In 1825 it happened that Sir Walter Scott was travelling in Ireland, and young Maclise, having seen him in a bookseller's shop, made a surreptitious sketch of the great man, which he afterwards lithographed.

[1] Various influential friends recognised Maclise's genius and promise, and were anxious to furnish him with the means of studying in London; but refusing all financial assistance, he saved the money himself and arrived in the capital on 18 July 1827.

Gradually he began to confine himself more exclusively to subject and historical pictures, varied occasionally by portraits – such as those of Lord Campbell, novelist Letitia Landon, Dickens, and other of his literary friends.

In 1833, he exhibited two pictures which greatly increased his reputation, and in 1835 the Chivalric Vow of the Ladies and the Peacock procured his election as associate of the Academy, of which he became full member in 1840.

[2] The years that followed were occupied with a long series of figure pictures, deriving their subjects from history and tradition and from the works of Shakespeare, Goldsmith and Le Sage.

[2][10] His works are distinguished by powerful intellectual and imaginative qualities, but, in the opinion of Monkhouse, a late Victorian critic, somewhat marred by harsh and dull colouring, by metallic hardness of surface and texture, and by frequent touches of the theatrical in the action and attitudes of the figures.