PARRY, JOSEPH (1744-1826), painter and engraver
Date of birth: 1744
Date of death: 1826
Child: James Parry
Child: David Henry Parry
Gender: Male
Occupation: painter and engraver
Area of activity: Art and Architecture
Author: Mary Gwyneth Lewis
Born at Liverpool in 1744, the son of a Welsh master pilot. He was apprenticed to a ship and house painter, but devoted his leisure to the study of art. In 1790 he removed to Manchester where he became known as ' Father of Art.' He found many appreciative patrons there and painted numerous scenes of everyday life in the city, one of his best pictures being ' The Old Market and Shambles at Manchester.' Another of his pictures, ' Eccles Wake,' contains 200 figures - all separate studies from nature. He was also a portrait painter and etched a fine portrait of himself, only ten impressions of which were taken. He died in Manchester in 1826.
His son, DAVID HENRY PARRY, born in Manchester 7 June 1793, became a painter after studying in his father's studio. In 1816 he married Elizabeth Smallwood of Macclesfield, and in May 1826 removed to London, where he died 15 September of the same year. He was buried in the churchyard of S. Martin-in-the-fields.
Joseph Parry's younger son, JAMES PARRY (died 1871), who was also an artist, exhibited in Manchester. His work, too, includes many Manchester scenes; he excelled as an engraver and produced many plates from his own, his brother's, and other artists' works, especially of Lancashire scenes. There is a portrait of him in the Salford Museum.
CHARLES JAMES PARRY
was D. H. Parry's youngest son, born in Manchester in 1824; he was educated there and placed in a woollen business. As an amateur he painted from an early period landscapes in oil, for which he found a ready sale. He married Alice Southern of Salford, and died in London, 18 December 1894, leaving two sons, Charles James Parry and David Henry Parry, both of them artists.
Author
- Mary Gwyneth Lewis, (1912 - 1999)
Sources
- Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
- Michael Bryan, Bryan's dictionary of painters and engravers iv, 1926, 73
- Benezit, Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs & graveurs des tous les temps et de tous les pays iii, 1919, 430-1
- Allgemeines Lexicon der Bildenden Künstler, xxvi, 1932, 259
- The Royal Academy of Arts (1905–6), vi, 1906
- Annual Volume of the Walpole Society, vi, 1917-18, 86, 88, 93
- T. M. Rees, Welsh painters, engravers and sculptors, 1527–1911 (1912), 117, 118
Published date: 1959
Article Copyright: http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/
The Dictionary of Welsh Biography is provided by The National Library of Wales and the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies. It is free to use and does not receive grant support. A donation would help us maintain and improve the site so that we can continue to acknowledge Welsh men and women who have made notable contributions to life in Wales and beyond.
Find out more on our sponsorship page.