William Percy (1820–1903) was a portrait artist of

Manchester, England Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

. He was born in

Chorlton-on-Medlock Chorlton-on-Medlock or Chorlton-upon-Medlock is an inner city area of Manchester, England. Historically in Lancashire, Chorlton-on-Medlock is bordered to the north by the River Medlock, which runs immediately south of Manchester city centre. It ...

in 1820. His love of art began early in his life: his first picture was exhibited at the Manchester Autumn Festival in 1833. In 1836 he went to London to become a pupil and assistant of William Bradley. He returned to Manchester early in 1839 where he established a first class reputation as a portrait painter. Percy was a founder of the Manchester Academy of Art in 1845. As he wrote later:

First - to institute a class for the study of the antique and the living model - the want of which has been long felt by the students and artists of this town as an insuperable bar to professional advancement. Secondly - to collect a library for reference, comprising history, poetry, archeology, optics, anatomy, chemistry, as applied to colour, architecture, sculpture, painting and engraving.

In 1882, Percy's painting of poet

Edwin Waugh Edwin Waugh (1817–1890) was an English poet. Life The son of a shoemaker, Waugh was born in Rochdale, Lancashire, England and, after some schooling, was apprenticed to a printer, Thomas Holden, at the age of 12. While still a young man he w ...

was hung at the

Manchester Art Gallery Manchester Art Gallery, formerly Manchester City Art Gallery, is a publicly owned art museum on Mosley Street in Manchester city centre. The main gallery premises were built for a learned society in 1823 and today its collection occupies three c ...

. At an exhibit of 51 of his portraits in 1885, The Manchester Literary Club remarked that, in his water colours of children, Percy was "almost without a rival among living painters."Papers of the Manchester Literary Club, Volume 11, by Manchester Literary Club, 1885, page 432
/ref> He died at his home in

Ashton-on-Mersey Ashton upon Mersey is an area of the Trafford, Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, Greater Manchester, England, with a population of 9,693 at the United Kingdom Census 2011, 2011 census. It lies on the south bank of the River Mersey, south of Manc ...

on 18 December 1903.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Percy, William 1820 births 1903 deaths Artists from Manchester English portrait painters 19th-century English painters English male painters 19th-century English male artists