Early Life
He began life as a weaver in Spitalfields, London, but soon took to dealing in prints and drawings and devoted his leisure to teaching himself drawing, etching, and engraving. He made sufficient progress to obtain a medal from the Society of Arts in 1760. In 1784 he appears as an exhibitor for the first and apparently only time at the Royal Academy, sending a view of Oxford. Between 1780 and 1785 he etched many plates after John Hamilton Mortimer and Hogarth. Etched portraits by him of General Oglethorpe (1785) and Thomas Inglefield, an armless artist (1787), are in the print room of the British Museum, together with etchings after Ruisdael (1786) and Teniers (1787) and other masters, and some architectural drawings in water-color.
Meanwhile his taste for collecting books, pictures, and curiosities gradually became an all-absorbing passion. In 1794 Ireland proved the value of a part of his collection by issuing "Graphic Illustrations of Hogarth, from Pictures, Drawings, and Scarce Prints in the Author’s possession." Some of the plates were etched by himself. A second volume appeared in 1799. The work is of high interest, although it is possible that Ireland has assigned to Hogarth some drawings by other artists.
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“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)