Page 23 - James Ward - A Lioness with a Heron

In 1781, when Ward was around twelve, his elder brother William reached the end of his
apprenticeship to John Raphael Smith (1752-1812), one of the most successful engravers of the time.
Ward was then indentured to Smith, in whose Oxford Street workshop he was exposed to the work of
some of the most renowned figures in British art of the period, including Sir Joshua Reynolds, Henry
Fuseli, John Opie, James Northcote, John Hoppner, William Beechey, Sir Thomas Lawrence, and
his future friend and brother-in-law, George Morland. It was under Smith that Ward learned the
mezzotint technique, for which Smith’s workshop was famous. His training included plate preparation,
how to copy from the flat, and how to imitate copper-plate lettering, which must have helped
immeasurably in his efforts towards literacy. The ambitious boy also helped himself to discarded trial
proofs for paper, the backs of which he used to practice drawing. A possibly apocryphal but nevertheless
very well-documented anecdote illustrates both Ward’s innate talent for draughtsmanship, and also his
early hunger for artistic notice. One afternoon, the notoriously eccentric and irascible Fuseli called into
the workshop, specifically to complain of how Smith had profited excessively from prints after his
painting The Night Mare, and to criticise Smith’s drawing skills in general. The two men began to
quarrel and, to illustrate a point, Fuseli furiously drew a huge female arm and hand in a few bold
strokes. Fascinated and impressed, Ward immediately copied the sketch from memory using chalk and
the door of a print chest. His drawing was so accurate and assured that, when he showed his brother,
William refused at first to believe it to be Ward’s work.18 Not long after Fuseli’s visit, Smith sacked
the boy for losing his dog. William took over his younger brother’s apprenticeship, with the proviso
that William himself would continue to work three days a week exclusively for Smith.19

Ward moved to William’s lodgings off Oxford Street, and worked during the day preparing scores of
mezzotint plates, while at night taking instruction to improve his writing. Throughout this period,
Ward complained endlessly of loneliness, and increasingly chafed under William’s supervision. He
also grumbled about spending his days preparing plates20 when he should be enrolled in the Royal
Academy Schools, something Ward said his brother discouraged as being unnecessary to a jobbing
printmaker. He staved off boredom by raising birds and rabbits and sowing box gardens in his garret
rooms. However, as Grundy, Ward’s first real biographer, pointed out, solitude may have hampered
his creative development. In effect, Ward became self-reliant to the point of hermitry and in later years,
when he applied the same methods to his art, he failed to learn from the triumphs and mistakes of others
and instead relied too exclusively on his own judgement.21

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