Biography

English painter, illustrator, and designer. He started studying with the painter Philip Reinagle in 1786. In 1788 he began attending the Royal Academy Schools and was awarded a silver medal for drawing from life and a gold medal for historical painting.

In March 1791, Howard traveled to Italy, France, and Switzerland. In Rome, he met and studied sculpture with John Flaxman and John Deare (1759-1798). In 1794, he returned to Britain by way of Vienna and Dresden. He began instructing Reinagle's daughter Jane in drawing and married her in 1803. Together they had four daughters and three sons.

In the 1790s Howard painted and drew a variety of subjects from literature, portraits, and drawings of sculpture. In 1795 and 1796, he submitted five such pictures to the Royal Academy, including a sketch from Milton's Paradise Lost. He illustrated Sharpe's British Essayists and Du Roveray's edition of Alexander Pope's translation of Homer. He also contributed designs for Josiah Wedgwood's pottery. Between 1799 and 1801, he made a series of drawings of sculpture.

In 1808, Howard was elected an associate member of the Royal Academy and exhibited there until his death in 1847; he was elected a full member in 1808. In 1811 he became secretary of the Academy and in 1833 he was appointed professor of painting at the Schools. Howard's diploma work was The Four Angels Loosed from the Great River Euphrates. He painted a series of works from Milton's Comus and several subjects from the plays of William Shakespeare.

While his history paintings were in a Neo-classical academic style following Flaxman and others, his portraits continued the general tradition of English 18th-century portraiture. In addition to his portraiture and historical painting, Howard worked on many decorative works.