Born
Henry Thaddeus Jones in 1859, he entered the
Cork School of Art when he was ten years old. There he studied under the genre painter
James Brenan. Thaddeus won the Taylor Prize in 1878 enabling him to go to
London, and then again in 1879 enabling him to continue his studies in
Paris at the
Académie Julian. His first major painting,
Le Retour du Braconnier (illustration, right), was hung "on the line" (at eye-level) at the
Paris Salon of 1881. He received commissions to paint portraits, among them two papal portrait
commissions (for
Pope Pius X), and became a Fellow of the
Royal Geographical Society. He received several other portrait commissions. In the 1880s, Thaddeus travelled to Algeria where he explored
Orientalist painting. His autobiography, titled
Recollections of a Court Painter, was written during his retirement in
California and published in 1912. In his latter years he settled in the
Isle of Wight, and died there at
Ryde, on 1 May 1929. ==See also==