Bartholomew Stoker, Portrait Painter
(b. 1763, d. 1788)
Portrait Painter
From A Dictionary of Irish Artists 1913
Was born in 1763, the son of William Stoker of Ballyroan, Queen's County. While studying under F. R. West in the Dublin Society's School he worked as an upholsterer with William Macready of Bride Street, father of the actor, William Macready, the elder. Starting as an artist he attained considerable success with his portraits in crayons and miniature. Several of his portraits were engraved; among them one of "Richard, Earl of Donoughmore," engraved by Henry Brocas for the "Sentimental and Masonic Magazine," May, 1792, and "Robert Jephson," engraved in stipple by J. Singleton as frontispiece to "Roman Portraits," 1794. A portrait of "Henry Flood" was copied in pencil by J. Comerford, from which Heath's stipple engraving in Barrington's "Historic Memoirs" was done. A portrait, in crayons, of the "Duchess of Rutland" is mentioned by J. D. Herbert ("Irish Varieties") as having been at Blarney Castle; and one of the "Earl of Mornington" was in the collection of Lord Fitzgerald and Vesci, sold in Dublin in June, 1843. Sir Martin Archer Shee, in a letter written in 1786, says: "Stoker has done some pictures for Latouche's family, two of which are extremely well" ("Life of Sir M. A. Shee," by his son). Stoker died in Suffolk Street on the 12th June, 1788, aged 25, and was buried in the old churchyard at Maryborough, where his father and mother were also interred and where there is an inscription to his memory.