a commercial opportunity and enlisted the talents of his friend John Wilson Carmichael (1800–1868) – an artist specialising in marine subjects – to work collaboratively on a painting that was to be known as William and Grace Darling Going to the Rescue of the SS Forfarshire. They paid four fishermen to row them to the Longstone Lighthouse, the home of the Darlings. Carmichael was taken beyond the lighthouse to sketch the wreckage, while Parker stayed for most of a week making watercolour studies and portraits. The project generated press coverage, and Parker supplemented the collaborative painting with two further related paintings. The set were engraved by David Lucas(1802–1881) and became very popular and well known. Leaving Newcastle upon Tyne [[File:The rescue of the young John Wesley from the burning parsona Wellcome V0006839.jpg|thumb|Providential Deliverance of John Wesley when a Child from Fire at Epworth Rectory' 'mezzotint print by S.W. Reynolds after H.P. Parker., 1840]] From the mid-1830s Parker was using studio addresses in London for Royal Academy purposes and it is possible that he was already anticipating a move from Newcastle. An opportunity arose through his involvement in Wesleyan Methodism. In 1839 he attended the conference at Liverpool that celebrated 100 years of Methodism. As the annual conference was to be at Newcastle the following year, Parker decided ‘to commemorate the occasion by painting a picture of some striking incident in their history. He consulted the Rev. James Everett, who suggested … the escape of John Wesley from the parsonage at Epworth, when he was a boy.’ After the Newcastle conference Parker sent the picture to the conference president, the Rev. Robert Newton. Samuel William Reynolds II's engraving of The Fire at Epworth Rectory was another widely circulated image. Parker became aware of a vacancy for a drawing master at the recently opened Wesleyan Proprietary Grammar School, Sheffield. Obtaining the appointment, he left Tyneside by 1841. Sheffield The year the family moved to Glossop Road, Sheffield, a new baby, Harriet Perlee Parker, was born. There were then eight children in the Parker family home. Sir Francis Chantrey – the leading portrait sculptor of the Regency era – died in November 1841, and was buried in his birthplace of Norton, Sheffield. Parker painted two commemorative paintings: The Burial of Sir F. Chantrey, in Norton churchyard, Sheffield for the British Institution and Milk Boys – showing Francis Chantrey as a boy going to