Joseph Stannard was an English marine, landscape and portrait painter. He was a talented and prominent member of the Norwich School of painters.

After attending the Norwich Grammar School, his parents paid for him to be trained as an artist by Robert Ladbrooke, one of the founding members of the Norwich Society of Artists. During his career he exhibited in both Norwich and London, with some success. In 1816 he joined a rival society in Norwich, which lasted a few years. He was influenced by the work of the Dutch masters, whose works he studied and copied following a visit to Holland in 1821. His own most important painting, Thorpe Water Frolic, Afternoon, was first exhibited in Norwich in 1825.

In 1826 he married the artist Emily Coppin. Several other members of his family, including their daughter Emily, were talented artists. He suffered from poor health during most of his life and died from tuberculosis in 1830, aged only 33.