Samuel Woodforde was an 18th-century British painter.

Woodforde was born at Castle Cary

Castle Cary

Castle Cary is a market town and civil parish in south Somerset, England, north west of Wincanton and south of Shepton Mallet.The town is situated on the River Cary, a tributary of the Parrett.-History:...

, Somerset

Somerset

The ceremonial and non-metropolitan county of Somerset in South West England borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the...

. He was the second son of Heighes Woodforde, an accountant of Ansford

Ansford

Ansford is a village and parish in Somerset, England, situated on the northern edge of Castle Cary in the South Somerset district. The village has a population of 1,048....

 and Anne. He was a lineal descendant of the painter Samuel Woodford, and nephew of the diarist, James Woodforde

James Woodforde

James Woodforde was an English clergyman, best known as the author of The Diary of a Country Parson.-Early life:James Woodforde was born at the Parsonage, Ansford, Somerset, England on 27 June 1740...

. He was supported by the banker Henry Hoare

Henry Hoare

Henry Hoare II , known as Henry the Magnificent, was an English banker and garden owner-designer.-Career:Born the son of Henry Hoare I and educated at Westminster School, Henry Hoare dominated the Hoare family through his wealth and personal charisma. Henry was a partner for nearly 60 years in C...

 of Stourhead

Stourhead

Stourhead is a 2,650 acre estate at the source of the River Stour near Mere, Wiltshire, England. The estate includes a Palladian mansion, the village of Stourton, gardens, farmland, and woodland...

, Wiltshire

Wiltshire

Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...

 and his family. On 8 March 1782 he became a student at the Royal Academy

Royal Academy

The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...

 Schools and started exhibiting pictures in 1784.. He contributed no less than 133 pictures to the Royal Academy and 39 at the British Institution

British Institution

The British Institution was a private 19th-century society in London formed to exhibit the works of living and dead artists; it was also known as the Pall Mall Picture Galleries or the British Gallery...

.

Richard Hoare granted Woodforde £100 a year, which allowed him to travel to Italy in 1786. He spent most of his time in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

, studying the works of Raphael

Raphael

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...

, Michelangelo

Michelangelo

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...

, and Paolo Veronese

Paolo Veronese

Paolo Veronese was an Italian painter of the Renaissance in Venice, famous for paintings such as The Wedding at Cana and The Feast in the House of Levi...

. He also visited Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

 and Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

 before returning to London in 1791. Between 1792 and 1815, "he exhibited constantly, showing portraits, scenes of Italian life, historical pictures, and subjects from literature".. Many of his literary pictures were engraved

Engraving

Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing...

, such as a scene from Titus Andronicus

Titus Andronicus

Titus Andronicus is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, and possibly George Peele, believed to have been written between 1588 and 1593. It is thought to be Shakespeare's first tragedy, and is often seen as his attempt to emulate the violent and bloody revenge plays of his contemporaries, which were...

by Anker Smith for the Boydell Shakespeare edition

Boydell Shakespeare Gallery

The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery in London, England, was the first stage of a three-part project initiated in November 1786 by engraver and publisher John Boydell in an effort to foster a school of British history painting...

 (1805) and several other scenes for Longmans Shakespeare (1805–7). Woodforde became an associate of the Royal Academy in 1800 and a full member in 1807.

On 7 October 1815 he married Jane Gardner; that year the couple left for Italy. Two years later, Woodforde died of fever at Bologna

Bologna

Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...

, Italy where he is buried in the cemetery of La Certosa