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William Mulready (1 April 1786 – 7 July 1863) was an Irish people genre painter living in London. He is best known for his romanticising depictions of rural scenes, and for creating Mulready stationery , issued at the same time as the Penny Black postage stamp.
In 1802, he married Elizabeth Varley (1784–1864), a landscape painter. She came from a family of established artists; her brothers included John Varley, friend of William Blake, Cornelius Varley, and William Fleetwood Varley.
Their three children, Paul Augustus (1805–1864), William (1805–1878), and Michael (1807–1889) also became artists. His relationship with his wife however deteriorated gradually over the years, which is detailed in papers stored at the library of the Victoria and Albert Museum. His strong Catholic beliefs prevented any chance of a divorce but they separated. He accused her of "bad conduct" but shied from providing details. In a letter to him in 1827 she blamed him entirely for the collapse of their marriage, suggesting cruelty, pederasty and adultery were the reasons,Brian Reade, Sexual Heretics, London, 1970. p. 16 writing that one of his pupils, Harriet Gouldsmith, had told her Malready "preferred her little finger" to his wife and children, and accusing him having "had taken a low boy to your bed, and turned one adrift at midnight, to seek one at the house of an unmarried man". A Family HistoryClairmont, Clara Mary Jane; Stocking, Marion Kingston The Clairmont correspondence: letters of Claire Clairmont, Charles Clairmont, and Fanny Imlay Godwin, Volume 1, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995, p4.
His son, William Mulready Junior (1805–1878), lived in London and maintained a career of a portrait painter and picture restorer. He had five children (Ellen, Mary, Augustus Edwin, Henry William, and JohnCensuses 1861, 1871, 1881). They also were trained as artists, but not all of them pursued the artistic career: Henry William and John described themselves as 'house painters'. Augustus Edwin Mulready (1844–1904) was the most successful of them and became known as a member of the Cranbrook Colony of artists.
, known in Europe for his Shakespearean roles, including Othello, Lear, and Macbeth. The Walters Art Museum.]]Mulready's paintings were popular in Victorian era. His first painting of importance, Returning from the Ale House, now in the Tate Gallery, London, under the title Fair Time, appeared in 1809. In 1815 he became an Associate of the Royal Academy (A.R.A.) and R.A. in 1816.Melville, Fred J, Postage Stamps in the Making, p71, Stanley Gibbons, 1916. He displayed The Fight Interrupted at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1816. In the same year, he also was awarded the French "Legion of Honour". Mulready's most important pictures are in the Victoria and Albert Museum and in the Tate Gallery. In the former are 33, among them Hampstead Heath (1806); Giving a Bite (1836); First Love (1839); The Sonnet (1839); Choosing the Wedding Gown (1846); and The Butt ( Shooting a Cherry) (1848). In the latter are five, including a Snow Scene. In the National Gallery, Dublin, are Young Brother and The Toy Seller. His Wolf and the Lamb is in Royal possession.
In 1840, Mulready designed the illustrations for the postal stationery, known as Mulready stationery were introduced by the Royal Mail at the same time as the Penny Black in May 1840. They were issued in two forms; one variant was precut to a diamond or lozenge shape and folded to form an envelope that could be held together by seal at the apex of the topmost flap; and that were cut in rectangles, folded over and sealed or tucked in. Stationery manufacturers, whose livelihood was threatened by the new lettersheet, produced many (or parody) of Mulready's design. Only six days after their introduction, on 12 May, Rowland Hill wrote that; I fear we shall have to substitute some other stamp for that design by Mulready ... the public have shown their disregard and even distaste for beauty, and within two months a decision had been made to replace the Mulready designed stationery. Essentially Mulready's designs were a folly.
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