(1764 - 1817), painter and sculptor; RA schools 1786; exh. RA 1789 - 1805; designed and modelled for Wedgwood; ARA 1811, RA 1813.
1790 Florence (Apr. 1790)
1791 - 6 Genoa (17 Jan. 1791), Leghorn, Rome (Feb. 1791 - Feb. 1796) with visits to Orvieto (1792) and Naples (Jul. 1795); Venice (22 Jul. 1796) [London by Dec. 1796]
Theed went to Italy with his fellow artist and close friend John Frearson. They were in Florence in April 1790, staying at Vannini's, when Theed was summoned back to England (16 Apr. 1790),1 but on 27 April he was applying to copy Rubens's Hercules in the Uffizi.2 He returned alone to England, but his visit was short; by January 1791 he was back in Genoa (17 Jan. 1791) and by February he had rejoined Frearson in Rome.
Mrs Flaxman saw Frearson and Theed several times in February and March 1791, and in June she noted they had walked from Frascati to Rome.3 In 1792 Theed was unwell but was attended by Frearson and the painter Henry Howard (5 Jan. 1793). Theed later described Howard and Frearson as the only friends he had in Rome (9 Jul. 1794). In the spring of 1792 Theed shared an address near the Casa Guarnieri with the American painter James Smith 'of Parma'.4 In 1793 he was listed as a history painter living on the Corso at the corner of the Strada Laurina, and in April 1794 he signed the letter of thanks to Prince Augustus from English artists in Rome (Rome Lists 1793, 1794).
Theed was not particularly happy, or successful, in Rome. In July 1792 he told his father: 'you will imagine I have taken up my residence here for life - but be assured that this is not the case for every day increases my detestation of the people and the place; and were it not for the beauties in art which exist here I believe I should settle my concerns in ten minutes and be off' (18 Jul. 1792). In the end it was a lack of commissions, rather than the advancing French, which led to his retreat: in October 1794 he wrote that his own situation 'gets daily more and more uncomfortable ... yet I have not the courage to leave Rome' (11 Oct. 1794), but in February 1795 he was saying there had been 'no commissions given this year except by Lord Bristol and those only to such as could incircle him' (18 Feb. 1795). He later said that living in Rome had become expensive, the wars had reduced the number of English travellers, and 'encouragement' had consequently been rare.5 Little is known of Theed's work in Italy, but two marble busts by him of James Scott and his son, James Winter Scott, executed 'not long before Theed returned to England' are recorded.6
In July 1795, still with Frearson, Theed visited Naples (7 Jul. 1795), where he was said to have married a Frenchwoman, Mlle Rougeot (DNB), though she is not mentioned in his letters. A year later, on 22 July 1796, Theed and Frearson were in Venice7 on their way home.
1. Dates in brackets refer to Theed letters MSS. 2. Borroni 1987, 136. 3. Mrs Flaxman jnl.MSS 2 (8 - 9 Feb., 20 Jun. 1791). 4. AVR sa, S.Andrea delle Fratte, 1792. 5. Farington Diary (14 Dec. 1796). 6. T. Mullaly, Daily Telegraph, 14 Oct. 1986. 7. ASV is 778.