Henry Stacy-Marks (1829 – 1898)
RA, RWS, HRCA, HFRPE

Henry Stacy-Marks was a London genre painter, watercolourist and illustrator who exhibited a total of 361 works in the principal London Galleries.
He studied heraldry painting and afterwards at JM Leigh’s School in London, at the Royal Academy Schools from 1851 and the following months with Picot in Paris. He visited Belgium where he met Baron Leys in 1860 and 1863.

As well as painting, both in oil and watercolour, Henry Stacy-Marks was a stage and stain glass designer and wood engraver, in conjunction with other artists he decorated several pieces of furniture by his friend William Burgess R A, the designer and architect. He also worked for Minton potteries and it was his designs that were accepted for the gilded frieze around the Dome of the Royal Albert Hall.

Although he is best known for his paintings of birds, his earlier subjects were mainly historical and Shakespearean. Toward the end of his career he wrote a lengthy autobiography ‘Pen and Pencil Sketches’ full of amusing anecdotes about himself, his friends and his contemporaries.