Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Orme, Daniel
ORME, DANIEL (1766?–1832?), portrait-painter, son of John Orme, merchant, was born at Manchester about 1766, and he received his art education at the schools of the Royal Academy, where in 1788 he competed for the gold medal. He continued to reside in London, where he practised as a portrait-painter in oil and miniature, and had for sitters many distinguished men of the time. He also engraved in stipple and other methods, was appointed engraver to George III, and in 1814 he styles himself artist to his majesty and the prince-regent. He engraved his own works, like Alexander and Thais, as well as portraits of Admiral the Earl of St. Vincent, after Gardner, and others. In October 1814 he returned to Manchester, residing at 40 Piccadilly, where he gave lessons in oil-painting, drawing, and etching, and continued his portrait-painting both in oil and on ivory. He exhibited at the Royal Academy eleven portraits between 1797 and 1801. He was represented in the first exhibition of the Royal Manchester Institution, 1827, by one portrait, ‘William Butterworth, the Oldham Hermit.’ He died at Buxton, Derbyshire, after 1832. There is a small drawing, slightly washed in colour, of ‘the New Pier, Margate,’ in the South Kensington Museum, which shows him to have been a capital draughtsman. It is evidently only out of a sketch-book. His brother William, also born at Manchester, was practising as a drawing-master and landscape-painter in that town in 1794, his address being Ardwick. He supplied the sketch of ‘Chetham College and Hunt's Bank’ from which Thomas Girtin made his drawing for ‘Turner and Girtin's Picturesque Views,’ 1797. He was an exhibitor of twenty pictures at the Royal Academy between 1797—when he removed to London—and 1819. In the British Museum there is a small book, published about 1800, and entitled ‘The Old Man, his Son and the Ass,’ with engravings by him.
[Manchester City News, 21 Jan. 4 Feb. 1893; Royal Academy and Manchester Royal Institution Catalogues; Graves's Dict. of Artists; Brit. Museum Cat.]