Mulready, William (1786–1863)

Irish painter and illustrator, active in England. He depicted sentimental rural scenes, his late style anticipating the bright, clear colours of the Pre-Raphaelites. In 1840 he designed the first penny-postage envelope, known as the Mulready envelope.

He was born in Ennis, County Clare, and was taken as a child to live in London. In 1800 he was admitted as a student of the Royal Academy, and was elected to the Royal Academy in 1816. His early works, largely landscapes, had a striking realism, though it was with genre scenes of rural and domestic life, to which he turned about 1810, that he established his reputation. The Sonnet, about 1839 (Victoria and Albert Museum, London), was one of the most popular.