Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement/Buck, Adam
BUCK, ADAM (1759–1833), portrait painter, elder son of Jonathan Buck, a silversmith of Castle Street, Cork, was born there in 1759. With a younger brother, Frederick, he studied art from an early age, and acquired some repute in youth in his native city as a painter of miniature portraits in water-colour. Coming to London in 1795, he settled at 174 Piccadilly, and soon gained popularity. He not only continued to paint miniature portraits in water-colour, but produced many portraits in oil and crayon of larger size. Between 1795 and 1833, the year of his death, he exhibited at the academy as many as 171 pictures. He also exhibited ten other works at the British Institution and at the Society of British Artists in Suffolk Street. But the pictures that he exhibited represent a small proportion of his labours. Numerous pictures by him were reproduced in coloured engravings, mostly in stipple, and had a wide circulation. Of extant coloured engravings after his pictures the originals of as many as forty or fifty are not known to have been exhibited. Among his sitters were the Earl of Cavan, the Duke of York, Sir Francis Burdett, Major Cartwright, John Cam Hobhouse, and John Burke, author of the ‘Peerage,’ and his family. His portraits were carefully finished, although they were stiff in treatment and design.
Buck was at the same time busily employed as a teacher of portrait painting, and in 1811 he brought out a volume entitled ‘Paintings on Greek Vases,’ which contained a hundred designs, not only drawn, but also engraved by himself. This work, which was planned to continue a similar compilation by Sir William Hamilton, is now extremely scarce.
In 1807 he moved from Piccadilly to Frith Street, Soho, and after several changes of residence died at 15 Upper Seymour Street West in 1833. Buck was married and left two sons, Alfred and Sidney; the latter followed his father's profession.
A miniature portrait of Buck by himself dated 1804, is in the Sheepshanks gallery of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
[Notes and Queries, 11 May 1901, by Colonel Harold Malet; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists.]