Born in Cork, Daniel Maclise was one of the first students to attend the Cork School of Art with fellow students John Hogan and Samuel Forde. He was an ambitious artist with a lively mind and personality who mixed well with literatery and political figures. In 1827 he moved to London where he attended The Royal Academy Schools. While there, he progressed quickly, earning medals for drawing and history painting. During his early years he supported himself by making pencil portraits and in 1830 he began his famous series of character portraits for Frazer's Magazine. He also illustrated books such as Hall's Ireland - its Scenery and Character. His draughtmanship was greatly admired, and his many clients and friends included the Disraeli family and Thackeray. Maclise became a very successful history painter, achieving a status and respect which was unequaled by any other Irish artist in Britain. Between 1858 and 1864, he painted a fine series of large sale frescoes for the new Houses of Parliament in London. A member of the Royal Academy, Maclise refused an offer of the presidency in 1866, and , in later life, became quite reclusive. He never married but lived with his parents and sister in London. After his death in 1870, an academy dinner was held in his honour where his friend Charles Dickens delivered a tribute address in which he talked of Maclise's 'fertility of mindand wonderful wealth of intellect'.

The subject of The Falconer may well have been inspired by a fourteenth-century Florentine folk tale, Frederigo's Falcon. Maclise has paid a good deal of attention to the implied drama between the two figures and to the Renaissance period costume. The three-quarter length pose in an enclosed space but with an outdoor setting is reminisent of Renaissance portraiture. The narative and passion implicit in the sceen is, however, typically Victorian. Maclise's poetic style of painting and strong use of colour is visually impressive. Both the repressed eroticism of the sceen and the detailed style of painting suggest that he was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite movement.

Maclise was very attraced to literatery and historical subjects, and although this is not an Irish scene, he did paint several Irish subjects. The enormous painting of The Wedding Feast of Aoife and Strongbow is on view in the National Gallery of Ireland. It shows Maclise's romantic and nostalgic view of Ireland, probably inspired by his distance from it, his archaelogical tours and his facination with history.