and on his return executed his most important work, a representation of the Duke of Wellington giving his orders previous to a general action, which comprised portraits of about fifty general officers. An engraving from this, commenced by Anker Smith and finished by Heaphy himself, was published by him in 1822. Though the picture was a direct commission from the king, it appears to have remained on the artist's hands, as it figured in the sale of his effects.
Heaphy devoted much of his fortune to utilising the land in the neighbourhood of the present Regent's Park for building purposes, and thus a portion of St. John's Wood owes its origin to him. This took him temporarily away from his profession, on resuming which he projected and established the Society of British Artists, of which he was elected the first president, and to its first exhibition, in 1824, contributed nine works, but he resigned his membership the following year. In 1831 he went to Italy, where he remained until the middle of the following year, and during his residence there made some admirable copies of famous pictures by the old masters. After his return to England he painted little. He died at 8 St. John's Wood Road, 23 Oct. 1835, and was buried in Bunhill Fields. His first wife, Mary Stevenson, to whom he was married in 1800, died some time after 1820; his second, Harriet Jane Mason, survived him.
Heaphy's subject pictures were realistic representations of nature. His miniatures and other portraits, which were usually on a small scale, were characterised by truthfulness, delicacy of colour, and beauty of finish. He was a man of versatile genius, and devoted much attention to mechanical inventions. Though it is stated that he was always opposed to the Royal Academy, the catalogues show that he contributed to its exhibitions up to the end of his life. The South Kensington Museum possesses two of his water-colours, ‘The Sore Leg’ and ‘Coast Scene with Figures,’ and in the National Portrait Gallery is a youthful portrait of Lord Palmerston; his portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch have been engraved.
Heaphy had by his first wife two sons, Thomas [q. v.] and Charles [q. v.], and three daughters, two of whom, Mary Ann (Mrs. Musgrave) and Elizabeth (Mrs. Murray), practised miniature-painting.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Athenæum, No. 418, 31 Oct. 1835; Magazine of the Fine Arts, iii. 223; Gent. Mag. 1835, pt. ii. p. 661; Graves's Dict. of Artists; Royal Academy Catalogues; information from the family.]
HEAPHY, THOMAS, the younger (1813–1873), portrait and subject painter, eldest son of Thomas Heaphy the elder [q. v.], by his first wife, Mary Stevenson, was born at St. John's Wood, London, 2 April 1813. In 1831, when a lad of seventeen, Heaphy accompanied his father on a visit to Italy, where he acquired a knowledge of the language and cultivated a taste for religious art, for which he always retained a strong predilection. Adopting his father's profession, he commenced life as a portrait-painter, and for many years enjoyed an extensive patronage. He exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy in 1831, and in 1850 sent his first subject picture, ‘The Infant Pan educated by the Wood Nymphs.’ Among his most successful works which followed were ‘Catherine and Bianca’ (1853), a series of peasant girls of various countries (1859–62), ‘Kepler mistaken for an Astrologer’ (1863), ‘Palissy the Potter taken for a Coiner’ (1864), ‘Lord Burleigh showing his Peasant Bride her new Home’ (1865), and ‘Lizzie Farren, afterwards Countess of Derby, waiting at the Prison Bars with her Father's Breakfast’ (1872). In 1867 he sent to the exhibition of the Society of British Artists ‘General Fairfax and his Daughter pursued by the Royal Troops,’ and in that year was elected a member of the society. In 1844 he was commissioned to paint an altar-piece for the protestant church at Malta, erected at the expense of Queen Adelaide, and he also executed one for a church at Toronto, Canada. He devoted much time to investigating the origin of the traditional likeness of Christ; in the pursuit of this inquiry he travelled widely. At Rome he made careful drawings of everything illustrating the subject to which he could obtain access in the Catacombs and Vatican Library. He has given an interesting account of his difficulties in procuring the necessary permissions for this purpose. His last journey to Rome was made in 1860, and in the following year he published the result of his labours in a series of eight articles in the ‘Art Journal.’ The papers with the necessary illustrations were not reissued till 1880, seven years after his death, when they were brought out in a folio volume under the editorship of his friend Mr. Wyke Bayliss, F.S.A., with the title ‘The Likeness of Christ; an Enquiry into the verisimilitude of the received Likeness of our Blessed Lord.’ A cheap reprint has since been issued by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. The original drawings are now in the print room of the British Museum. Heaphy possessed considerable literary ability, and contributed articles on various subjects to the periodical
