during 1728–9, were bound together in a portfolio known as the ‘Knowsley Gallery,’ with an obsequious dedication to the Earl of Derby. Walpole does not seem to have known Winstanley as a portrait-painter, but the portraits he executed of the Stanleys, of John Blackburne, of Samuel Peploe, bishop of Chester, and Jonathan Patten of Manchester, are said to be most faithful likenesses. Several of his portraits have been etched or engraved; that of the Earl of Derby was retouched by Gerard Van der Gucht to enhance the effect; the portrait of Edward Waddington [q. v.], bishop of Chichester, painted in 1730, was engraved in mezzotint by Faber; and that of Francis Smith, the architect, by A. N. Haecken (Dodd, Manuscript Memoirs of English Engravers). A few of his landscape and other subjects are at Knowsley, and Winstanley also made etchings of Sir James Thornhill's paintings in the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral. He spent his later years at Warrington, where he built Stanley Street, and named it after his patrons at Knowsley. He died at Warrington on 18 May 1756. A tombstone in Warrington churchyard thus commemorates his burial: ‘Hamlet Winstanley, second son of William & Ellen Winstanley, an eminent portrait-painter, 20 May 1756, aged 61.’ His collections of copper-plates and prints are stated by Walpole to have been sold by auction at Essex House on 18 March 1762.
A three-quarter-length portrait of Hamlet Winstanley in painting dress, by the artist himself, dated in 1730, was engraved in mezzotint by G. Faber, and was engraved in line by J. Thompson for Walpole's ‘Anecdotes of Painting,’ 1888, iii. 235 (cf. J. C. Smith, Brit. Mezzo. Portraits, p. 445).
[Biographical Memoranda, made in 1776 by Peter Winstanley, and contributed to Notes and Queries (5th ser. viii. 404) with some comments by (Sir) George Scharf (these particulars are wrongly assigned in the index to ‘Herbert’ Winstanley); Addit. MS. 33407, f. 159; Rylands's Local Gleanings, 1877, p. 637; Memoir of Hamlet Winstanley, Warrington, 1883; Brit. Mus. Cat. The notices in Walpole's Anecdotes and in Redgrave wrongly assume that the painter was the son of Henry Winstanley, the engineer and engraver.]
WINSTANLEY, HENRY (d. 1703), engineer and engraver, was probably a native of Saffron Walden and brother of William Winstanley [q. v.]. In 1665 he was a ‘porter’ in the service of James Howard, third earl of Suffolk [q. v.] He was employed on Suffolk's buildings at Audley End, and when, early in 1666, Suffolk sold the place to Charles II, Winstanley was transferred to the king's service, and became clerk of the works there and at Newmarket (Braybrooke, Audley End, pp. 89–266). Winstanley engraved and published a set of twenty-four plans and views of Audley End, one of which bears date 1676. The completed set were dedicated in 1688 to James II, the Earl of Suffolk (former owner), and Sir Christopher Wren. The original issue (181/4 in. by 14 in.) was followed by a smaller set in quarto (Braybrooke, p. 86), and the plates were afterwards reissued as a supplement to the ‘Britannia Illustrata’ of Johannes Kip [q. v.] Winstanley obtained a certain notoriety from the whimsical mechanisms with which he embellished or encumbered his house at Littlebury in Essex; he was also the inventor and proprietor of a place of entertainment known as the Water Theatre at the ‘lower end of Piccadilly.’
Either on the strength of this reputation or at his own suggestion, he was permitted in 1696 to furnish the authorities of Trinity House with a design for a lighthouse to be placed on the Eddystone rock off Plymouth. The design was accepted, but his first project was succeeded by one, if not two, modifications. The solid base, twelve feet high and fourteen feet in diameter, was, after two years' work, increased to a diameter of sixteen feet, and the superstructure was erected to a total height of eighty feet from rock to vane. At this stage the building is said to have been drawn on the spot by Jaaziell Johnston, and an engraving of the drawing is given in Smeaton's ‘Edystone Lighthouse.’ In June 1697, while working at Eddystone, he was carried off by a French privateer, and the work destroyed. Early in July, owing to the admiralty's intervention, he was exchanged (Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 245, 247, 251). In the fourth year of the work the solid base was increased to a diameter of twenty-four feet, and its height raised to nearly twenty feet. In the same year (1700) the superstructure of the lighthouse appears to have been completed from a fresh design. The whole was a fantastic erection, largely composed of wood; the stonework of the base being bound with copper or iron. The engraving of the completed building as given by Smeaton is ‘drawn orthographicaly’ from a very rare perspective view made by Winstanley himself. The entire structure was swept away on the night of 26 Nov. 1703, carrying with it the unfortunate designer, who had gone out to superintend some repairs. John Smeaton [q. v.] suggests that an insufficient knowledge of cements was one cause of Winstanley's failure.
