Ford was born at 129 Sloane Street,
Chelsea on 21 April 1796, the elder son of
Richard Ford (1758–1806), MP 1789–1791, Chief Magistrate at
Bow Street and knighted 1801 and his wife Marianne (1767–1849), daughter of
Benjamin Booth,
East India Company Director and collector of the landscape paintings of
Richard Wilson (1713/4–1782). Ford was educated at
Winchester College, and matriculated at
Trinity College, Oxford in 1813, graduating B.A. 1817 and M.A. in 1822. A lifelong
Tory, in spite of joining the Whig
Brooks's Club, he was a great admirer of the
Duke of Wellington. He travelled on the Continent at the close of the
Napoleonic Wars visiting France, Germany, Austria and Italy between 1815 and the late 1820s, latterly with his first wife, Harriet Capel, whom he married in 1824. She was an illegitimate daughter of the
George Capel-Coningsby, 5th Earl of Essex, who had been a close friend of his father. Ford entered
Lincoln's Inn in 1819 and was called to the Bar in 1822, but never practised. His real interest lay in the fine arts where he collected old master prints, particularly those of
Parmigianino and
Andrea Meldolla (Schiavone). In 1822 and 1824 he and his wife Harriet issued their own etchings after these two masters. Between 1825 and 1832 the Fords has six children, the three youngest dying in infancy. By 1830 Mrs. Ford's health was causing concern and it was decided to visit the warmer climate of Spain. Their stay lasted from October 1830 to October 1833,
Seville being their base, except for the summers of 1831 and 1833, which they spent in the
Alhambra at
Granada where the climate was cooler. There he wrote about the rivalry between
Marie Guy-Stéphan and
Maria Brambilla, specialist in
Donizetti and first dancer of
La Scala. In
Seville he bought Spanish paintings and drawings mainly from the British Vice-Consul, Julian Benjamin Williams, who was also a dealer. These, among others, included works by
Murillo,
Zurbarán and
Alonso Cano. Later he bought a
Ribalta at
Valencia. He was to send paintings to auction at Rainy's Rooms in
Regent Street in 1836. Some of these were bought in. In all probability Williams was instrumental in introducing Ford to local artists
José Gutiérrez de la Vega (1791–1865) and
José Domínguez Bécquer (1805–1841), both of whom Ford patronised. In his correspondence he also mentions
José Maria Escacena (1800–1858), later a painter of Moroccan scenes and
Antonio Maria Esquivel (1806–57). From late 1832 Ford was also to house and patronise the British artist,
John Frederick Lewis (1804/5–1876). When back in England, he befriended the Scottish artist,
David Roberts, who was in Spain 1832–1833, but apparently Ford never met him while they were both there. , a gate of Seville's Old Town Ford and his wife made many topographical drawings of Seville and its vicinity and during their wider travels in Spain. These constitute an important record of the Spain of the period as many of the buildings he drew were later to disappear. Ford also kept detailed notebooks of what he observed. His journeys took him through
Andalucia,
Extremadura, Northwest Spain and several times to
Madrid. Late in 1831, together with Harriet Ford, he travelled along the Mediterranean coast to
Barcelona and via Eastern Spain to Madrid. Apart from that a large part of the north and southeast of the country remained unvisited. During his stay he bought many Spanish books, particularly of literature, artistic treatises, topography, local histories and of local saints. He continued to procure such items after his return home, notably at the Heber (1834–1836), W. B. Chorley (1846) and Riego (1847) sales, which helped to augment his knowledge of those areas he did not visit. He also relied on friends such as
Henry Unwin Addington, the British minister in Madrid 1829–1833 and
Pascual de Gayangos, an Arabist, to provide him with more recent publications. Ford's wife Harriet was constantly in poor health and after their return to England in 1833 the couple lived separately. Ford went to live in
Exeter and in 1835 he bought a
Heavitree house close to its eastern boundary. There, he created a Spanish style garden and built a Moorish-style summer house. This interest caused him to write an article on cob walls, contributed to
John Murray's
Quarterly Review (April 1837), in which he likened the local Devon cob to the Spanish tapia buildings. This proved to be the precursor of many contributions, mainly, but not exclusively, to the Quarterly, mainly on Spanish subjects, which continued until 1857. As a result, in late 1840 Murray submitted the manuscript of
George Borrow's account of the Gypsies of Spain,
The Zincali, to Ford, who recommended publication. This resulted in a literary friendship in which Ford did his very best to encourage the highly temperamental author and which came to an end in 1851, when Ford, because of his own personal commitments, but also puzzlement about its content, felt unable to review
Lavengro; Borrow took offence. A review of Captain
Charles Rochfort Scott's excursions in the mountains of
Ronda and
Granada (Quarterly, April 1839) demonstrated Ford's topographical knowledge of the area, and this may have prompted Murray to invite Ford to write a handbook for Spain. The first Mrs. Ford died in May 1837 and Ford married the Hon. Eliza Cranstoun (1808–1849) in 1838. Their daughter was born in 1840. He and his wife visited Italy in 1839–1840. Ford began the work on his most famous work,
Handbook for Travellers in Spain on their return. A first draft took until the end of 1843 to complete and was partially printed in 1844, but was finally abandoned in early 1845, because of its hostility to perceived inadequacies of Spanish government, the cult of
Mariolatry (worship of the Virgin Mary), and Spanish military incompetence together with French misconduct and depredations during the
Peninsular War in which
Marshal Soult, who happened to be the French Head of Government at the time, was categorised as the 'plundermaster general'. A revised edition, still highly critical, if somewhat toned down, appeared in two volumes in July 1845. It remained a highly opinionated, strongly Protestant view of Spain, but nevertheless provided very detailed knowledge of the country and offered specialist information about the fine arts, including, most notably, a detailed consideration of the collections of the
Prado. It is relished for its erudition, prejudice and dry wit. It remains one of the very few guide books to be regarded as a classic of travel literature in its own right. Of the 2,000 copies of this first published edition 1,800 were sold by the end of the year. Murray wanted a single-volume handbook, so Ford discarded much of the preliminary content and incorporated it with fresh material as
Gatherings from Spain, issued in Murray's
Home and Colonial Library at the end of 1846. The one-volume
Handbook appeared in 1847. He was also helping his friends Sir
Edmund Head and
William Stirling (later Sir William Stirling Maxwell) write their surveys of Spanish art, both of which were published in 1848. The second Mrs. Ford died of tuberculosis in January 1849 and in 1851 Ford married Mary Molesworth (1816–1910) of
Pencarrow, Cornwall. In 1843 Ford had published a life of
Velázquez in the
Penny Cyclopaedia and in 1851 on a tour of the north of England and Scotland with Mrs Ford 'rediscovered' the
Rokeby Venus in North Yorkshire then in the possession of
William J. S. Morritt (1813–1874), (now in the
National Gallery). It had been known previously to very few people and had its first public display at the 1857 Manchester
Art Treasures Exhibition. In 1855 Ford published the third edition of the
Handbook, restored to two volumes and containing much new material, but by this time his health was failing. In 1855 he also wrote "Andalucia, Ronda and Granada, Murcia, Valencia, and Catalonia; the portions best suited for the invalid". He died of
Bright's disease at Heavitree on 31 August 1858. His fine collection of pictures was inherited by his widow Mary. ==Family==