Marshall Claxton was born at Bolton, Lancashire on 12 May 1811. He was the son of the Wesleyan Methodist minister, the Reverend Marshall Claxton and his wife Diana. As a child, Marshall displayed a particular aptitude for drawing and at the age of 17, became a pupil of John Jackson, RA. He entered the Royal Academy Schools on 26 April 1831 and had his first picture exhibited there, a portrait of his father, in 1832. In 1834 he was awarded the first medal in the RA’s School of Painting, and in 1835 his portrait of Sir Astley Cooper won him the Gold Medal of the Society of British Artists. In the years 1837-42 Claxton lived and worked in Italy and developed his speciality, large narrative and historical oils, which enjoyed a brief and limited popularity. In 1843 at Westminster Hall cartoon exhibition he won a prize of £100 for his Alfred the Great in the Camp of the Danes. Claxton’s Lady Godiva (1850; Coventry Art Museum) features a half-naked, dismounted Lady Godiva, who dominates the picture, as she prepares to mount her gorgeously bridled white horse for the ride naked through the streets of Coventry. One of Claxton’s pupils at that time would be the well-travelled Conrad Martens. Later that year, he set sail for Sydney, Australia, with over two hundred paintings, many of them his own work, which he intended to exhibit and sell, but he would have little success in doing so. He was however, encouraged by the small circle of cultured colonists centred on the connoisseur Sir Charles Nicholson. Claxton also planned to establish a school of art, but could find no suitable premises and was allowed the use of a large room at Sydney College as a studio. His sketch Arrival of The Government Conveyance at The Colonial Treasury, Sydney, on 21 August 1851 appeared in the January 1852 edition of the Illustrated London News. Whilst in Sidney, Claxton painted a large picture, Suffer little children to come unto Me, a commission from the great Victorian philanthropist Angie, Baroness Burdett-Coutts. The painting excited much interest in the colony, and more than seven thousand people viewed it. It would be described in Household Words as ‘the first important picture’ painted in Australia. Later, Claxton received further commissions from his patroness and from Queen Victoria. In 1851 he submitted the winning entry in the open competition for an emblem for the new University of Sydney, and his design, ‘Learning’, a female figure seated under a Southern Cross, was used by the university until the Royal Grant of Arms was made in 1857. Claxton’s exhibitions in Sydney in 1854 and 1857 included portraits of such prominent colonists as Bishop William Grant Broughton and Dr James Mitchell. In September 1854 he left Sydney for Calcutta, where he sold several of his pictures and painted portraits and historical pieces He returned to England in 1858 by way of Egypt, his portfolios full of Australian, Indian and Egyptian sketches. He continued his work until he contracted a fatal illness which commenced in the early 1870s. He died at Maida Vale in London after a long illness on 28 July 1881. Claxton married Sophia Hargrave of Blackheath, Kent in 1837. They had two daughters, Adelaide and Florence (Anne) Claxton, both of whom were trained by their father and represented in Royal Academy exhibitions in the period 1859-67. Both were campaigners for women’s rights and signed the 1859 petition for women to be admitted to the Royal Academy. Claxton’s General View of the Harbour and City of Sydney is in the Royal Collection. He is also believed to have undertaken a commission given him by Queen Victoria to paint the portrait of the Queen of the Aborigines, but the whereabouts of that painting remains unknown. There are two paintings by him in the Dickinson Collection in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. His portraits of Bishop William Broughton and Dean Cowper are at St Paul’s College, University of Sydney, and that of the Reverend Robert Forrest at The King’s School, Parramatta. He was also known for his depictions of Wesleyan and Methodist subjects, made popular as prints. His rather interesting watercolour and pencil sketch of the engraver Charles George Lewis standing on a chair, whilst reading a newspaper, may be found in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. Claxton’s powerful, dramatic and downright disturbing oil on canvas painting The Lifeboat (1862) may be found in the collection of Rossendale Museum, Lancashire.