Maclise was the son of Alexander McLeish or McClise (1777-1861), a soldier of Scottish parentage who served in the Elgin fencibles in Ireland, and married Rebecca Buchanan in Cork on 24 December 1797. After 1835 Daniel spelled his name Maclise in place of other forms. Maclise received a good basic classical education in Cork, where he displayed his interest in drawing rather than academic pursuits. He studied at the Cork Drawing Academy, sketching the collection of plaster casts of the Vatican marbles which had been presented by Pope Pius VII to the Prince Regent and had been taken to Cork in 1818. He also attended the lectures in anatomy for artists given by Dr Woodroffe at the Royal Cork Institution. Drawings by Maclise were displayed in his father’s shop and he attracted the attention of local collectors and patrons. On 9 August 1825 Sir Walter Scott, on a tour of Ireland, visited Bolster's bookshop in Cork, where Maclise was executing outline portrait drawings. From these he worked up an elaborate profile portrait drawing of Scott which was lithographed in Dublin, bringing him his first public success. This enabled him to open his own studio in late 1825 in Patrick Street, Cork, making portrait drawings and the following year he embarked on a picturesque tour of Co Wicklow in Ireland. In 1827 he came to London, with letters of introduction, to enrol as a probationer at the Royal Academy Schools. He enrolled as a student on 20 April 1828 and received a silver medal for antique drawing in 1829 (the year in which he first exhibited at the Royal Academy summer exhibition) and silver medals and prizes for life drawing and for a copy of Guido Reni in December 1830. The culmination of his studies came with the gold medal for history painting, awarded for his Choice of Hercules (private collection) in December 1831.
Maclise contributed eighty-one lithographed drawings of eminent literary or political figures to Fraser’s Magazine under the pseudonym Alfred Croquis. The series was collected and published as The Maclise Portrait Gallery in 1874, 1883, and 1898. The subjects included Bulwer-Lytton, Carlyle, William Cobbett, Coleridge, Croker, George Cruikshank, Disraeli, Faraday, Goethe, Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, Moore, Daniel O'Connell, Lord John Russell, Scott, John Soane and Wordsworth. Exhibiting great elegance and economy of line, these drawings established Maclise's reputation in the 1830s and were singled out for extensive praise by the Pre-Raphaelite D.G. Rossetti: 'I suppose no such series of the portraits of celebrated persons of an epoch, produced by an eye and hand of so much insight and power, and realised with such a view to the actual impression of the sitter, exists anywhere' (The Academy, 15 April 1871, 217–18).
Maclise was a lifelong friend of John Forster: critic, essayist and historian, and it was through Forster that so many of Maclise's drawings, paintings, and letters found their way to the Victoria and Albert Museum after the painter's death. In 1836, when Forster met Dickens, he introduced him to Maclise and the three met frequently and Maclise painted a celebrated portrait of Dickens in 1839 (National Portrait Gallery). His work encompassed historical paintings and also book illustrations Milton’s 'L'allegro' and 'Il penseroso' in S. C. Hall's Book of Gems (1836). For Dickens he contributed illustrations to The Old Curiosity Shop (1840), The Cricket on the Hearth (1846), The Chimes (1845), and The Battle of Life (1846), however his finest achievement in book illustration was arguably for The Irish Melodies (1845) by his fellow Irishman, Thomas Moore, he also contributed two illustrations for 'Morte d'Arthur' in the 1857 Moxon edition of Tennyson's Poems.
His work for Westminster Palace formed the centrepiece of Maclise's career. In July 1845, in Westminster Hall, he exhibited a cartoon, sketch, and fresco specimen of The Spirit of Chivalry, one of the designated themes for the House of Lords, in a Gothic style influenced by German Nazarene art: it was approved and the fresco was completed in 1848. He painted the companion fresco, The Spirit of Justice in 1849, however, his physical and mental health suffered from his prolonged fresco painting.
The culmination of the narrative histories and of Maclise's career came with the commission for The Meeting of Wellington and Blücher and The Death of Nelson for the Royal Gallery of Westminster Palace, originally these were to be accompanied by sixteen other subjects from the history of the United Kingdom. The Meeting of Wellington was completed in December 1861 and drew favourable comment, especially from F. G. Stephens in The Athenaeum (2 November 1861, 1775, 585–6). From 1863 to 1865 he worked on The Death of Nelson, which involved extensive naval research. Following the death of Prince Albert, who was a strong supporter of Maclise, the decorative programmes were cut back and his contract for the remaining works was cancelled.
Maclise was active in the life of the Academy, serving on its council and deputizing for the president in 1869, and teaching regularly in the schools during the 1850s. He served as a juror at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1855. Maclise died at his home Cheyne Walk on 25 April 1870 of pneumonia and was buried in Kensal Green cemetery, London.
Maclise's greatest strengths as an artist were his figure draughtsmanship and pictorial composition, both of which we see in this highly worked drawing, reminiscent in style of the early work of the Pre-Raphaelites and German engravers and he aimed at factual reconstructions of period costume.
The present drawing appears to depict a murderous Tybalt, with another Capulet on the left, awaiting Romeo, who looks up at Juliet on the balcony to the right. The mountains upper right suggest the Alps above Verona. Maclise painted a number of Shakespearean subjects, and this drawing does not seem to have been destined for a book illustration.
We are grateful to Jan Piggott for his help in identifying the subject of this drawing.