SHEPPARD, Isaac

1842 - 1899

Isaac Sheppard was born at Ipswich in late 1842, son of Isaac Sheppard (1821-6 March 1884), brewer, and his wife Eliza née Hunt (1818-1883), who married at Ipswich, six months before Isaac’s birth. In 1851, his parents were living in Fore Hamlet, St Clements, Ipswich with four children Isaac 8, Eliza 6, William 2 and Alfred 1 and ten years later the family were living in Great Wingfield Street when Isaac, sen. was a brewer’s manager, son Isaac, a brazier’s apprentice and they had two additional children Henry 9 and Harriet 5. Isaac studied at Ipswich School of Art under William Thompson Griffiths passing his examinations in 1864 and where his classmates included Frederick George Cotman, John William Duvall and William Robert Symonds. He married at Ipswich in 1867, Maria Benstead and in 1871, an iron plate worker at Orwell Works, living at 32 Victoria Street, St Clements with his wife Maria and their daughter Isabella Maria, born in 1868. Ten years later they had moved to 5 Argyle Street with four more children Frederick Charles born 1872, Florence Maud 1877, Rose Ellen 1878 and Ella Louise 1880. A painter in oil of landscapes and topographical scenes and a member of Ipswich Fine Art Club 1881-1897, exhibiting from 5 Argyle Street, Ipswich in 1881, four oil paintings 'On the Heath, Moonlight', 'Back of Christchurch Park', 'Pond Hall Farm, Winter' and 'The Old Mill, Icklingham' and exhibited some seventy-six works including, in 1890 'A View of Mildenhall-Winter', 'Moonlight on the River Orwell' and 'The Gipping' and at the 1974 centenary of the Ipswich Club his oils 'The Limes, Rushmere' and 'The Orwell at Freston' were on show. In 1883 he exhibited from Ipswich at the Woodbridge Fine Art Exhibition at the Lecture Hall, Woodbridge, three oils 'View of Ipswich', 'Water Mill' and 'On the Gipping' and in 1887, noted as A. Sheppard of Ipswich, 'Bramford Church', 'Rishangles Mill', 'Dock, Ipswich' and 'View from Mildenhall' also, as Shepherd, at the Bury St Edmund's Fine Art Society in 1882 several landscapes. In 1885, Isaac was a picture dealer & antiquarian, at 89 Princes Street, Ipswich and in 1888 noted as an ‘artist’ at the same address but in 1894 was of 36 Friars Street, Ipswich. Isaac Sheppard died at Ipswich on 19 December 1899, aged 57 and buried in Ipswich Cemetery four days later. His father Isaac, sen. and Isaac’s siblings William and Alfred are also said to have been amateur artists but have found nothing by them other than the 1887 exhibition above. There has been noted a J[ohn] Sheppard but this is an error for I. Sheppard.




Works by This Artist