• Name: Smirke,
• Gender: Male
• Birth Date:
• Death Date:

DNB has several possible identifications:

Smirke appears about 80 times between 1795 and 1815, generally with artists or at art and exhibition related events. However, in the early mentions (1775), Smirke appears with Batty, Foulkes, and Firth, Tooke, and A A. By 1797 the Smirke circle seems to include Northcote and Nicholson, and Godwin recorded a group in 1798 including Fordyce, Smirke, Nicholson, Dyson and Jas Wt dine; adv. H G and M J (invités, Fuseli, Northcote, Este, Carlisle, Pinkerton and C Smith).

Joseph Farington recorded the following on Sunday, 16th December 1798:
'Smirke dined with Godwin on Monday last. Fuseli was invited, as was Northcote, but did not go. Fuseli does not think Godwin at all an extra-ordinary man. Horne Tooke says that in Godwin's Political Justice there is not a passage that has common sense in it.'
Unfortunately, we cannnot discern whether this was a first meeting or not.

According to the Farington Diary, the Smirkes are a large family of artists including the well-known painter Robert Smirke (1752-1845), his father Richard 'Dick' Smirke, Robert's daughter, the landscape painter Mary (fl. 1809-1818), Robert's son Edward (1795 - 1875) lawyer and antiquary, Robert's eldest son Richard (1778-1815), also an exhibiting RA artist, Sir Robert Smirke (1781-1867), architect and second son of Robert Smirke the elder, Sydney Smirke (1798-1877) youngest brother and architect, and Thomas Smirke (another brother).

Farington also reveals that the Thursday dining group in 1811 included Lawrence, Fuseli, and both Smirke's, which indicates at least that father and sons were traveling within the same social circle (although Godwin doesn't seem to have attended any of these dinners). It would be difficult to separate out which family member Godwin was meeting.

We can guess that Godwin's R Smirke junr. is one of the brothers (either Robert jr. or Richard).

He appears in the 1796 lists under 1795, which matches his first appearance in the diary.

• DNB.
• The diary of Joseph Farington, ed. by Kenneth Garlick, Angus Macintyre, Kathryn Cave and Evelyn Newby, 17 vols (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1978–98), vol 3, p. 1113.

This table lists the people this person is most frequently noted with in the diary.