 1839 was exhibited at the Royal Academy.
While a student at the Schools, Ward became a member of The Clique, a group of painters, led by Richard Dadd. Like other members of the Clique, Ward saw himself as a follower of Hogarth and Wilkie, considering their styles distinctly national. Many of his early paintings were set in the eighteenth century and were on Hogarthian subjects. He also painted episodes from seventeenth-century history, influenced by the thinking of his friend the historian Thomas Babington Macaulay. He also painted subjects from the history of the French Revolution.