Edward Matthew Ward

Edward Matthew Ward, RA, (14 July 1816 – 15 January 1879) was a British painter who specialised in historical genre.

He is best known for his murals in the Palace of Westminster depicting episodes in British history from the English Civil War to the Glorious Revolution.

As a youth, he created illustrations for the well-known book Rejected Addresses, written by his uncles James and Horace Smith.

Ward's painting of Charlotte Corday being led to execution beat Millais's Ophelia for a prize at Liverpool, leading to much debate at the time.

On 10 January 1879, he was found raving on the floor of his dressing room, his throat cut with a razor, shouting "I was mad when I did it; the devil prompted me".

His son, Leslie, became a popular caricaturist for the magazine Vanity Fair, and later the journal The World, under the nickname "Spy".

Portrait of Edward Matthew Ward, c. 1863, by Ernest Edwards
Self-portrait by Ward, in which he is depicted working on a portrait of one of his daughters
The South Sea Bubble (1847), a Hogarthian subject in the Tate Gallery
Leicester and Amy Robsart at Cumnor Hall (1866), after Walter Scott 's novel Kenilworth
Dr. Johnson in the ante-room of Lord Chesterfield , in Chesterfield House, Westminster . Coloured engraving by E. M. Ward and C. W. Sharpe.