I intend to place items on this blog that I have written, but not published, relating to their lives and concerning genealogical information. However I am having problems doing this.
Could anyone interested email me at richardjwestall@yahoo.co.uk
Richard J. Westall
richardjwestall@yahoo.co.uk
Richard Westall’s obituary in the Athenaeum in 1836 declared that: ‘At the time when Lawrence became a leading star in our Exhibitions, Westall was in possession of the town’. Richard maintained a close association with Thomas Lawrence throughout their lives and the most intimate experiences are described to Lawrence in a series of letters from Richard now at the Royal Academy.
The type of reception Richard was receiving is shown by an exultant review in the Annals of Fine Arts of Richard’s ‘Mary Queen of Scots, after her defeat at the battle of Langside’ exhibited in 1791: ‘Mr Westall has in this excellent illustration of this no less excellent and well chosen subject, equalled any of his former and much admired productions. The composition and grouping are natural and unaffected, the colouring brilliant and clear, the pencilling characteristic, and though finely finished, tender and delicate. There are few, if any, better specimens of this excellent painter in existence.’
After 1815 Richard lost his reputation to some extent in Britain, but his influence overseas,
especially in France, continued. Some of this was due to his illustrations of Byron’s poems.
Delacroix and Gericault made use of engravings after Richard’s drawings and Balzac refers ‘the fanciful portraits of women drawn by Westall’ in Eugenie Grandet. In 1943 the Burlington Magazine’s reviewer writes of a picture: ‘by R. Westall – of whom it will be recalled Theophile Gautier spoke with such affection’ Gautier (1811 – 1872) was a central figure in the world of literature and art in Paris for almost half a century.
Antoine-Jean Gros and Richard both had the subject of Sappho in mind although it is not clear which artist influenced the other, an engraving by Richard of Sappho jumping from a cliff may have been echoed by Gros. More research in this area would be valuable. It is also clear from images sent to me from the United States that at least 24 of Richard’s engravings of religious subjects were widely copied in that country by Joseph Adams. The Bible illustrations Richard did with John Martin influenced Gabriel Dante Rossetti who greatly admired them.
A painting by Richard displayed at the ‘Art on the Line’ exhibition at the Royal Academy in 2001 was Les Bourgeois de Calais which is at the Musee des Beaux Arts in Calais. This fine dramatic watercolour was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1791 as The burgers of Calais taking leave of their friends at the gate. An auction listing gives the sale of The Surrender of Calais as being a pen and ink drawing establishes that Richard conveyed this scene in another form.
A striking oil portrait of David Garrick as King Lear was displayed at the Heim Gallery in London in 1981, described as vividly conveying ‘the brilliant madness of Garrick’s Lear’. It is thought that the image, painted after the actor’s death, made use of a death mask drawn by Robert Edge Pine published as a mezzotint in 1779. The composition is based on the Roman Emperors by Rubens following Titian and Giulio Romano.
A further elegant watercolour by Richard, entitled Reading was exhibited by Abbot & Holder in 2005. It was published with a description by Philip Athill in the Oldie magazine in June 2005 where he remarks on the influence of Thomas Lawrence as had Marina Warner concerning Richard’s portrait of Princess Victoria.
The Year Book of the 1805 Club over two years considered Richard’s Nelson paintings at the National Maritime Museum in some detail. In 2005 Huw Lewis Jones, in a fascinating paper, established that Richard’s painting Nelson and the Bear was a portrayal of a mythical event. In the following year my contribution, together with a montage of the four Nelson paintings that Richard exhibited in 1807 at the Royal Academy, drew attention to contemporary reviews of these pictures where the paintings were ‘ranked among the most interesting in the whole Exhibition.’ Another critic found the pictures and drawings Richard exhibited ‘will class with the best productions of the age in which he lives.’ There is something very modern about the Nelson pictures in their theatrical promotion of an icon as a celebrity. A brilliant vibrant drawing of Emma Hamilton by Richard can be seen at the Witt Library. A portrait said to be of Emma now at the National Maritime Museum could I believe be a painting of Miss Hamilton, a relation of Sir William Hamilton, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1806. In the New York Times (March 10, 1900) a reviewer wrote of Richard Westall’s Lady Hamilton as Miranda that ‘the grace of Westall is that of a ballet-master’. The extent of Richard’s portrayals of Emma is uncertain, but several of the lightly clad ladies in his paintings bear a strong resemblance to Nelson’s lover.
A further hero of the time was the Duke of Wellington and Richard’s illustrations of the Duke in Battle portrayed another patriotic symbol of his time. On the same theme of historical icons Simon Keynes has explored two paintings by Richard of King Alfred The Poet Laureate H.J. Pye described The Boyhood of Alfred, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1800 as ‘an excellent picture’. It was owned by Richard Payne Knight in 1814 and bequeathed by him to the British Museum, being exhibited recently. An oil painting of the picture was shown at the inaugural exhibition of the British Institution and Keynes considers Richard possibly produced this painting and another of Henry III and the bishops in identical sizes specifically for the Institution’s first exhibition.
The National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition in 2003 Mad Bad And Dangerous – The Cult of Lord Byron prominently featured Richard’s sensitive and romantic portrait of the poet. In April 2008 Richard was the artist of the month at the Royal Academy and four of his pictures are on the RA website where his portrait of his brother-in-law William Daniell is highly praised.
Richard’s poetry, found to be ‘amiable like his character’ by fellow artist George Smirke, (Farington, Diary 9, 3328) can be extended by his poem The Pleasures of Vicissitude praised as ‘very tasteful’ in the Literary Gazette in 1835. The reviewer finds that it ‘evinces more cheerfulness and content than poets of the sentimental order usually care to acknowledge’.
Some of Richard’s rural painting have a genuine and moving sympathy conveyed with a humility seldom present in Richard’s more flashy work. The Farmer’s Return, a watercolour exhibited by Lowel Libson in 2006 is an example of this and A Child At The Cottage Door and A Child Going to Fetch Water, which can be seen at Attingham Park, also have their charm. These two paintings were originally purchased by Lord Berwick, son of the first occupier of Attingham..
On Richard’s death the Times carried a notice claiming that the artist ‘occupied a large portion of public interest…for half a century.’ The same newspaper reported in 1959 on a Romantic Exhibition at the Tate Gallery in an article ‘Westall’s Labour of Love for the Romantics’ and suggested that ‘No man ever laboured harder in the Romantic cause than Westall, who spent much of his life designing illustrations for editions of the poets’ The dramatic illustration of Byron’s Mazeppa is mentioned in particular.
The extent of Richard’s reported penury at his death is perhaps put in some doubt by the contents of his Will where Richard mentions ‘monies in trust’, ‘Government Securities’ and ‘money owing to me’. His sister Mary Daniell is left stocks & securities and the children of his late brother Benjamin are left shares. Richard also asks that his body be buried next to John Ayton and that a locket ‘in memory of him be placed round my neck and buried with me’. This confirms the letter written by Westall to Lawrence in 1829 about the death of John Ayton: where he wrote ‘I have purchased a vault under the new Church of St Pancras in which he was buried’ later he mentions that ‘by his side is a vacant space which my body will occupy’. Andrew Ballantyne surmises that Richard Payne Knight and Richard Westall may have had a ‘homosocial relationship’; the same could apply to Richard’s friendship with Ayton. A record exists at St Pancras Parish Church, opposite Euston Station, of Richard Westall’s burial there but there is no record of John Ayton’s. The crypt of the Church, where bodies were buried, was used as a shelter in World War II and the tombs have been dislodged and broken in many cases. The location of Richard’s vault cannot be established.
Sources: Athenaeum No 447 Dec 17 1836; Letters at RA Library. LAW/369 et al on website www.bradonpace.com/westall ; Annals of the Fine Arts 1817; Gabriel Dante Rossetti Family Letters; Honore de Balzac Eugenie Grandet;Burlington Magazine July 1943; Scott Thomas Buckle for reference to Sappho at Leucadia ; Andrew Ballantyne ‘The Most Interesting And Affecting Pictures: Richard Westall And Richard Payne Knight’ Sheffield Art Review 1995; Ed David Solkin Art On the Line Yale University Press 2001; ‘World Auction Record’ 1980;. The Painted Image: British History Painting 1750-1830 Heim Gallery 1981; Philip Athill ‘A guide to neglected artists’ Oldie June 2005 ; Huw Lewis-Jones ‘Nelson & the Bear: The Making of an Arctic Myth’ The Trafalgar Chronicle – Yearbook of the 1805 Club 2005; Richard J. Westall ‘“The Story is Admirably Told”: The Nelson Pictures by Richard Westall RA’ with plate 5 The Trafalgar Chronicle 2006; Victories of the Duke of Wellington 1819; Simon Keynes ‘The cult of King Alfred the Great’ Anglo-Saxon England 28 & working notes; The Literary Gazette 1835; National Archives
Will PROB 11/1877.
Sappho leaping off the Leucadian Cliff
ReplyDeleteRichard Westall watercolour
Courtesy of Scott Thomas Buckle