William Theodore Parkes, Medallist and Draughtsman
(fl. 1864-1908)
Medallist and Draughtsman
From A Dictionary of Irish Artists 1913
Son of Isaac Parkes (q.v.). He began his artistic career as a medallist with his father. The medal commemorating the restoration of St. Patrick's Cathedral by Sir Benjamin Guinness, 1864, is by him. It bears a bust portrait of Guinness, and on the reverse a view of the Cathedral. On the death of his father in 1870 he started for himself in Fleet Street. He pursued various forms of art, turning his hand to anything that offered, and exhibited drawings, both landscapes and subjects in the Royal Hibernian Academy, from 1875 to 1883. In 1872 he published a series of heraldic albums and sheets of arms, crests, etc, of Irish families. He was also a journalist, contributing to "The Nation," "The Weekly Freeman," "Irish Fireside" and "Carlow College Magazine," and published various poetical effusions under the name of "Barney Bradey." He went to London in or soon after 1883, where he worked as an artist and journalist and also as a public reciter. He died about 1908.