Gallery, Liverpool). In the 1870s, he painted some modern-life genre subjects. Towards the end of the 1870s, he began to suffer painful illness and depression. On 10 January 1879, he was found raving on the floor of his dressing room, his throat cut with a razor, shouting "I was mad when I did it; the devil prompted me". Medical help arrived. He died on 15 January at his home, 3 Queens Villas, in Windsor. The inquest in Windsor on 17 January found that he committed suicide while temporarily insane. Family In 1843, Ward met the 11-year-old Henrietta Ward (her maiden and married names were the same, but she was no relation); they married secretly in May 1848, shortly before her 16th birthday, after an elopement aided by Ward's friend Wilkie Collins. Henrietta's mother never forgave the elopement, and disinherited her. Collins may have based the plot of his 1852 novel Basil on the Ward engagement. Henrietta also became a successful painter. She became a notable art teacher after her husband's death and wrote two autobiographical memoirs about their life together. His son, Leslie, became a popular caricaturist for the magazine Vanity Fair, and later the journal The World, under the nickname "Spy". References External links Profile on Royal Academy of Arts Collections 1816 births 1879 deaths Artists who committed suicide English muralists 19th-century English painters English male painters 19th-century painters of historical subjects Royal Academicians Alumni of the Royal Academy Schools 1870s suicides Suicides by sharp instrument in England 19th-century English male artists