Thomas Musgrave Joy (9 July 1812 – 7 April 1866) was a British portraitist.

Life

Joy was born on 9 July 1812 in

Boughton Hall Boughton Hall is a former country house in Boughton, to the east of the city of Chester, Cheshire, England. It is designated by English Heritage as a Grade II listed building. History The original house on the site is thought to have be ...

in Boughton Monchelsea where his father was the squire. His parents, Thomas and Susanah, were not keen on his choice of career but he was allowed to leave

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

to study with

Samuel Drummond Samuel Drummond (25 December 1766, London – 6 August 1844, London) was a British painter, especially prolific in portrait and marine genre painting. His works are on display in the National Portrait Gallery, the National Maritime Museum a ...

in London. By 1831 he was exhibiting at the

Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its purp ...

. The

McManus Galleries The McManus: Dundee's Art Gallery and Museum is a Gothic Revival-style building, located in the centre of Dundee, Scotland. The building houses a museum and art gallery with a collection of fine and decorative art as well as a natural history co ...

in Dundee today exhibit Joy's substantial commissions to paint Grace Darling and her father

William William is a masculine given name of Norman French origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conq ...

, who had become Victorian heroes after rescuing sailors from the distressed ''

Forfarshire Angus ( sco, Angus; gd, Aonghas) is one of the 32 local government council areas of Scotland, a registration county and a lieutenancy area. The council area borders Aberdeenshire, Dundee City and Perth and Kinross. Main industries include a ...

paddle steamer A paddle steamer is a steamship or steamboat powered by a steam engine that drives paddle wheels to propel the craft through the water. In antiquity, paddle wheelers followed the development of poles, oars and sails, where the first uses wer ...

. Joy also painted a re-creation of the wreck for his patron

Lord Panmure Fox Maule-Ramsay, 11th Earl of Dalhousie, (22 April 18016 July 1874), known as Fox Maule before 1852, as The Lord Panmure between 1852 and 1860, was a British politician. Ancestry Dalhousie was the eldest son of William Maule, 1st Baron Pan ...

and this is also in the same galleries in Dundee. Panmure was generous with this good-looking artist, encouraging him to visit the continent and paying for John Phillip to become his student briefly in 1836. Grace Darling DYK Thomas Musgrave Joy

Joy married Eliza Rohde Spratt in 1839 and two years later received a Royal Commission that recognised him as an established artist. The newly married couple lived at No. 8 Fitzroy Street in the London parish of St Pancras. He painted the Queen's dogs as well as the Prince of Wales, the

Duke of Cambridge Duke of Cambridge, one of several current royal dukedoms in the United Kingdom , is a hereditary title of specific rank of nobility in the British royal family. The title (named after the city of Cambridge in England) is heritable by male de ...

and the

Princess Royal Princess Royal is a style customarily (but not automatically) awarded by a British monarch to their eldest daughter. Although purely honorary, it is the highest honour that may be given to a female member of the royal family. There have been s ...

. These paintings are in the

Royal Collection The Royal Collection of the British royal family is the largest private art collection in the world. Spread among 13 occupied and historic royal residences in the United Kingdom, the collection is owned by King Charles III and overseen by the ...

. Joy was in demand as a portrait painter and he created paintings of General Sir

Charles James Napier General Sir Charles James Napier, (; 10 August 178229 August 1853) was an officer and veteran of the British Army's Peninsular and 1812 campaigns, and later a Major General of the Bombay Army, during which period he led the military conquest of ...

who had achieved victories in what is now called Pakistan. A large group painting exhibited in 1864 records the most important people at Tattersalls before a race.Thomas Musgrave Joy
Stanford University, retrieved October 2013 Joy's habits of overwork are said to have led to a bout of

bronchitis Bronchitis is inflammation of the bronchi (large and medium-sized airways) in the lungs that causes coughing. Bronchitis usually begins as an infection in the nose, ears, throat, or sinuses. The infection then makes its way down to the bronchi ...

that resulted in his death in 1866. In the same year his eighteen-year-old eldest daughter, Mary Eliza, exhibited her first painting at the Royal Academy. Joy died in

Pimlico Pimlico () is an area of Central London in the City of Westminster, built as a southern extension to neighbouring Belgravia. It is known for its garden squares and distinctive Regency architecture. Pimlico is demarcated to the north by Victor ...

at 32 St Georges Square.

Legacy

Joy had exhibited regularly throughout his career at the

Society of British Artists The Royal Society of British Artists (RBA) is a British art body established in 1823 as the Society of British Artists, as an alternative to the Royal Academy. History The RBA commenced with twenty-seven members, and took until 1876 to reach fif ...

and at the

British Institution The British Institution (in full, the British Institution for Promoting the Fine Arts in the United Kingdom; founded 1805, disbanded 1867) was a private 19th-century society in London formed to exhibit the works of living and dead artists; it w ...

. Besides the paintings in Dundee he also has a number in public collections including the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Joy, Thomas Musgrave 1812 births 1866 deaths People from Boughton Monchelsea 19th-century English painters English male painters English portrait painters 19th-century English male artists