INCHBOLD, JOHN WILLIAM (1830–1888), painter, was born 29 April 1830 at Leeds, where Thomas Inchbold, his father, was proprietor and editor of the 'Leeds Intelligencer.' Manifesting a great talent for drawing in his boyhood, he was placed as a draughtsman in the lithographic works of Messrs. Day & Haghe. He soon became a pupil of Louis Haghe, the water-colour painter, and was a student at the Royal Academy in 1847. He exhibited at the Society of British Artists in 1849, at the Academy in 1851, and in 1855 gained the enthusiastic praise of Ruskin by his picture, `The Moorland,' painted in illustration of a famous passage in 'Locksley Hall.' His `White of Rylstone' was purchased by Mr. Ruskin. These were almost his only pictures connected by their titles with poetical fancy or legend, the landscapes which down to 1885 he continued, in spite of incessant discouragement, to contribute to the Academy, being chiefly topographical; and perhaps Ruskin's praise of his stern fidelity made him too merely literal a transcriber of nature. His best-known works are probably 'The Jungfrau' (1857), 'On the Lake of Thun' (1860), 'Tintagel' (1862), 'Gordale Scar' (1876), and 'Drifting' (1886); the last-named is in the possession of Mr. Coventry Patmore. Inchbold was happy all his life in the friendship of poets and men of genius, which consoled him for the hostility of the Academy and the indifference of the public. His faults, especially the frequent hardness and chilliness of his general effects, contrasted with the over-brightness of particular portions, undoubtedly militated against the general attractiveness of his work; his failings were obtrusive, and the recognition of his merits demanded insight and sympathy. For fidelity, delicacy, and true though unadorned poetry of feeling, no painter of his day stood higher. Tennyson, Browning, Lord Houghton, and Sir Henry Thompson were among his admirers and supporters, and in Dr. Russell Reynolds he found a liberal and discriminating patron. A year or two before his death he had returned from Algeria with a large collection of sketches, in which the ordinary defects of his manner were less apparent. He died suddenly of disease of the heart at Headingley, near Leeds, 23 Jan. 1888. His memory was shortly afterwards honoured by Mr. Swinburne in a funereal ode of surpassing beauty. Inchbold himself was a poet of considerable mark; the sonnets in his 'Annus Amoris,' 1877, are interesting tokens of a refined and poetical mind, though perhaps not one possesses the finish and concentration demanded by this most difficult form of composition.
[Athenæum, 4 Feb. 1888; personal knowledge.]
INCHIQUIN, Lords and Earls of. [See O'Brien.]
INCLEDON, BENJAMIN (1730–1796), genealogist, baptised at Pilton, near Barnstaple, Devonshire, 6 June 1730, was the second son, but the successor to the estate, of Robert Incledon, of Pilton House, by his second wife, Penelope, daughter of John Sanford of Ninehead, Somerset. The father was buried at Pilton on 9 Dec. 1758, aged 83, and the mother on 30 April 1738. Their son was educated at Blundell's school, Tiverton, and in 1765 was elected as a feoffee of that foundation. He was also a trustee of Comyn or Chilcott's free English school at Tiverton. With an ample patrimony, he interested himself all his life in the ancient families of Devonshire. Richard Polwhele refers to his skill in compiling pedigrees (Traditions and Recollections, i. 260), and the 'Stemmata Fortescuana,' which he drew up in 1795, form the basis of the genealogies in Lord Clermont's 'History of the Family of Fortescue.' For some unknown reason he refused to submit his pedigrees to the inspection of Polwhele, who thereupon addressed to him an angry letter, which is printed in the 'Gentleman's Magazine' for April 1791, p. 308, and in his 'Traditions,' i. 258-9. Incledon printed at Exeter, in 1792, at his own expense, for the use of the governing body, a volume entitled 'Donations of Peter Blundell and other Benefactors to the Free Grammar School at Tiverton,' which was reprinted by the trustees, with notes and additions, in 1804 and 1826. His account of St. Margaret Hospital at Pilton appeared in the 'Archæologia,' xii. 211-14. His manuscript collections on the Fortescues are deposited with Lord Fortescue at Castle Hill, near South Molton, Devonshire: the rest of his papers seem to have been dispersed. From 1758 until his death
