Maria Flaxman

Maria Flaxman (1768–1833) was an English painter and illustrator.

Maria Flaxman
Born1768
Died17 April 1833
London
NationalityBritish

Life

Maria, also noted as Mary Ann[1] or Maria T Flaxman,[2] was the half-sister of John Flaxman, she was influenced by his work and assisted him in the last years of his life. Maria Flaxman was employed as a governess to the Hare-Naylor family while they were living in Italy and at Weimar. In 1810 she moved to John Flaxman's house at Buckingham Street, just off The Strand in Central London, residing there until his death.

She is best known for six designs engraved by William Blake, illustrations published in the 1803 edition of William Hayley's Triumphs of Temper.[3] Her works were contributed to the Royal Academy between 1780 and 1819, primarily designs for illustration of poetry and romance.[1]

Almanac of Lausanne (1806) recently attributed to Maria Flaxman

In his Life of Blake, Alexander Gilchrist describes the work for Hayley's poem, finally issued in 1807,[4]

"These amateur designs, aiming at an idealized domesticity, are expressive and beautiful in the Flaxman-Stothard manner; abound in grace of line, elegance of composition, and other artist-like virtues of a now obsolete sort."

There is a self portrait on ivory in the National Portrait Gallery, London[5] and a diary from 1806 in the Bodleian Library.[6]

References
  1. Colvin, Sidney (1889). "Flaxman, John" . In Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 19. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  2. Garnett, Richard (1895). "3". William Blake, Painter and Poet. New York: Macmillan.
  3. Damon, Samuel Foster; Eaves, Morris (1988). A Blake dictionary: the ideas and symbols of William Blake. UPNE. p. 177. ISBN 978-0-87451-436-0. Retrieved 12 December 2010.
  4. Gilchrist, Alexander; Gilchrist, Anne (1880). "18". Life of William Blake (1880). Vol. 1 (2nd ed.).
  5. "Mary Ann Flaxman - National Portrait Gallery". www.npg.org.uk. Retrieved 3 June 2018.
  6. W, Mike (9 November 2017). "Mary Ann Flaxman revealed as the author of an anonymous diary, Weimar and Lausanne 1805-6". Archives and Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library. Retrieved 27 June 2020.
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