DOYEN, GABRIEL FRANÇOIS (1726-1806), French painter, was born at Paris in 1726. His passion for art prevailed over his father’s wish, and he became in his twelfth year a pupil of Vanloo. Making rapid progress, he obtained at twenty the Grand Prix, and in 1748 set out for Rome. He studied the works of Annibale Caracci, Cortona, Giulio Romano and Michelangelo, then visited Naples, Venice, Bologna and other Italian cities, and in 1755 returned to Paris. At first unappreciated and disparaged, he resolved by one grand effort to conquer a reputation, and in 1758 he exhibited his “Death of Virginia.” It was completely successful, and procured him admission to the Academy. Among his greatest works are reckoned the “Miracle des Ardents,” painted for the church of St Geneviève at St Roch (1773); the “Triumph of Thetis,” for the chapel of the Invalides; and the “Death of St Louis,” for the chapel of the Military School. In 1776 he was appointed professor at the Academy of Painting. Soon after the beginning of the Revolution he accepted the invitation of Catherine II. and settled at St Petersburg, where he was loaded with honours and rewards. He died there on the 5th of June 1806.
DOYLE, SIR ARTHUR CONAN (1859- ), English novelist, eldest son of the artist Charles Doyle, was born on the 22nd of May 1859. He was sent to Stonyhurst College, and further pursued his education in Germany, and at Edinburgh University where he graduated M.B. in 1881 and M.D. in 1885. He had begun to practise as a doctor in Southsea when he published A Study in Scarlet in 1887. Micah Clarke (1888), a tale of Monmouth’s rebellion, The Sign of Four (1889), and The White Company (1891), a romance of Du Guesclin’s time, followed. In Rodney Stone (1896) he drew an admirable sketch of the prince regent; and he collected a popular series of stories of the Napoleonic wars in The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard (1896). In 1891 he attained immense popularity by The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which first appeared in The Strand Magazine. These ingenious stories of the success of the imperturbable Sherlock Holmes, who had made his first appearance in A Study in Scarlet (1887), in detecting crime and disentangling mystery, found a host of imitators. The novelist himself returned to his hero in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1893), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), and The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905). His later books include numerous novels; plays, The Story of Waterloo (1894), in which Sir Henry Irving played the leading part, The Fires of Fate (1909), and The House of Temperley (1909); and two books in defence of the British army in South Africa—The Great Boer War (1900) and The War in South Africa; its Causes and Conduct (1902). Dr Conan Doyle served as registrar of the Langman Field Hospital in South Africa, and was knighted in 1902.
DOYLE, SIR FRANCIS HASTINGS CHARLES, Bart. (1810-1888), English man of letters, was born at Nunappleton, Yorkshire, on the 21st of August 1810. He was the son of Major-General Sir Francis Hastings Doyle, 1st baronet (1783-1839), and was educated at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he took a first-class in classics in 1831. He read for the bar and was called in 1837. He had been elected to a fellowship of All Souls’ in 1835, and his interests were chiefly literary. Among his intimate friends was Mr Gladstone, at whose marriage he assisted as “best man”; but in later life their political opinions widely differed. In 1834 he published Miscellaneous Verses, reissued with additions in 1840. This was followed by Two Destinies (1844), The Duke’s Funeral (1852), Return of the Guards and other Poems (1866); and from 1867 to 1877 he was professor of poetry at Oxford. In 1869 some of the lectures he delivered were published in book form. One of the most interesting was his appreciation of William Barnes, and the essay on Newman’s Dream of Gerontius was translated into French. In 1886 he published his Reminiscences, full of records of the interesting people he had known. Sir Francis Doyle succeeded his father (chairman of the board of excise) as 2nd baronet in 1839, and in 1844 married Sidney, daughter of Charles Watkin Williams Wynn (1775-1850). From 1845 he held various important offices in the customs. He died on the 8th of June 1888. Doyle’s poetry is memorable for certain isolated and spirited pieces in praise of British fortitude. The best-known are his ballads on the “Birkenhead” disaster and on “The Private of the Buffs.”
DOYLE, JOHN ANDREW (1844-1907), English historian, the son of Andrew Doyle, editor of The Morning Chronicle, was born on the 14th of May 1844. He was educated at Eton and at Balliol College, Oxford, winning the Arnold prize in 1868 for his essay, The American Colonies. He was a fellow of All Souls’ from 1870 until his death, which occurred at Crickhowell, South Wales, on the 4th of August 1907. His principal work is The English Colonies in America, in five volumes, as follows: Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas (1 vol., 1882), The Puritan Colonies (2 vols., 1886), The Middle Colonies (1 vol., 1907), and The Colonies under the House of Hanover (1 vol., 1907), the whole work dealing with the history of the colonies from 1607 to 1759. Doyle also wrote chapters i., ii., v. and vii. of vol. vii. of the Cambridge Modern History, and edited William Bradford’s History of the Plimouth Plantation (1896) and the Correspondence of Susan Ferrier (1898).
DOYLE, RICHARD (1824-1883), English artist, son of John Doyle, the caricaturist known as “H. B.” (1797-1868), was born in London in 1824. His father’s “Political Sketches” took the town by storm in the days of Lord Grey and Lord Melbourne. The son was an extremely precocious artist, and in his “Home for the Holidays,” done when he was twelve, and in his “Comic English Histories,” drawn four years later, he showed extraordinary gifts of humour and fancy. He had no art training outside his father’s studio. In 1843 he joined the staff of Punch, drawing cartoons and a vast number of illustrations, but he retired in 1850, in consequence of the attitude adopted by that paper towards what was known as “the papal aggression,” and especially towards the pope himself. In 1854 he published his “Continental Tour of Brown, Jones and Robinson.” His illustrations to three of the Christmas Books of Charles Dickens, and to The Newcomes by Thackeray, are reckoned among his principal achievements; and his fanciful pictures of elves and fairies have always been general favourites. He died on the 11th of December 1883. His most popular drawing is his cover of Punch.