Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Condy, Nicholas
CONDY or CUNDY, NICHOLAS (1793?–1857), painter, is supposed to have been born at Torpoint, in the parish of Antony East, Cornwall, in 1793, but no entry of his baptism is to be found in the register kept at Antony Church. He was gazetted to the 43rd regiment as an ensign on 9 May 1811, and served in the Peninsula; became lieutenant on 24 Feb. 1818, and was thenceforth on half-pay during the remainder of his life. From 1818 he devoted his attention to art, and became a professional painter at Plymouth. He chiefly produced small water-colours on tinted paper, about eight inches by five inches, which he sold at prices ranging from fifteen shillings to one guinea each. Between 1830 and 1845 he exhibited at the Royal Academy two landscapes, at the British Institution four, and at the Suffolk Street Gallery one. His best known painting is entitled ‘The Old Hall at Cotehele on a Rent-day,’ and is in the possession of the Earl of Mount-Edgcumbe at Mount-Edgcumbe. He brought out a work called ‘Cotehele, on the Banks of the Tamar, the ancient seat of the Right Hon. the Earl of Mount-Edgcumbe, by N. Condy, with a descriptive account written by the Rev. F. V. J. Arundell, 17 plates, London, published by the author, at 17 Gate Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields.’ He died at 10 Mount Pleasant Terrace, Plymouth, on 8 Jan. 1857, aged 64, and was buried in St. Andrew's churchyard. By his wife Ann Trevanion Pyle (1792–1860), daughter of Capt. Mark Oates of the marines, he was father of Nicholas Matthews Condy, who has often been confused with him. He was born at Union Street, Plymouth, in 1818, and having been educated at Exeter was intended for the army or navy, but preferred becoming a professor of painting in his native town. He exhibited three sea-pieces at the Royal Academy from 1842 to 1845, which gave hopes of his becoming a distinguished artist; but he died suddenly and prematurely at the Grove, Plymouth, on 20 May 1851, when aged only thirty-three. He married Flora Ross, third daughter of Major John Lockhart Gallie, of the 28th regiment.
[Notes and Queries, 3 Jan. 1885, p. 17; Smith's Plymouth Almanac (1885); Redgrave's Dict. of Artists.]