Friday, 29 January 2010
Monday, 25 January 2010
Thursday, 21 January 2010
Recent William Westall Picture Discoveries
AUSTRALINA May 2008 to view images
Recent William Westall Picture Discoveries by Richard J. Westall
The voyage of the Investigator, captained by Matthew Flinders, which sailed from England in the summer of 1801 to circumnavigate Australia between December of that year and the autumn of 1803, has been well researched (1). The contribution of the young landscape and figure artist on board, William Westall (1781 – 1850), has also received substantial coverage (2).
However fresh items have appeared in recent decades claiming to be by the hand of that artist and stemming from the voyage. In portraying the art Westall produced associated with the Investigator voyage I will concentrate on the emergence of these significant pictures.
There are several aspects to Westall’s Australian artistic output: the drawings & sketches which he drew whilst on the journey; the coastal profiles or seascapes which he recorded during the voyage; the watercolours which were completed either on the expedition or on Westall’s return to England; the oil paintings which he completed for the Admiralty between 1807 and 1812 and the engravings completed for Flinders’ account of the journey.(3)
Apart from Australia there were brief visits to South Africa in 1801, to Timor in 1803, to China (1803/4), India (1804)(4) and a stop at St Helena (1804). Following his return to England in 1805 Westall visited Madeira (1805), where the Investigator had called in 1801 and Jamaica (1806).
Research into the production of nine oil paintings for the Admiralty (1807 – 1812) has given some new insights into the influences that led to their production.
Westall’s subsequent life and career is not convered here, except to mention that he exhibited at the Royal Academy and the British Institution throughout his life and was substantially associated with the publication of topographical views (5).
The most interesting new discovery is a painting which the art dealer Spinks of London had in the 1980s. It is a pencil and watercolour picture 19 3/4 x 23 5/8 ins described as An Ambush by Aborigines on two Europeans in the bush.. I was kindly provided with a negative and photograph of this painting by Anthony Spink who wanted my opinion. Although unsigned there is no doubt that this is a William Westall painting depicting the episode on January 21st, 1803 when Mr Whitewood, the master’s mate on the Investigator, was speared after his approach to Aborigines was misunderstood. This was followed by the fatal shooting of an Aborigine. Westall drew a sketch of the dead man (Westall’s Drawngs 102 Blue Mud Bay : body of a native on Morgan’s island). There is every indication that the watercolour Spinks owned had probably been completed by Westall whilst on the Investigator. It is striking, not only for the scene of the attack, but for the beautifully executed drawings of the trees towering over the scene, which is totally portrayed in shades of brown.
Why was this painting never publicised? Clearly the subject matter may have caused problems. It was perfectly in order for pictures of a dead Aborigine, killed
2
probably by master carpenter John Aken against the orders of Flinders, to be known about, but the hostility of Aborigines and their successful ambush of a European may have been an unwanted fact resulting from the expedition to Australia. It is nonetheless a very important historical painting and among Westall’s most accomplished of Australia. I am not aware of how the painting came into the possession of Spinks but members of the family were disposing of his Australian work in the 1970’s.
Another photograph of a painting was sent to me in 1983 by Chris Deutscher, Director of Deutscher Fine Art of Carlton, Victoria on the suggestion of Bernard Smith as the picture bore “some similarities with Westall’s work”. They were unable to identify not only the artist but the location. It is an oil on canvas unsigned 56 x 83 cm entitled Mountainous Landscape with Shelter in foreground (Small temple or lookout structure on top of mountain in background). The provenance of the picture was that is had been purchased from an unidentified dealer in London. In a subsequent letter Chris Deutscher advised me that “the canvas and stretcher certainly appear to be early 1800’s”.
I replied that the painting “Is almost the same size as some of the Admiralty oils and is similar in a number of ways. The log is similar in execution to a tree in his (Westall’s) painting Part of King George III Sound on the South Coast of Australia (New Holland)which is engraved in the Flinders’ account of the voyage. The trees are very like the ones found in some of the drawings illustrated in Westall’s Drawings. It is quite possible that Westall painted this picture for himself at the time of his Admiralty commissions”. It was suggested that a location which would be credible might be a view directed towards Mount Westall, in which case the “temple” must be a “lookout”.
I am not aware what final attribution Deutscher’s finally put on this painting but I would now suggest that John Glover (6) be another possible attribution. It would be interesting to know whether the unidentified dealer who sold the painting was Spinks.
Following this incident the Investigator sailed to Timor. A watercolour by Westall entitled The Island of Timor 1808 was sold by Sotheby’s, London on 28th January 1971. It is 20.3 x 31.7 cm, 8 x 12 ½ in and signed W. Westall 1808. It appears as a colour reproduction in Outlines of Australian Art by Daniel Thomas (7). The author notes that Westall was in Coupang in March – April 1803 and that in London views of Timor were engraved for the Naval Chronicle after Westall’s drawings (1806 & 1808) but he suggests that this watercolour was probably painted for Westall’s exhibition in April 1808. This seems feasible, although without seeing the original I would query the date of 1808 and suggest the written figure 3 might have been mistaken for an 8.
Another view of Timor by Westall signed with initials was sold by Christie’s, S. Kensington on June 6th 1988 (7 ¼ x 10 ¾ ins). Both the above views were not used by the Naval Chronicle.
.
3
Christie’s also sold a watercolour (4 x 7 7/16 in, 10.2 x 18.9 cm) by Westall of Port Jackson (28 May, 1987), being the original of the Naval Chronicle engraving published on 30 November 1809. A colour reproduction (actual size) of this scene is reproduced. Christie’s again sold (24 May 1990) a watercolour delightful seascape by Westall, probably of the Queensland coast signed and dated 1802. Its provenance was to my father’s cousin Mrs McN. Lester. A label on the backboard read: “Investigator in full sail off a hilly coastline, and to its left the Lady Nelson, which acted for a while as the Investigator’s tender.” The vessels were together between 21 July and 18 October 1802 and the view is not among those engraved for Flinders. Another view of Queensland, taken from the shore, in pencil (18 x 26 cm) and signed, appeared at a sale by Phillipson & Neale on 22 December 1986. A final illustration of interest was executed on Westall’s return from India. It is entitled St Helena – Lot and his Daughters signed and dated 1804 12 ½ x 17 1/4in. (8).
Following William Westall’s return to England in early 1805 he was elected to be a Fellow of the Linnean Society in December of that year (9) before he departed to revisit Madeira, perhaps because his original drawings of the island in 1801 had been lost when he almost drowned there when the Investigator called. After Madeira he travelled to Jamaica where he is known to have drawn several studies of trees and some panoramic views similar to his coastal profiles of Australia (10).
In 1805 and 1806 views of New South Wales and Madeira by Westall were exhibited at the Royal Academy (11) being shown again together at the British Institution in 1807. In 1808 Westall organised an Exhibition of his foreign views.
Westall had sent his Australian work from India in 1804 under the custody of Lieutenant Robert Fowler who arrived in England in August 1804 and handed them over to the Admiralty. Sir Joseph Banks wrote to the Admiralty on 22 August (ADM 1/4378, No 27): “I have been informed …that the Drawings of Mr Westhall (sic) are by no means in a secure state they having been damaged by water…and not yet sufficiently freed from the effects of salt water. His Elder Brother Mr Westhall Royal academician, wishes much to be allowed to examine them & put them in a secure state which he thinks he can do”. The drawings were transmitted to Richard Westall after Admiralty approval. In a letter to the Investigator’s naturalist, Robert Brown, Banks commented that Westall’s “finished drawings were all spoiled in the Wreck”. Banks sent the drawings back to the Admiralty stating that they were “now in a situation to be preserved if kept in a dry place.” Although a list of the drawings was mentioned it has unfortunately not been discovered(12).
On the return of Matthew Flinders, after his imprisonment on Mauritius, substantial work depicting scenes from the voyage to Australia was carried out. Richard Westall and Banks campaigned on William Westall’s behalf to persuade the Admiralty to commission pictures. On the basis of two oils exhibited William was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1812. A total of nine oil paintings were completed and are now owned by the British Ministry of Defence. (13)
Comparison between Westall’s original drawings in Australia and his finished oil
4
paintings lead one to recognise contemporary artistic pressures. Richard Westall had succeeded in establishing himself at this period as among the leaders of style in fashionable London (14). He was particularly praised by a leading connoisseur of the picturesque Richard Payne Knight (15). Furthermore in 1807 he exhibited four paintings depicting scenes from the life of Nelson which the ranked as “among the most interesting in the whole Exhibition” in the St. James’s Chronicle (May 7-9, 1807).
An indication of the appreciation William had of Richard’s influence is noted by Joseph Farington (16) on 30 April 1808 when he recorded that William had taken lodgings away from Richard so that “he should be seen as an artist distinct from his brother”. Farington also reported (28 April, 1811) : “Westall (Richard) took his brother Wm Westall into the Exhibition room yesterday to touch upon His picture which had been injured, but Turner & Calcott finding Him so employed wd. Not allow Him to proceed.” (17) Although is not clear which “Him” Farington is referring to it appears that Richard’s influence on his brother may have gone beyond advice. The painting in question was of Rydal Lake not Australia.
Another interesting report from Farington on 14th April, 1809 comes from William’s brother in law William Daniell which involved Westall’s drawings in Madeira that had not been used as engravings because “He placed Convents where there are none, & made other alterations so unsatisfactory in respect of fidelity as to cause” the plan for engravings to be abandoned. Daniell said that William Westall’s drawings were made subject to (his) “notions of what is picturesque”. Further Daniell suggested that considering the time Westall was absent from England he had made “but few drawings” also “He (Westall) did not think of what might be interesting to the Topographer but only what would, in His opinion ‘come well’ (picturesque)” (18)
This tension between Westall’s need to be accurate and his notion of the picturesque is at the heart of his Australian work. It is clearest in his oil paintings which were for the Royal Academy as well as the Admiralty. For Jeffrey Auerbach (19) they are “especially important because they are so clearly at odds with his written description” of Australia as being a “barren land”. Through “picturesque devices” he conveyed an impression of Australia which defied his own opinion.
The Royal Academy paintings are fine pictures and they achieved for William Westall his Associate of the Royal Academy status, setting him on his artistic career. They demonstrate perhaps a compromise between his independence of mind and the prevailing constraints of the day.
1 Two recent books being Matthew Flinders and His Scientific Gentlemen
edited by Juliet Wege, Alex George et al (Western Australia Museum, 2005) & The Fever of Discovery by Marion Body (New European Publications, 2006).
5
2. Westall’s Drawings edited by Thomas Perry & Donald Simpson (Royal Commonwealth Society, London 1962) ; Early Artists in Australia by Rex & Thea
Reinits (Angus & Robertson, Sydney 1963); William Westall in Australia by Richard J. Westall (Art & Australia Vol 20 No 2, Summer 1982 pp 252 – 256); European Vision and the South Pacific by Bernard Smith (Yale University Press 2nd edition 1985); Arcadian Quest by Elisabeth Findlay (National Library of Australia, Canberra 1998) and Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2002) by Richard J. Westall. See website www.bradonpace/westall on both Richard & William Westall.
3. A Voyage to Terra Australis 1801 – 1803 by Matthew Flinders (G & W Nicol 1814) 2 Vols & Atlas. Nine engravings after W. Westall ARA FLS and 28 land profiles.
4. See The Westall Brothers by Richard J. Westall (Turner Studies Vol 4 No 1 Summer 1984 (Tate, London) and William Westall in India by Richard J. Westall (Marg publications, Mumbai Vol XLVII No 4 June 1996 pp 94 – 96).
5. A listing of Westall’s book illustrations (some 700) can be found in William Westall – A Catalogue of his Book illustration by Richard J. Westall (Antiquarian Book Monthly Review Vol XIII no 12 issue 152, December 1986, Oxford).
6. 1767 – 1849.
7. Outlines of Australian Art: The Joseph Brown Collection by Daniell Thomas (Macmillan Sydney 1973).
8. See Early English Watercolours by Iolo Williams.
9. Westall applied for membership on June 4, 1805, and was elected on 3 December, 1805.
10.See my article in National Library of Australia News ( Canberra December 2007). For the panoramas see William Westall boxes at the Witt Library, Kings College, London.
11. The Australian picture was: View of the bay of Pines, New South Wales
Long 150 30, lat 22 20. Feb 1802.
12. I am indebted to Library Notes (Royal Commonwealth Society July 1965 for this information.
13. A possible tenth oil is mentioned above.
14. In 1814 at Richard Westall’s own exhibition in Pall Mall the catalogue which can be seen at the British Library indicates the proprietors of his pictures included Richard
6
Payne Knight, Thomas Hope, the Earls of Oxford, Carlisle & Harrowby, Lord Byron, Samuel Rogers, the Prince Regent, D’Israeli and William Daniell among many others.
15. Analytical Enquiry into the Principles of Taste (1805 ed) in which Knight wrote p. 304 : “Some of the most interesting and affecting pictures that art has ever produced, are taken from similar events (tragedies taken from common life), and are treated in similar style; such as Mr West’s General Wolfe, Mr Westall’s Strom in Harvest and Mr Westall’s Storm In Harvest, and Mr Wright’s Soldiers Tent; in all of which the pathos is much improved, with the picturesque effect being at all injured, by the characters and dress being taken from familiar life.”
16. The Diary of Joseph Farington (Yale University Press. New Haven & London 1982).
17. The Diary of Joseph Farington op. cit.
18. The Diary of Joseph Farington op. cit.
19. The picturesque and the homogenisation of Empire, British Art Journal (London)Vol V No 1, Spring/Summer 2004.
Recent William Westall Picture Discoveries by Richard J. Westall
The voyage of the Investigator, captained by Matthew Flinders, which sailed from England in the summer of 1801 to circumnavigate Australia between December of that year and the autumn of 1803, has been well researched (1). The contribution of the young landscape and figure artist on board, William Westall (1781 – 1850), has also received substantial coverage (2).
However fresh items have appeared in recent decades claiming to be by the hand of that artist and stemming from the voyage. In portraying the art Westall produced associated with the Investigator voyage I will concentrate on the emergence of these significant pictures.
There are several aspects to Westall’s Australian artistic output: the drawings & sketches which he drew whilst on the journey; the coastal profiles or seascapes which he recorded during the voyage; the watercolours which were completed either on the expedition or on Westall’s return to England; the oil paintings which he completed for the Admiralty between 1807 and 1812 and the engravings completed for Flinders’ account of the journey.(3)
Apart from Australia there were brief visits to South Africa in 1801, to Timor in 1803, to China (1803/4), India (1804)(4) and a stop at St Helena (1804). Following his return to England in 1805 Westall visited Madeira (1805), where the Investigator had called in 1801 and Jamaica (1806).
Research into the production of nine oil paintings for the Admiralty (1807 – 1812) has given some new insights into the influences that led to their production.
Westall’s subsequent life and career is not convered here, except to mention that he exhibited at the Royal Academy and the British Institution throughout his life and was substantially associated with the publication of topographical views (5).
The most interesting new discovery is a painting which the art dealer Spinks of London had in the 1980s. It is a pencil and watercolour picture 19 3/4 x 23 5/8 ins described as An Ambush by Aborigines on two Europeans in the bush.. I was kindly provided with a negative and photograph of this painting by Anthony Spink who wanted my opinion. Although unsigned there is no doubt that this is a William Westall painting depicting the episode on January 21st, 1803 when Mr Whitewood, the master’s mate on the Investigator, was speared after his approach to Aborigines was misunderstood. This was followed by the fatal shooting of an Aborigine. Westall drew a sketch of the dead man (Westall’s Drawngs 102 Blue Mud Bay : body of a native on Morgan’s island). There is every indication that the watercolour Spinks owned had probably been completed by Westall whilst on the Investigator. It is striking, not only for the scene of the attack, but for the beautifully executed drawings of the trees towering over the scene, which is totally portrayed in shades of brown.
Why was this painting never publicised? Clearly the subject matter may have caused problems. It was perfectly in order for pictures of a dead Aborigine, killed
2
probably by master carpenter John Aken against the orders of Flinders, to be known about, but the hostility of Aborigines and their successful ambush of a European may have been an unwanted fact resulting from the expedition to Australia. It is nonetheless a very important historical painting and among Westall’s most accomplished of Australia. I am not aware of how the painting came into the possession of Spinks but members of the family were disposing of his Australian work in the 1970’s.
Another photograph of a painting was sent to me in 1983 by Chris Deutscher, Director of Deutscher Fine Art of Carlton, Victoria on the suggestion of Bernard Smith as the picture bore “some similarities with Westall’s work”. They were unable to identify not only the artist but the location. It is an oil on canvas unsigned 56 x 83 cm entitled Mountainous Landscape with Shelter in foreground (Small temple or lookout structure on top of mountain in background). The provenance of the picture was that is had been purchased from an unidentified dealer in London. In a subsequent letter Chris Deutscher advised me that “the canvas and stretcher certainly appear to be early 1800’s”.
I replied that the painting “Is almost the same size as some of the Admiralty oils and is similar in a number of ways. The log is similar in execution to a tree in his (Westall’s) painting Part of King George III Sound on the South Coast of Australia (New Holland)which is engraved in the Flinders’ account of the voyage. The trees are very like the ones found in some of the drawings illustrated in Westall’s Drawings. It is quite possible that Westall painted this picture for himself at the time of his Admiralty commissions”. It was suggested that a location which would be credible might be a view directed towards Mount Westall, in which case the “temple” must be a “lookout”.
I am not aware what final attribution Deutscher’s finally put on this painting but I would now suggest that John Glover (6) be another possible attribution. It would be interesting to know whether the unidentified dealer who sold the painting was Spinks.
Following this incident the Investigator sailed to Timor. A watercolour by Westall entitled The Island of Timor 1808 was sold by Sotheby’s, London on 28th January 1971. It is 20.3 x 31.7 cm, 8 x 12 ½ in and signed W. Westall 1808. It appears as a colour reproduction in Outlines of Australian Art by Daniel Thomas (7). The author notes that Westall was in Coupang in March – April 1803 and that in London views of Timor were engraved for the Naval Chronicle after Westall’s drawings (1806 & 1808) but he suggests that this watercolour was probably painted for Westall’s exhibition in April 1808. This seems feasible, although without seeing the original I would query the date of 1808 and suggest the written figure 3 might have been mistaken for an 8.
Another view of Timor by Westall signed with initials was sold by Christie’s, S. Kensington on June 6th 1988 (7 ¼ x 10 ¾ ins). Both the above views were not used by the Naval Chronicle.
.
3
Christie’s also sold a watercolour (4 x 7 7/16 in, 10.2 x 18.9 cm) by Westall of Port Jackson (28 May, 1987), being the original of the Naval Chronicle engraving published on 30 November 1809. A colour reproduction (actual size) of this scene is reproduced. Christie’s again sold (24 May 1990) a watercolour delightful seascape by Westall, probably of the Queensland coast signed and dated 1802. Its provenance was to my father’s cousin Mrs McN. Lester. A label on the backboard read: “Investigator in full sail off a hilly coastline, and to its left the Lady Nelson, which acted for a while as the Investigator’s tender.” The vessels were together between 21 July and 18 October 1802 and the view is not among those engraved for Flinders. Another view of Queensland, taken from the shore, in pencil (18 x 26 cm) and signed, appeared at a sale by Phillipson & Neale on 22 December 1986. A final illustration of interest was executed on Westall’s return from India. It is entitled St Helena – Lot and his Daughters signed and dated 1804 12 ½ x 17 1/4in. (8).
Following William Westall’s return to England in early 1805 he was elected to be a Fellow of the Linnean Society in December of that year (9) before he departed to revisit Madeira, perhaps because his original drawings of the island in 1801 had been lost when he almost drowned there when the Investigator called. After Madeira he travelled to Jamaica where he is known to have drawn several studies of trees and some panoramic views similar to his coastal profiles of Australia (10).
In 1805 and 1806 views of New South Wales and Madeira by Westall were exhibited at the Royal Academy (11) being shown again together at the British Institution in 1807. In 1808 Westall organised an Exhibition of his foreign views.
Westall had sent his Australian work from India in 1804 under the custody of Lieutenant Robert Fowler who arrived in England in August 1804 and handed them over to the Admiralty. Sir Joseph Banks wrote to the Admiralty on 22 August (ADM 1/4378, No 27): “I have been informed …that the Drawings of Mr Westhall (sic) are by no means in a secure state they having been damaged by water…and not yet sufficiently freed from the effects of salt water. His Elder Brother Mr Westhall Royal academician, wishes much to be allowed to examine them & put them in a secure state which he thinks he can do”. The drawings were transmitted to Richard Westall after Admiralty approval. In a letter to the Investigator’s naturalist, Robert Brown, Banks commented that Westall’s “finished drawings were all spoiled in the Wreck”. Banks sent the drawings back to the Admiralty stating that they were “now in a situation to be preserved if kept in a dry place.” Although a list of the drawings was mentioned it has unfortunately not been discovered(12).
On the return of Matthew Flinders, after his imprisonment on Mauritius, substantial work depicting scenes from the voyage to Australia was carried out. Richard Westall and Banks campaigned on William Westall’s behalf to persuade the Admiralty to commission pictures. On the basis of two oils exhibited William was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1812. A total of nine oil paintings were completed and are now owned by the British Ministry of Defence. (13)
Comparison between Westall’s original drawings in Australia and his finished oil
4
paintings lead one to recognise contemporary artistic pressures. Richard Westall had succeeded in establishing himself at this period as among the leaders of style in fashionable London (14). He was particularly praised by a leading connoisseur of the picturesque Richard Payne Knight (15). Furthermore in 1807 he exhibited four paintings depicting scenes from the life of Nelson which the ranked as “among the most interesting in the whole Exhibition” in the St. James’s Chronicle (May 7-9, 1807).
An indication of the appreciation William had of Richard’s influence is noted by Joseph Farington (16) on 30 April 1808 when he recorded that William had taken lodgings away from Richard so that “he should be seen as an artist distinct from his brother”. Farington also reported (28 April, 1811) : “Westall (Richard) took his brother Wm Westall into the Exhibition room yesterday to touch upon His picture which had been injured, but Turner & Calcott finding Him so employed wd. Not allow Him to proceed.” (17) Although is not clear which “Him” Farington is referring to it appears that Richard’s influence on his brother may have gone beyond advice. The painting in question was of Rydal Lake not Australia.
Another interesting report from Farington on 14th April, 1809 comes from William’s brother in law William Daniell which involved Westall’s drawings in Madeira that had not been used as engravings because “He placed Convents where there are none, & made other alterations so unsatisfactory in respect of fidelity as to cause” the plan for engravings to be abandoned. Daniell said that William Westall’s drawings were made subject to (his) “notions of what is picturesque”. Further Daniell suggested that considering the time Westall was absent from England he had made “but few drawings” also “He (Westall) did not think of what might be interesting to the Topographer but only what would, in His opinion ‘come well’ (picturesque)” (18)
This tension between Westall’s need to be accurate and his notion of the picturesque is at the heart of his Australian work. It is clearest in his oil paintings which were for the Royal Academy as well as the Admiralty. For Jeffrey Auerbach (19) they are “especially important because they are so clearly at odds with his written description” of Australia as being a “barren land”. Through “picturesque devices” he conveyed an impression of Australia which defied his own opinion.
The Royal Academy paintings are fine pictures and they achieved for William Westall his Associate of the Royal Academy status, setting him on his artistic career. They demonstrate perhaps a compromise between his independence of mind and the prevailing constraints of the day.
1 Two recent books being Matthew Flinders and His Scientific Gentlemen
edited by Juliet Wege, Alex George et al (Western Australia Museum, 2005) & The Fever of Discovery by Marion Body (New European Publications, 2006).
5
2. Westall’s Drawings edited by Thomas Perry & Donald Simpson (Royal Commonwealth Society, London 1962) ; Early Artists in Australia by Rex & Thea
Reinits (Angus & Robertson, Sydney 1963); William Westall in Australia by Richard J. Westall (Art & Australia Vol 20 No 2, Summer 1982 pp 252 – 256); European Vision and the South Pacific by Bernard Smith (Yale University Press 2nd edition 1985); Arcadian Quest by Elisabeth Findlay (National Library of Australia, Canberra 1998) and Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2002) by Richard J. Westall. See website www.bradonpace/westall on both Richard & William Westall.
3. A Voyage to Terra Australis 1801 – 1803 by Matthew Flinders (G & W Nicol 1814) 2 Vols & Atlas. Nine engravings after W. Westall ARA FLS and 28 land profiles.
4. See The Westall Brothers by Richard J. Westall (Turner Studies Vol 4 No 1 Summer 1984 (Tate, London) and William Westall in India by Richard J. Westall (Marg publications, Mumbai Vol XLVII No 4 June 1996 pp 94 – 96).
5. A listing of Westall’s book illustrations (some 700) can be found in William Westall – A Catalogue of his Book illustration by Richard J. Westall (Antiquarian Book Monthly Review Vol XIII no 12 issue 152, December 1986, Oxford).
6. 1767 – 1849.
7. Outlines of Australian Art: The Joseph Brown Collection by Daniell Thomas (Macmillan Sydney 1973).
8. See Early English Watercolours by Iolo Williams.
9. Westall applied for membership on June 4, 1805, and was elected on 3 December, 1805.
10.See my article in National Library of Australia News ( Canberra December 2007). For the panoramas see William Westall boxes at the Witt Library, Kings College, London.
11. The Australian picture was: View of the bay of Pines, New South Wales
Long 150 30, lat 22 20. Feb 1802.
12. I am indebted to Library Notes (Royal Commonwealth Society July 1965 for this information.
13. A possible tenth oil is mentioned above.
14. In 1814 at Richard Westall’s own exhibition in Pall Mall the catalogue which can be seen at the British Library indicates the proprietors of his pictures included Richard
6
Payne Knight, Thomas Hope, the Earls of Oxford, Carlisle & Harrowby, Lord Byron, Samuel Rogers, the Prince Regent, D’Israeli and William Daniell among many others.
15. Analytical Enquiry into the Principles of Taste (1805 ed) in which Knight wrote p. 304 : “Some of the most interesting and affecting pictures that art has ever produced, are taken from similar events (tragedies taken from common life), and are treated in similar style; such as Mr West’s General Wolfe, Mr Westall’s Strom in Harvest and Mr Westall’s Storm In Harvest, and Mr Wright’s Soldiers Tent; in all of which the pathos is much improved, with the picturesque effect being at all injured, by the characters and dress being taken from familiar life.”
16. The Diary of Joseph Farington (Yale University Press. New Haven & London 1982).
17. The Diary of Joseph Farington op. cit.
18. The Diary of Joseph Farington op. cit.
19. The picturesque and the homogenisation of Empire, British Art Journal (London)Vol V No 1, Spring/Summer 2004.
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Sunday, 10 January 2010
Saturday, 9 January 2010
Towards A Chronological Catalogue of Print illustrations by Richard Westall R.A
Prints in both monochrome and colour of the same illustration exist in varying sizes and a few were published for French, German or American markets. Size of print is not indicatednor whether a print is on copper or steel – although the turn of the century is a roughguide to the transition.
1783
Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse
Eng. T. Cook Pub. J.Bell
Sarah Siddons.
Bust, face in profile to right
Oval medallion
Eng. R. Ibbot Pub R.Ibbot, Bath
1784
Sarah Siddons as Lady Macbeth
Plate to Bell’s edition of Shakespeare
Sarah Siddons.
Half length, looking to left in hat.
Oval. “From a crayon painting in her possession”
Pub. J. Walker
1785
Maria Linley; singer; sister of Mrs Sheridan 1763-1784
Three quarters length to left
Eng. T. Ryder Pub. S. Watts
1786
Sarah Siddons as Isabella in “Measure for Measure”
Plate to Lady’s Magazine
1788
A Boy of Glamorganshire
[R. Westal] 21st February
Eng. T. Ryder Pub. S. Watts
Come see
Rural fidelity
Which health and innocence ever enjoy
A Girl of Carnarvonshire
[R. Westal] 21st February
Eng. T. Ryder Pub. S. Watts
How happy is the harmless country maid
Who rich by nature scorns superfluous aid
1789
The Beggar Girl
Eng. C. Josi (pupil of J.R. Smith)
Stipple printed in colours
1790
Spring
[R. Westal] April 9th
Eng. Fransesco Bartolozzi R.A. Pub. T. Simpson
Hark melodious sounds I hear
Autumn
[R. Westal] April 9th
Eng. Francesco Bartolozzi R.A. Pub. T. Simpson
Delightful is the ripen’d year
These prints are from a set of four with Summer and Winter engraved after F. Wheatley.
The Young Fortune Teller
July 20th
Eng. T. Gaugain Pub J.R. Smith
The Sheltered Lamb
July 20th
Eng. T. Gaugain Pub. J.R Smith
Elizabeth Billington (born Weichsel); singer, 1766 - 1818
As Rosetta in Love in a Village
Eng Thornwaite Plate to Bell’s British Theatre
1791
A Ghost
March
Eng. Schiavonetti Pub. T. Simpson
Also as L’Apparation
Mr Kemble as Cato
June 25th
Eng. Audinet Pub. J. Bell
Presumptuous Man! The gods take care of Cato
This print illustrates “A Tragedy” by Joseph Addison
The Earl of Essex’s first interview with Queen Elizabeth, after his return from Ireland
Eng. W.Ward Pub J.R. Smith
The Young Corsican convinced by General Paoli of the necessity of his Uncle’s death
Eng. W. Ward Pub J.R. Smith
See Boswell’s account of Corsica
Rhynsault confronted by Sapphira in the presence of Charles, Duke of Burgundy
Eng. W. Ward Pub. J.R. Smith
Henry lV of France reconciles the Duchess of Beaufort to Sully
Pub J.R. Smith
See Leggatt facsimile edition of “J.R. Smith Catalogue of Prints”
1792
The Hop Pickers
Feb 1
Eng. W. Ward Pub. E.M. Diemar
See the peasants round each Pole
The leafy Hops that grace the soil
The Gleaners
Eng. W. Ward Pub. E.M. Diemar
See content the humble Gleaners
Take the scattered Ears that fall,
Queen Elizabeth receiving the News of the Death of her sister Queen Mary
March 2
Eng. Schiavonetti Pub. Thomas Simpson
The Little Gipsey (sic)
May 1
Eng. C. Josi, pupil of J.R. Smith Pub. J.R. Smith
William Hodges Esq R.A.
Landscape Painter to the Prince of Wales
From an Original Painting by Mr Westall
Pub. C. Forster
The Literary and Biographical Magazine (May 1792)
Sarah Siddons as Medea
In Glover’s “Medea”
Whole length with her child beside her
Plate for Bell’s British Theatre
Cardinal Ximenes answering the Grandees of Spain
May 14
Pub. J.R. Smith
See: W.W. Robertson “History of the Emporer Charles V”
Note: The British Library has the 1798 edition of Robertson’s history which gives Stothard as the artist. Richard Westall exhibited “Anecdote from the life of Cardinal Ximenes” at the Royal Academy in 1790
The Benevolent Cardinal
Pub. J.R. Smith
Joan of Arc Maid of Orleans receiving the Consecrated Banner
July 4
Eng. F. Bartolozzi RA Pub Thomas Simpson
1793
Cupid Sleeping
From a Poem addressed to Her Grace the Duchess of Devonshire by Mrs Robinson
Jan 1
Eng. William Nutter Pub. E. M. Diemar
O Mistress Mine where are you roaming?
Eng. James Hogg Pub.J. Hogg & John Raphael Smith
He is dead and gone, Lady
From a Ballad of Shakespeare’s Hamlet Act 4
Eng. James Hogg Pub. J.R. Smith, King St, Covent Garden & James Hogg
BMP
Perdita
vide Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale
Feb. 10
Eng. T. Cheesman, late pupil of F. Bartolozzi Pub. J.F. Tomkins
Beatrice
Vide Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing
Eng. T. Cheesman, late pupil of F. Bartolozzi Pub J.F. Tomkins
The Adoration of the Shepherds
Luke Chap XI v. 15 & 17
June
Eng. Bromley Pub. Thos Macklin Poets Gallery
The Archers return
Eng. J. Ogborne Pub. J. Ogborne
Nov. 12
Note: RW 1792 on print
1794
Mother and Child
From Jerningham’s Poem Il Latte
March 20
Eng.T. Cheesman, late pupil of F. Bartolozzi RA Pub J.F. Tomkins
Unsway’d by Fashions dull unseemly jest
Still to the Bosom let your infant cling
The Defeat of Mary Queen of Scots at the Battle of Langside
Eng W. Ward Pub. J.R. Smith
The Flight of Mary Queen of Scots
Eng. F. Bartolozzi
The Flight of Mary, Queen of Scots into England
Eng. Chaparier
The Departure of Mary Queen of Scots, when a child for France
Eng. F. Bartolozzi
1794 -1797 The Life of Milton by William Hayley Pub J & J Boydell and G.Nicol
23 engravings by Westall were included
Vol I
Paradise Lost
Book 1 line 315 He call’d so loud, that all the hollow deep
Of Hell resounded
Eng. J.P. Simon
(On this print R. Westal is the spelling of the artist’s name, all subsequent prints have the correct spelling.)
Book 2 line 752 All of a sudden miserable pain surprised thee…
A godess arm’d…our of thy head I sprang
Eng: J.P. Simon
Book 3 line 260 Then with the multitude of my redeem’d
Shall enter Heaven
Eng J.P. Simon
Book 4 line 985 Satan alarm’d
Collecting all his might, dilated stood
Eng. J.P. Simon
Book 5 line 11 He on his side
Leaning, half raised, with looks of cordial love
Eng. R. Earlom
Book 6 line 834 All but the throne itself of God
Eng. L. Schiavonetti
Vol II
Book 7 line 535 Wherever thus created, for no place
Is yet distinct by name
Eng. Thos. Kirk
Book 8 line 44 Went forth among her fruits and flowers
Eng. Rich, Earlom
Book 9 line 888 On the other side, Adam, soon as he heard
Eng. Thos. Kirk
Book 10 line 272 So saying, with delight, he sniff’d the smell
Of mortal change on earth
Eng. J. Ogborne
Book 11 line 652 With cruel tournament the squadrons join
Eng. J. Ogborne
Book 12 line 640 They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld
Eng B. Smith
Paradise Regained
Book 1 line 310 Among wild beasts; they at his sight grew mild
Eng. M. Haughton
Book 2 line 66 O what avails me now that honour high
Eng. B. Smith
Book 3 line 106 I seek not mine (glory), but his Eng. W. Leney
Book 4 line 560 To whom thus Jesus. Also it is written
Tempt not the Lord thy God
Eng. B. Smith
Vol III (1797)
Samson Agonistes Page 9
Eng Thos. Kirk
Samson Agonistes Page 67
Eng. Thos. Kirk
Death of a Fair Infant Page 77 O fairest flower, no sooner blown but blasted!
Eng. B. Smith
Hymn of the Nativity Stan 23 & 24 page 92
Eng. I.P. Simon
L’Allegro p. 106 Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee Jest,
And youthful Jollity
Eng. Thos. Kirk
Il Penseroso p.111 Hail. Divinest Melancholy
Eng. J. Ogborne
Comus p. 133 thou unblemished form of chastity!
Eng. B. Smith
Poems p. 189 XXIII On his deceased Wife
Elegia Quinta p. 247
Eng. Thos Kirk
1795 The Pleasures of Memory
Samuel Rogers
Pub. Cadell & Davies
2 engravings after Stothard, 2 after Richard Westall
p.96 Wrapt in clouds, in tempests lost
Eng I. Neagle
p. 102 In cloistered solitude she sits and sighs
While from each shrine still, small responses rise
Eng. J. Heath
1797 Mr Bannister furnished in the Character of Walter in the Children in the Wood
Eng James Heath
Published Darling & Thompson, Gt Newport St & T. Simpson, St Paul’s Churchyard
1797 Cimion and Iphigenia (after Reynolds)
Eng Haward
1798
Calculation
Eng A. Cardon (artist given as B. Westall, clearly R. Westall)
Pub Colnaghi Sala & co (BM)
1799 The Naval Chronicle
Vol I Frontis Britannia
This engraving appeared in Vols I – VI
In Vols I, II, V & VI Cooke is the engraver
In Vols III & IV Heath is the engraver and the design is slightly larger
1800
A Fern-Cutter’s Child
Eng Meadows
From the original Drawing in the possession of William Chamberlain
Pub J &J Boydell
1801 A Girl Returning from Milking
Eng Th. Gaugain
Pub Scriven & Clay
A Peasant Boy
Eng Th Gaugain
Scriven & Clay
Girl Gathering Mushrooms
Eng G. Venzo not dated
(Gordon’s Print Annual 1980)
Venus et les amours
Eng Ruotte
Not dated
(Gordon’s Print Annual 1982)
Jeune Villageois
Eng L. de Tolouze
Stated to be after W. Westall but clearly R. Westall
Not dated
(Gordon’s Print Annual 1979)
Petite Blanchisseuse
Eng Laindor de Toulouze
Stated to be after W. Westall but clearly R.Westall
Not dated
(Gordon’s Print Annual 1979)
The Sower
The Thresher
Eng S. W Reynolds
Given as after R. Westfall but clearly R.Westall
(Gordon’s Print Annual 1979)
The Sower published as Le Semeur
Eng S.W. Reynolds
Pub S. Morgan & W. Pearce
(BM)
A Boy Mending His Net
Eng Hellyer & Gaughain
Pub J & J Boydell
(BM)
Rural Musick from Thomson’s Spring
Eng T.Gaugain
Pub J & J Boydell
(BM)
Girl & Pigs
Eng Bartoloti (Bartalozzi)
Not dated
(BM)
Also Girl & Pigs in 1802 reversed
Eng Ogborne & Gaugain
Pub J & J Boydell
(BM)
1802
Gaiety (Lady Hamilton)
Meditation (Mrs Siddons)
Pair
(Gordon’s Print Annual 1981)
Before 1803 Cupid Sleeping
Eng Wm Nutter (1754 – 1802)
Not dated
Pub in German E.W. Diemar
A Cottage Seamstress
From the Original Painting in the possession of R.P. Knight
Eng E. Scriven
Pub Clay & Scriven
Wood Cutter & Cow-boy
Eng John Ogborne
Pub J&J Boydell
A Peasant Smoking
From the original in the possession of R.P. Knight
Eng H.R. Cook
Pub Clay & Scriven
A Storm in Harvest
Eng R.M. Meadows
1804
The Poetical Works of William Collins (BMP)
Pub. John Sharpe
3 engravings seen but others may exist.
p. 16 eng Jas Parker
p. 24 eng Jas Heath ARA
p. 84 eng W. Bromley & J. Landseer
1805
British Poets
Collins & Gray
Pub Sharpe
1 engraving after Henry Thomson from Collins
1 engraving after RW from Gray
The Bard : Loose his beard, and hoary hair
Stream’d, like a meteor to the troubled air
Eng P.W. Tomkins (Jan 1, 1805)
!805 – 1809
The Adventurer Vol I/IV
British Classics Vol 19
Pub John Sharpe (1806)
Vol I Vignette Title
Transmigration (No 5)
Eng J. Heath
p.42 The Death of Melissa’s father
(no 7) eng J. Heath
p.113 Mr Friendl’s Indignation roused
(no 17) eng J. Mitan
Vo II British Classics Vol 20
Vignette Title
No 61 The Request of Honour to Jupiter
Eng Anker Smith
No 38 Cosrou’s Vision
p.18 eng Jas Mitan
no 70 Agrestis enquiring….
p.211 eng Anker Smith
Vol III Frontis (1807)
no 104 Vignette title. The Herald of Soliman astonished by the Beauty of Shelimah
eng J. Mitan
no 73 The Death of Nouraddin
p. 19 eng Anker Smith
no 81 The Death of Crichton
p.77 eng J. Mitan
Vol IV Vignette title (1805)
no. 114 Almet and the Stranger
eng J. Mitan
no 125 Flavilla writing the billet to Mercator
p.132 eng Jas Heath
no 129 Inertio’s Disappointment
p.154 eng Anker Smith (1807)
180?
Life of Nelson 2 Vols
By Clarke & McArthur
Pub Cadell & Davies
Vol I
Nelson’s Conflict with a Bear
July 1773
Eng J. Landseer
Lt. Nelson volunteering to board a prize in a violent gale
Nov 20 1777
Eng A. Rambach
Vol II
The San Nicolas & San Josef, carried by Boarding
Feb 14 1797
Eng Golding
1807
March 25
Baptism & Matrimony
By James Carpenter
Pub Sharpe & Hailes; Taylor & Hessey & John Carr
1 engraving
Westall’s Illustrations of the Book of Common Prayer (BMP)
Pub John Sharpe
1. Matrimony eng A. Cardon
2. Baptism eng L. Schiavonetti
3. Sermon eng A. Cardon
4. The Creed eng I.S. Agar
5. The Lord’s Prayer eng L. Schiavonetti
6. The Catechism eng A. Cardon
7. Coming to Church eng I.S. Agar
8. The Sacrament eng N. Schiavonetti
9. The Exhortation eng L. Schiavonetti
10. Confirmation eng I.S. Agar
11. Burial of the Dead eng N. Schiavonetti
12. Visitation of the Sick eng N. Schivonetti
Also Confirmation
Eng R.M. Meadows
Pub R. Bowyer’s Historic Gallery in 1806
(BM)
1808
A Day in Spring and other Poems
By Richard Westall R.A.
Pub John Murray
Frontis (xxiii) Hail! Grey bosom’d twilight hail!
Eng Jas Heath ARA (May 20)
p.55 A Shipwreck
eng J. Heath
p. 197 Horace
eng Charles Heath
Spencer
Eng Charles Heath
1808/1810
Poems 2 Vols
William Cowper
Vol I
p.102 Truth
1810 Eng F.Engleheart
p.290 Retirement
1810 eng J. Heath
p372 The Negro’s Complaint
1810 eng John Romney
p.388 The Lily and the Rose
1810 Eng Chas Heath
Vol II
All 1810
Frontis
The Task (Book VI)
Eng Geo. Corbould
p.82 The Task (Book II)
eng R. Golding
p. 124 The Task (Book III)
eng Jas Heath
p. 154 The Task (Book IV)
eng Anker Smith
p. 182 The Task (Book V)
eng F. Engleheart
p. 352 On his Mother’s Picture
eng Richd Golding
1809
Poems
By Sir John Carr
Pub Mathews & Leigh
Engraving by Freeman after R.W. of portrait of Sir John Carr
1810
Telemachus Relating His Adventures to Calypso
(Gordons Print Annual 1982)_
1810
Poems 2 Vols
William Cowper
John Sharpe
Vol I
p.76 Truth
eng F. Engleheart
p. 238 Retirement
eng J. Heath
p. 300 The Dog & the Water Lily
eng R. Rhodes
p. 312 The Negro’s Complaint
eng John Romney
p. 328 The Lily & the Rose
eng Chas Heath
Vol II
The Task – Kate is craz’d
Eng Chas Heath
p.70 The Task – He would stroke
eng R. Golding
p. 106 The Task – And neatly tied
eng Jas Heath
p. 136 The Task – Where penury is felt
eng Anker Smith
p. 158 The Task - Forth goes the Woodman
eng F. Engleheart
p. 212 The Task - A Sportive Train
eng Geo Corbould
p. 318 Cowper – On his mother’s picture
eng Richd Golding
1811/1812 (2nd edition)
The Vision of Don Roderick
Pub. Longman. London
James Ballantyne, Edinburgh
Sir Walter Scott
Frontis. Koran – Then, too, the holy cross
Stanz xxiii
Eng. W.B. Cook
p. 32 He stay’d his speech abrupt
Stanz viii
Eng. Saml Noble
p.41 “Rivers Ingulph him!”
Stanz xxi
1812
May The Vision of Don Roderick
p. 42 “Rivers Ingulph him!” – “Hush,” in shuddering tone
The prelate said, “Rash Prince, yon visioned form,s thine own
Stanz xxi
Eng. A. Raimbach
1812
Glenfilas
Sir Walter Scott
John Sharpe
Frontis eng W.B. Cooke
p.12 Glenfilas – As, bending o’er the dying gleam
eng Richd Golding
p. 50 Cadyow Castle – What sheeted phantom wanders wild
eng Anker Smith
p.130 Thomas the Rhymer – And there before Lord Douglas’ face
eng F. Engleheart
p. 180 Helvellyn- The much-loved remains…
eng F. Engleheart
p 32 Vision of Don Roderick – He stay’d his speech abrupt
Stanz vii
Eng Saml Noble
p. 41 Vision of Don Roderick – “Rivers ingulph him!”
stanz xxi
eng A. Raimbach
1812
Ballads
Sir Walter Scott
Sharpe?
P11/12 Glenfinlas – As, bending o’er the dying gleam,
She rung the moisture from her hair
Eng Richd Golding
p.50 Cadyow Castle – What sheeted Phantom wanders wild.
Where mountain eske trough woodland flows?
Eng Anker Smith
p.130 Thomas the Rhymer – And there before Lord Dougls’s face
With them he crossed the flood
Eng F. Engleheart
P, 180/1 Helvellyn- The much-loved remains of her master defended
And chased the hill-fox and the raven away
Eng F. Engleheart
1815
The Bible – Old Testament (only some information on engravings available)
Pub White, Cochrane & Co
Engavings all by Chas Heath
Frontis Moses receiving the Law
Ex. Ch xxi v 19
Hagar & Ishmael
Gen .Ch xxii v 11/12
Isaac discovering that he had blessed Jacob instead of Esau
Gen. Ch xxvii v 34
The mother of Moses leaving her child in the Bullrushes
Ex Ch ii v3
Manoah’s sacrifice
Judges Ch xiii v20
Samson betrayed by Delilah
Judges Ch xvi v19
Ruth gleaning the fields of Boaz
Ruth Ch ii v8
Saul & the witch of Endor
I Samuel Ch xxviii v14
The Prophet Ahijah & the Wife of King Jeroboam
I Kings Ch xiv v12
Elijah raising the Widow’s Son
I Kings Ch xvii v 21
Elisha prophesying
II Kings Ch xiii v17
Esther before Ahasuerus
Esther Ch vii v2
1815/1829
Mrs Chapone’s Letters – Letters on the Improvemeent of the Mind – Addressed to a Lady
By Mrs Hester Chapone
Pub John Sharpe
Frontis eng W. Greatbatch (1829)
Letter I. I will hope that your attention may be engaged by seeing on paper…Truths of the highest importance (june 1, 1829)
Eng W. Greatbatch
Letter V. The time to consult them is before you have given a lover the least encouragement
(June 1, 1829)
Eng W. Greatbatch
Letter VIII. Who can contemplate such a scene unmoved?
(June 1, 1829)
Eng W. Greatbatch
1816
The Minstrel
James Beattie
Pub John Sharpe
Frontis The wild harp rang to his adventurous hand
Book 1 st 57
Eng Chas Heath
The Minstrel vignette – With merriment
Book 1 St xxxv
Eng Charles Heath
April 27, 1816
The Minstrel vignette – Responsive to the sprightly pipe
Book 1 st LV
Eng Chas Heath
April 27, 1816
The Minstrel vignette – And thither
Book II St XVIII
Eng James Mitan
June 1, 1816
The Minstrel vignette – In a flowery nook
Book II St XXV
Eng James Mitan
April 27, 1816
Ode to Hope vignette – Along the plain
Eng John Pye
April 27, 1816
1816/1826 (2 editions)
Poems
Oliver Goldsmith
Pub John Sharpe
Frontis Deserted Village – The bashful virgin’s side-long looks of love
The matron’s glance –
Eng. W. Finden (1816), W. Greatbatch (1827)
p.18 The Traveller – Ev’n now, where Alpine solitudes ascend
Eng John Pye (1816), W. Greatbatch (1827)
p.39 The Traveller – E’en now, perhaps, as there some pilgrim strays
Eng Charles Heath (1816), W. Greatbatch (1827)
p.45 The Deserted Village – Down where you anch’ring vessel spreads the sail
-yon widow’d. solitary thing
That feebly bends beside the plashy spring
Eng. William Finden (1816), W,.Greatbatch (1827)
p.66
Eng James Mitan (1816), Greatbatch (1827)
p.70 The Hermit – Turn, gentle hermit of the dale
Eng Charles Heath (1816), W. Greatbatch (1827)
1817
March 15
The Complaint or Night Thoughts
By Edward Young D.D.
Pub John Sharpe
Frontis For one short moment Lucifer ador’d
Night VII
Eng A. Smith ARA
Night I The Complaint
Eng J.H. Robinson
Night II The Complaint
Eng R. Rhodes
Night III The Complaint
Eng George Corbould
Night IV The Complaint
Eng Samuel Noble
Night V The Complaint
Eng Edward Finden
Night VI The Complaint
Eng J.H. Robinson
Night VII The Complaint – Is it that things terrestrial can’t content?
Eng Charles Heath
Night VIII The Complaint
Eng Edward Portbury
Night IX The Consolation
Eng F. Engleheart
1817
Poems
William Cowper
Pub. Sharpe
Publisher: “Besides nine entire new Designs, it will include all the subjects in the set of Embellishments by Mr Westall formerly published, with the difference only of being remodelled into vignettes; an arrangement which, as it has occasioned the necessity of entire new Drawings, has spared no expense to the undertaking”
Frontis -A tattered apron hides –
Kate is Craz’d
The Task Book I
Eng J.H. Robinson
Part 2 Book II The Task
He would stroke
Eng W, Finden
Part 3 Book III The Task
- and neatly tied
Eng J.H. Robinson
Part 4 Book IV The Task
Sleep seems
Eng J.H. Robinson
Part 5 Book V The Task
That calls
Eng George Corbould
Pat 6 Book V Forth goes
Eng F. Engleheart
Part 9 Truth, Yon cottager
Eng W. Winden
Part 10 Conversation
Eng E. Portbury
Part 11 Retirement
Eng W.Finden
Part 12 Expostulation
Eng. John Romney
Part 13 Hope
Eng E. Finden
Part 14 Charity
Eng J. Romney
Part 18 Odes
Eng E. Finden
Part 19 The Negro’s Complaint
Eng John Romney
Part 20 On his mother’s picture
Eng Ed. Portbury
Part 21 The Rose
Eng E. Portbury
Part 22 The Dog & the Water Lily
Eng R. Rhodes
Part 23 The Minor Poems
Eng J.H. Robinson
Part 24 The Minor Poems
Eng W. Radclyffe
1817
Elizabeth; or The Exiles of Siberia – A Tale founded upon facts
(from the French)
by Madame Cottin
Pub. Sharpe
Frontis p12 Eng W. Finden
Part I Elizabeth discovered sleeping at the altar
Eng John Romney (1816)
p.10 Elizabeth pt I
Eng W. Finden
Part II
p.105 The return of Elizabeth to her parents
(1817) Eng George Corbould
p.114 Elizabeth Pt II
Eng Chas
1819
The Works of the British Poets Vol XIX
Savage & Dyer
Pub Mitchell, Ames & White
1819
The Works of the British Poets Vol XX
Alexander Pope
“Thus while she spoke..”
Eng J. Neagle
Chaucer
January & May
“She saw him watch the motions of her eye,
And singled out a pear tree planted nigh”
1819
Illustrations for the Poems of Lord Byron
Engravings mainly by Charles Heath
Pub. John Murray unless otherwise stated
Don Juan
Canto 1 Stanza 170
“He turned his lips to hers, and with his hand
Call’d back the tangles of her wandering hair
(also published by Thomas Davison 1820, eng Chas Heath)
Canto I Stanza 181
“Alfonso first examined well their fashion,
And then flew out into another passion”
Photogaph of this scene in watercolour is at the Witt Library
Photocopied b/w. Also colour photograph from Murray’s
Canto II Stanza 89
“And o’er him lent his sire, and never raised
His eyes from his face, but wiped the foam”
Photograph of this scene in watercolour is at the Witt Library
Photocopy b/w.
Canto II, Stanza 144
“And thus like to an angel o’er the dying
Who die in righteousness, she lean’d; and there
All tranquillity the shipwreck’d boy was lying”
(Published by Thomas Davison 1820 eng Chas Heath)
Childe Harold
Canto I Stanza 6 line 1 or 8 lines 2-9
And now Childe Harold was sore sick of heart
Or
Strange pangs would flash along Childe Harold’s brow
Canto I Stanza 56
Her lover sinks – she sheds no ill-timed tear
Canto II Stanza 68
Vain fear! The suliotes stretch’d the welcome hand
Eng John Romney
Canto III Stanza 30
But when I stood beneath the fresh green tree
Canto 4 Stanza 151 line 7
No drop of that clear stream its way shall miss
Childe Harold and Ianthe
Eng E.Portbury
Longman, Rees, Brown & Green 1829
In “The Life and Works of Lord Byron” (1832/33)
An engraving of Ianthe (Lady Charlotte Harley) by William Finden stated to be
“drawn by Richard Westall, from the Original Picture painted at the request of Lord Byron”
A photograph of Lady Jane Harley as a child is at the Witt library
Mazeppa
Stanza 18
The sun was sinking – still I lay
Chain’d to the chill & stiffening steed
Illustration (Whitworth)
Stanza 6
We met – we gazed – I saw and sigh’d
(conjecture)
D/149/1960(D 2585)
The Corsair
Canto I line 504
? The white sail set
Canto II line 1042
? What is that form
Canto III line 1770
? He turned not
Two further engravings from the Corsair published in “Trelawanny” by William St Clair
A drawing from The Corsair is at the Royal Academy and is in the Trelawlanny book indentified as:
“Sunburnt his cheek – his forehead high and pale
The sable curls in wild profusion veil;
And oft perforce his rising lip reveals
The haughtier thought it curbs but scarce conceals”
Manfred
Act 3
? Back, ye baffled fiends
? Thou false fiend (Scene IV near end)
Illustration Manchester Art Gallery (Whitworth)
A Vision of Astarte
D/153?/1960(2588)
From the Turkish
The Chain I gave
2nd verse
These gifts were charm’d by secret spell
The Dream
Stanza 4
A change came o’er the spirit of my dream
…and in the last he lay
Reposing from the noontide sultriness,
Couch’d among the fallen columns
The Prisoner of Chillon
Stanza 3 line 208
I listen’d but I would not hear
The Siege of Corinth
Stanza 21 line 606
Eng F. Engleheart
Bride of Abydos
Canto I Stanza 12, line 3
His keen eye shone
Eng Wm Finden
Canto II Stanza 27
Lara
Canto I stanza XIV line 241
But Lara’s prostrate form he bent beside
Canto II stanza XIX line 1109
Save that when struggling nearer to his last
The Giaour
Line 891
There will be pause
Line 1032
There’s blood upon that dinted sword
Parisiana
Stanza 14 Line 30
Then burst her voice in one long shriek
Eng F. Engleheart
Illustration circular
The meeting of Hugo & Parisina
May be Stanza III line 8
“They only for each other breathe”
Whitworth
D/151/1960(2586
Beppo
Stanza XCII (92)
Well that’s the prettiest shawl – as I’m alive!
Eng A. Warren
At John Murray’s a picture of Allegra has a pencil note on the back of the sketch.
Stated to be by R. Westall R.A. However an engaving by H. Corbould in about 1827 to illustrate Byron’s lines has it as Byron and Mary Chaworth’s daughter. There is no special
likeness between Allegra and the genuine miniature, so presumably this represents Mary Chaworth’s daughter as always claimed by the Chaworth family.
In “Claire Clairmont and the Shelley” by Robert Gittings & Jo Manton (OUP 1992 pb 1995)
is another illustration of Allegra –‘ a pretty little girl enough. And reckoned like papa’ Byron, Venice, 1818
1821
Forget Me Not
The Legend of Mab’s Cross
The Drowned Fisherman/Le Matelot Noye
Eng Lefevere & Nyon
Pub John Burnet & Boydell
Also The Drowned Fisherman or the moment of surprise
Eng James Heath
Pub 1820 by Hurst, Robinson & co
(Both BM)
1823
Reflections on the Works of God …from the German (2 Vols)
By Christopher Christian Sturm
Vol I Spring
Eng W. Greatbatch (1824)
Vignettes: January 7th Day
February 15th Day
March 4th Day
Eng. John Pye
Summer – Noon, July 18
Eng. John Pye
Vignettes: April 4th Day
May 14th Day
June 23rd Day
Eng John Pye
Vol II Autumn Evening Oct 10
Eng W. Greatbatch (1824)
All now eng J.Pye
Vignettes: July 6th Day
August 20th Day
September
Winter – Night Jany 14
Vignettes: October 23rd Day
November 6th Day (1824)
December 7th Day (1824)
1824
Poems chiefly in the Scottish Dialect
Robert Burns
Eng all by W. Finden
Pub Sharpe
Frontis The wily mother sees the conscious flame
Sparkle in Jenny’s e’e & flush her cheek
From The Cotter’s Saturday Night
Death & Dr Hornbrook
Poor Mailie
Halloween
Tom O’Shanter
1824
British Anthology Vol IV
Essays A. Pope
Pub John Sharpe
Essays on Man
But thinks admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall hear him company
Eng Jas Lewis
Essay on Criticism
Then Criticism the Muse’s handmaid prov’d
To dress her charms and make her more belov’d
Eng W. Roddon
The Rape of the Lock
Belinda still her downy pillow prest
Her guardians sylph prolonged the balmy rest
Eng W. Greatbatch
Eloisha to Abelard
In each low wind methinks a spirit calls
And more than echoes talk along the walls
Eng W. Greatbatch
1828
Market Day
Drawn and engraved by Rd Westall
Pub Colnaghi
1832
The Poet’s Dream
Eng J.Goodyear
Pub Smith, Elder & co
For Friendship Offering – Journal of Belles Lettres
“Who would not be a poet, to be
attended in his sylvan siesta”
1834
Princess Victoria, aged 11
Eng E. Finden
Pub Graves & Co Pall Mall
(republished 1897 by Kerslake & Co)
Prints in both monochrome and colour of the same illustration exist in varying sizes and a few were published for French, German or American markets. Size of print is not indicatednor whether a print is on copper or steel – although the turn of the century is a roughguide to the transition.
1783
Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse
Eng. T. Cook Pub. J.Bell
Sarah Siddons.
Bust, face in profile to right
Oval medallion
Eng. R. Ibbot Pub R.Ibbot, Bath
1784
Sarah Siddons as Lady Macbeth
Plate to Bell’s edition of Shakespeare
Sarah Siddons.
Half length, looking to left in hat.
Oval. “From a crayon painting in her possession”
Pub. J. Walker
1785
Maria Linley; singer; sister of Mrs Sheridan 1763-1784
Three quarters length to left
Eng. T. Ryder Pub. S. Watts
1786
Sarah Siddons as Isabella in “Measure for Measure”
Plate to Lady’s Magazine
1788
A Boy of Glamorganshire
[R. Westal] 21st February
Eng. T. Ryder Pub. S. Watts
Come see
Rural fidelity
Which health and innocence ever enjoy
A Girl of Carnarvonshire
[R. Westal] 21st February
Eng. T. Ryder Pub. S. Watts
How happy is the harmless country maid
Who rich by nature scorns superfluous aid
1789
The Beggar Girl
Eng. C. Josi (pupil of J.R. Smith)
Stipple printed in colours
1790
Spring
[R. Westal] April 9th
Eng. Fransesco Bartolozzi R.A. Pub. T. Simpson
Hark melodious sounds I hear
Autumn
[R. Westal] April 9th
Eng. Francesco Bartolozzi R.A. Pub. T. Simpson
Delightful is the ripen’d year
These prints are from a set of four with Summer and Winter engraved after F. Wheatley.
The Young Fortune Teller
July 20th
Eng. T. Gaugain Pub J.R. Smith
The Sheltered Lamb
July 20th
Eng. T. Gaugain Pub. J.R Smith
Elizabeth Billington (born Weichsel); singer, 1766 - 1818
As Rosetta in Love in a Village
Eng Thornwaite Plate to Bell’s British Theatre
1791
A Ghost
March
Eng. Schiavonetti Pub. T. Simpson
Also as L’Apparation
Mr Kemble as Cato
June 25th
Eng. Audinet Pub. J. Bell
Presumptuous Man! The gods take care of Cato
This print illustrates “A Tragedy” by Joseph Addison
The Earl of Essex’s first interview with Queen Elizabeth, after his return from Ireland
Eng. W.Ward Pub J.R. Smith
The Young Corsican convinced by General Paoli of the necessity of his Uncle’s death
Eng. W. Ward Pub J.R. Smith
See Boswell’s account of Corsica
Rhynsault confronted by Sapphira in the presence of Charles, Duke of Burgundy
Eng. W. Ward Pub. J.R. Smith
Henry lV of France reconciles the Duchess of Beaufort to Sully
Pub J.R. Smith
See Leggatt facsimile edition of “J.R. Smith Catalogue of Prints”
1792
The Hop Pickers
Feb 1
Eng. W. Ward Pub. E.M. Diemar
See the peasants round each Pole
The leafy Hops that grace the soil
The Gleaners
Eng. W. Ward Pub. E.M. Diemar
See content the humble Gleaners
Take the scattered Ears that fall,
Queen Elizabeth receiving the News of the Death of her sister Queen Mary
March 2
Eng. Schiavonetti Pub. Thomas Simpson
The Little Gipsey (sic)
May 1
Eng. C. Josi, pupil of J.R. Smith Pub. J.R. Smith
William Hodges Esq R.A.
Landscape Painter to the Prince of Wales
From an Original Painting by Mr Westall
Pub. C. Forster
The Literary and Biographical Magazine (May 1792)
Sarah Siddons as Medea
In Glover’s “Medea”
Whole length with her child beside her
Plate for Bell’s British Theatre
Cardinal Ximenes answering the Grandees of Spain
May 14
Pub. J.R. Smith
See: W.W. Robertson “History of the Emporer Charles V”
Note: The British Library has the 1798 edition of Robertson’s history which gives Stothard as the artist. Richard Westall exhibited “Anecdote from the life of Cardinal Ximenes” at the Royal Academy in 1790
The Benevolent Cardinal
Pub. J.R. Smith
Joan of Arc Maid of Orleans receiving the Consecrated Banner
July 4
Eng. F. Bartolozzi RA Pub Thomas Simpson
1793
Cupid Sleeping
From a Poem addressed to Her Grace the Duchess of Devonshire by Mrs Robinson
Jan 1
Eng. William Nutter Pub. E. M. Diemar
O Mistress Mine where are you roaming?
Eng. James Hogg Pub.J. Hogg & John Raphael Smith
He is dead and gone, Lady
From a Ballad of Shakespeare’s Hamlet Act 4
Eng. James Hogg Pub. J.R. Smith, King St, Covent Garden & James Hogg
BMP
Perdita
vide Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale
Feb. 10
Eng. T. Cheesman, late pupil of F. Bartolozzi Pub. J.F. Tomkins
Beatrice
Vide Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing
Eng. T. Cheesman, late pupil of F. Bartolozzi Pub J.F. Tomkins
The Adoration of the Shepherds
Luke Chap XI v. 15 & 17
June
Eng. Bromley Pub. Thos Macklin Poets Gallery
The Archers return
Eng. J. Ogborne Pub. J. Ogborne
Nov. 12
Note: RW 1792 on print
1794
Mother and Child
From Jerningham’s Poem Il Latte
March 20
Eng.T. Cheesman, late pupil of F. Bartolozzi RA Pub J.F. Tomkins
Unsway’d by Fashions dull unseemly jest
Still to the Bosom let your infant cling
The Defeat of Mary Queen of Scots at the Battle of Langside
Eng W. Ward Pub. J.R. Smith
The Flight of Mary Queen of Scots
Eng. F. Bartolozzi
The Flight of Mary, Queen of Scots into England
Eng. Chaparier
The Departure of Mary Queen of Scots, when a child for France
Eng. F. Bartolozzi
1794 -1797 The Life of Milton by William Hayley Pub J & J Boydell and G.Nicol
23 engravings by Westall were included
Vol I
Paradise Lost
Book 1 line 315 He call’d so loud, that all the hollow deep
Of Hell resounded
Eng. J.P. Simon
(On this print R. Westal is the spelling of the artist’s name, all subsequent prints have the correct spelling.)
Book 2 line 752 All of a sudden miserable pain surprised thee…
A godess arm’d…our of thy head I sprang
Eng: J.P. Simon
Book 3 line 260 Then with the multitude of my redeem’d
Shall enter Heaven
Eng J.P. Simon
Book 4 line 985 Satan alarm’d
Collecting all his might, dilated stood
Eng. J.P. Simon
Book 5 line 11 He on his side
Leaning, half raised, with looks of cordial love
Eng. R. Earlom
Book 6 line 834 All but the throne itself of God
Eng. L. Schiavonetti
Vol II
Book 7 line 535 Wherever thus created, for no place
Is yet distinct by name
Eng. Thos. Kirk
Book 8 line 44 Went forth among her fruits and flowers
Eng. Rich, Earlom
Book 9 line 888 On the other side, Adam, soon as he heard
Eng. Thos. Kirk
Book 10 line 272 So saying, with delight, he sniff’d the smell
Of mortal change on earth
Eng. J. Ogborne
Book 11 line 652 With cruel tournament the squadrons join
Eng. J. Ogborne
Book 12 line 640 They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld
Eng B. Smith
Paradise Regained
Book 1 line 310 Among wild beasts; they at his sight grew mild
Eng. M. Haughton
Book 2 line 66 O what avails me now that honour high
Eng. B. Smith
Book 3 line 106 I seek not mine (glory), but his Eng. W. Leney
Book 4 line 560 To whom thus Jesus. Also it is written
Tempt not the Lord thy God
Eng. B. Smith
Vol III (1797)
Samson Agonistes Page 9
Eng Thos. Kirk
Samson Agonistes Page 67
Eng. Thos. Kirk
Death of a Fair Infant Page 77 O fairest flower, no sooner blown but blasted!
Eng. B. Smith
Hymn of the Nativity Stan 23 & 24 page 92
Eng. I.P. Simon
L’Allegro p. 106 Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee Jest,
And youthful Jollity
Eng. Thos. Kirk
Il Penseroso p.111 Hail. Divinest Melancholy
Eng. J. Ogborne
Comus p. 133 thou unblemished form of chastity!
Eng. B. Smith
Poems p. 189 XXIII On his deceased Wife
Elegia Quinta p. 247
Eng. Thos Kirk
1795 The Pleasures of Memory
Samuel Rogers
Pub. Cadell & Davies
2 engravings after Stothard, 2 after Richard Westall
p.96 Wrapt in clouds, in tempests lost
Eng I. Neagle
p. 102 In cloistered solitude she sits and sighs
While from each shrine still, small responses rise
Eng. J. Heath
1797 Mr Bannister furnished in the Character of Walter in the Children in the Wood
Eng James Heath
Published Darling & Thompson, Gt Newport St & T. Simpson, St Paul’s Churchyard
1797 Cimion and Iphigenia (after Reynolds)
Eng Haward
1798
Calculation
Eng A. Cardon (artist given as B. Westall, clearly R. Westall)
Pub Colnaghi Sala & co (BM)
1799 The Naval Chronicle
Vol I Frontis Britannia
This engraving appeared in Vols I – VI
In Vols I, II, V & VI Cooke is the engraver
In Vols III & IV Heath is the engraver and the design is slightly larger
1800
A Fern-Cutter’s Child
Eng Meadows
From the original Drawing in the possession of William Chamberlain
Pub J &J Boydell
1801 A Girl Returning from Milking
Eng Th. Gaugain
Pub Scriven & Clay
A Peasant Boy
Eng Th Gaugain
Scriven & Clay
Girl Gathering Mushrooms
Eng G. Venzo not dated
(Gordon’s Print Annual 1980)
Venus et les amours
Eng Ruotte
Not dated
(Gordon’s Print Annual 1982)
Jeune Villageois
Eng L. de Tolouze
Stated to be after W. Westall but clearly R. Westall
Not dated
(Gordon’s Print Annual 1979)
Petite Blanchisseuse
Eng Laindor de Toulouze
Stated to be after W. Westall but clearly R.Westall
Not dated
(Gordon’s Print Annual 1979)
The Sower
The Thresher
Eng S. W Reynolds
Given as after R. Westfall but clearly R.Westall
(Gordon’s Print Annual 1979)
The Sower published as Le Semeur
Eng S.W. Reynolds
Pub S. Morgan & W. Pearce
(BM)
A Boy Mending His Net
Eng Hellyer & Gaughain
Pub J & J Boydell
(BM)
Rural Musick from Thomson’s Spring
Eng T.Gaugain
Pub J & J Boydell
(BM)
Girl & Pigs
Eng Bartoloti (Bartalozzi)
Not dated
(BM)
Also Girl & Pigs in 1802 reversed
Eng Ogborne & Gaugain
Pub J & J Boydell
(BM)
1802
Gaiety (Lady Hamilton)
Meditation (Mrs Siddons)
Pair
(Gordon’s Print Annual 1981)
Before 1803 Cupid Sleeping
Eng Wm Nutter (1754 – 1802)
Not dated
Pub in German E.W. Diemar
A Cottage Seamstress
From the Original Painting in the possession of R.P. Knight
Eng E. Scriven
Pub Clay & Scriven
Wood Cutter & Cow-boy
Eng John Ogborne
Pub J&J Boydell
A Peasant Smoking
From the original in the possession of R.P. Knight
Eng H.R. Cook
Pub Clay & Scriven
A Storm in Harvest
Eng R.M. Meadows
1804
The Poetical Works of William Collins (BMP)
Pub. John Sharpe
3 engravings seen but others may exist.
p. 16 eng Jas Parker
p. 24 eng Jas Heath ARA
p. 84 eng W. Bromley & J. Landseer
1805
British Poets
Collins & Gray
Pub Sharpe
1 engraving after Henry Thomson from Collins
1 engraving after RW from Gray
The Bard : Loose his beard, and hoary hair
Stream’d, like a meteor to the troubled air
Eng P.W. Tomkins (Jan 1, 1805)
!805 – 1809
The Adventurer Vol I/IV
British Classics Vol 19
Pub John Sharpe (1806)
Vol I Vignette Title
Transmigration (No 5)
Eng J. Heath
p.42 The Death of Melissa’s father
(no 7) eng J. Heath
p.113 Mr Friendl’s Indignation roused
(no 17) eng J. Mitan
Vo II British Classics Vol 20
Vignette Title
No 61 The Request of Honour to Jupiter
Eng Anker Smith
No 38 Cosrou’s Vision
p.18 eng Jas Mitan
no 70 Agrestis enquiring….
p.211 eng Anker Smith
Vol III Frontis (1807)
no 104 Vignette title. The Herald of Soliman astonished by the Beauty of Shelimah
eng J. Mitan
no 73 The Death of Nouraddin
p. 19 eng Anker Smith
no 81 The Death of Crichton
p.77 eng J. Mitan
Vol IV Vignette title (1805)
no. 114 Almet and the Stranger
eng J. Mitan
no 125 Flavilla writing the billet to Mercator
p.132 eng Jas Heath
no 129 Inertio’s Disappointment
p.154 eng Anker Smith (1807)
180?
Life of Nelson 2 Vols
By Clarke & McArthur
Pub Cadell & Davies
Vol I
Nelson’s Conflict with a Bear
July 1773
Eng J. Landseer
Lt. Nelson volunteering to board a prize in a violent gale
Nov 20 1777
Eng A. Rambach
Vol II
The San Nicolas & San Josef, carried by Boarding
Feb 14 1797
Eng Golding
1807
March 25
Baptism & Matrimony
By James Carpenter
Pub Sharpe & Hailes; Taylor & Hessey & John Carr
1 engraving
Westall’s Illustrations of the Book of Common Prayer (BMP)
Pub John Sharpe
1. Matrimony eng A. Cardon
2. Baptism eng L. Schiavonetti
3. Sermon eng A. Cardon
4. The Creed eng I.S. Agar
5. The Lord’s Prayer eng L. Schiavonetti
6. The Catechism eng A. Cardon
7. Coming to Church eng I.S. Agar
8. The Sacrament eng N. Schiavonetti
9. The Exhortation eng L. Schiavonetti
10. Confirmation eng I.S. Agar
11. Burial of the Dead eng N. Schiavonetti
12. Visitation of the Sick eng N. Schivonetti
Also Confirmation
Eng R.M. Meadows
Pub R. Bowyer’s Historic Gallery in 1806
(BM)
1808
A Day in Spring and other Poems
By Richard Westall R.A.
Pub John Murray
Frontis (xxiii) Hail! Grey bosom’d twilight hail!
Eng Jas Heath ARA (May 20)
p.55 A Shipwreck
eng J. Heath
p. 197 Horace
eng Charles Heath
Spencer
Eng Charles Heath
1808/1810
Poems 2 Vols
William Cowper
Vol I
p.102 Truth
1810 Eng F.Engleheart
p.290 Retirement
1810 eng J. Heath
p372 The Negro’s Complaint
1810 eng John Romney
p.388 The Lily and the Rose
1810 Eng Chas Heath
Vol II
All 1810
Frontis
The Task (Book VI)
Eng Geo. Corbould
p.82 The Task (Book II)
eng R. Golding
p. 124 The Task (Book III)
eng Jas Heath
p. 154 The Task (Book IV)
eng Anker Smith
p. 182 The Task (Book V)
eng F. Engleheart
p. 352 On his Mother’s Picture
eng Richd Golding
1809
Poems
By Sir John Carr
Pub Mathews & Leigh
Engraving by Freeman after R.W. of portrait of Sir John Carr
1810
Telemachus Relating His Adventures to Calypso
(Gordons Print Annual 1982)_
1810
Poems 2 Vols
William Cowper
John Sharpe
Vol I
p.76 Truth
eng F. Engleheart
p. 238 Retirement
eng J. Heath
p. 300 The Dog & the Water Lily
eng R. Rhodes
p. 312 The Negro’s Complaint
eng John Romney
p. 328 The Lily & the Rose
eng Chas Heath
Vol II
The Task – Kate is craz’d
Eng Chas Heath
p.70 The Task – He would stroke
eng R. Golding
p. 106 The Task – And neatly tied
eng Jas Heath
p. 136 The Task – Where penury is felt
eng Anker Smith
p. 158 The Task - Forth goes the Woodman
eng F. Engleheart
p. 212 The Task - A Sportive Train
eng Geo Corbould
p. 318 Cowper – On his mother’s picture
eng Richd Golding
1811/1812 (2nd edition)
The Vision of Don Roderick
Pub. Longman. London
James Ballantyne, Edinburgh
Sir Walter Scott
Frontis. Koran – Then, too, the holy cross
Stanz xxiii
Eng. W.B. Cook
p. 32 He stay’d his speech abrupt
Stanz viii
Eng. Saml Noble
p.41 “Rivers Ingulph him!”
Stanz xxi
1812
May The Vision of Don Roderick
p. 42 “Rivers Ingulph him!” – “Hush,” in shuddering tone
The prelate said, “Rash Prince, yon visioned form,s thine own
Stanz xxi
Eng. A. Raimbach
1812
Glenfilas
Sir Walter Scott
John Sharpe
Frontis eng W.B. Cooke
p.12 Glenfilas – As, bending o’er the dying gleam
eng Richd Golding
p. 50 Cadyow Castle – What sheeted phantom wanders wild
eng Anker Smith
p.130 Thomas the Rhymer – And there before Lord Douglas’ face
eng F. Engleheart
p. 180 Helvellyn- The much-loved remains…
eng F. Engleheart
p 32 Vision of Don Roderick – He stay’d his speech abrupt
Stanz vii
Eng Saml Noble
p. 41 Vision of Don Roderick – “Rivers ingulph him!”
stanz xxi
eng A. Raimbach
1812
Ballads
Sir Walter Scott
Sharpe?
P11/12 Glenfinlas – As, bending o’er the dying gleam,
She rung the moisture from her hair
Eng Richd Golding
p.50 Cadyow Castle – What sheeted Phantom wanders wild.
Where mountain eske trough woodland flows?
Eng Anker Smith
p.130 Thomas the Rhymer – And there before Lord Dougls’s face
With them he crossed the flood
Eng F. Engleheart
P, 180/1 Helvellyn- The much-loved remains of her master defended
And chased the hill-fox and the raven away
Eng F. Engleheart
1815
The Bible – Old Testament (only some information on engravings available)
Pub White, Cochrane & Co
Engavings all by Chas Heath
Frontis Moses receiving the Law
Ex. Ch xxi v 19
Hagar & Ishmael
Gen .Ch xxii v 11/12
Isaac discovering that he had blessed Jacob instead of Esau
Gen. Ch xxvii v 34
The mother of Moses leaving her child in the Bullrushes
Ex Ch ii v3
Manoah’s sacrifice
Judges Ch xiii v20
Samson betrayed by Delilah
Judges Ch xvi v19
Ruth gleaning the fields of Boaz
Ruth Ch ii v8
Saul & the witch of Endor
I Samuel Ch xxviii v14
The Prophet Ahijah & the Wife of King Jeroboam
I Kings Ch xiv v12
Elijah raising the Widow’s Son
I Kings Ch xvii v 21
Elisha prophesying
II Kings Ch xiii v17
Esther before Ahasuerus
Esther Ch vii v2
1815/1829
Mrs Chapone’s Letters – Letters on the Improvemeent of the Mind – Addressed to a Lady
By Mrs Hester Chapone
Pub John Sharpe
Frontis eng W. Greatbatch (1829)
Letter I. I will hope that your attention may be engaged by seeing on paper…Truths of the highest importance (june 1, 1829)
Eng W. Greatbatch
Letter V. The time to consult them is before you have given a lover the least encouragement
(June 1, 1829)
Eng W. Greatbatch
Letter VIII. Who can contemplate such a scene unmoved?
(June 1, 1829)
Eng W. Greatbatch
1816
The Minstrel
James Beattie
Pub John Sharpe
Frontis The wild harp rang to his adventurous hand
Book 1 st 57
Eng Chas Heath
The Minstrel vignette – With merriment
Book 1 St xxxv
Eng Charles Heath
April 27, 1816
The Minstrel vignette – Responsive to the sprightly pipe
Book 1 st LV
Eng Chas Heath
April 27, 1816
The Minstrel vignette – And thither
Book II St XVIII
Eng James Mitan
June 1, 1816
The Minstrel vignette – In a flowery nook
Book II St XXV
Eng James Mitan
April 27, 1816
Ode to Hope vignette – Along the plain
Eng John Pye
April 27, 1816
1816/1826 (2 editions)
Poems
Oliver Goldsmith
Pub John Sharpe
Frontis Deserted Village – The bashful virgin’s side-long looks of love
The matron’s glance –
Eng. W. Finden (1816), W. Greatbatch (1827)
p.18 The Traveller – Ev’n now, where Alpine solitudes ascend
Eng John Pye (1816), W. Greatbatch (1827)
p.39 The Traveller – E’en now, perhaps, as there some pilgrim strays
Eng Charles Heath (1816), W. Greatbatch (1827)
p.45 The Deserted Village – Down where you anch’ring vessel spreads the sail
-yon widow’d. solitary thing
That feebly bends beside the plashy spring
Eng. William Finden (1816), W,.Greatbatch (1827)
p.66
Eng James Mitan (1816), Greatbatch (1827)
p.70 The Hermit – Turn, gentle hermit of the dale
Eng Charles Heath (1816), W. Greatbatch (1827)
1817
March 15
The Complaint or Night Thoughts
By Edward Young D.D.
Pub John Sharpe
Frontis For one short moment Lucifer ador’d
Night VII
Eng A. Smith ARA
Night I The Complaint
Eng J.H. Robinson
Night II The Complaint
Eng R. Rhodes
Night III The Complaint
Eng George Corbould
Night IV The Complaint
Eng Samuel Noble
Night V The Complaint
Eng Edward Finden
Night VI The Complaint
Eng J.H. Robinson
Night VII The Complaint – Is it that things terrestrial can’t content?
Eng Charles Heath
Night VIII The Complaint
Eng Edward Portbury
Night IX The Consolation
Eng F. Engleheart
1817
Poems
William Cowper
Pub. Sharpe
Publisher: “Besides nine entire new Designs, it will include all the subjects in the set of Embellishments by Mr Westall formerly published, with the difference only of being remodelled into vignettes; an arrangement which, as it has occasioned the necessity of entire new Drawings, has spared no expense to the undertaking”
Frontis -A tattered apron hides –
Kate is Craz’d
The Task Book I
Eng J.H. Robinson
Part 2 Book II The Task
He would stroke
Eng W, Finden
Part 3 Book III The Task
- and neatly tied
Eng J.H. Robinson
Part 4 Book IV The Task
Sleep seems
Eng J.H. Robinson
Part 5 Book V The Task
That calls
Eng George Corbould
Pat 6 Book V Forth goes
Eng F. Engleheart
Part 9 Truth, Yon cottager
Eng W. Winden
Part 10 Conversation
Eng E. Portbury
Part 11 Retirement
Eng W.Finden
Part 12 Expostulation
Eng. John Romney
Part 13 Hope
Eng E. Finden
Part 14 Charity
Eng J. Romney
Part 18 Odes
Eng E. Finden
Part 19 The Negro’s Complaint
Eng John Romney
Part 20 On his mother’s picture
Eng Ed. Portbury
Part 21 The Rose
Eng E. Portbury
Part 22 The Dog & the Water Lily
Eng R. Rhodes
Part 23 The Minor Poems
Eng J.H. Robinson
Part 24 The Minor Poems
Eng W. Radclyffe
1817
Elizabeth; or The Exiles of Siberia – A Tale founded upon facts
(from the French)
by Madame Cottin
Pub. Sharpe
Frontis p12 Eng W. Finden
Part I Elizabeth discovered sleeping at the altar
Eng John Romney (1816)
p.10 Elizabeth pt I
Eng W. Finden
Part II
p.105 The return of Elizabeth to her parents
(1817) Eng George Corbould
p.114 Elizabeth Pt II
Eng Chas
1819
The Works of the British Poets Vol XIX
Savage & Dyer
Pub Mitchell, Ames & White
1819
The Works of the British Poets Vol XX
Alexander Pope
“Thus while she spoke..”
Eng J. Neagle
Chaucer
January & May
“She saw him watch the motions of her eye,
And singled out a pear tree planted nigh”
1819
Illustrations for the Poems of Lord Byron
Engravings mainly by Charles Heath
Pub. John Murray unless otherwise stated
Don Juan
Canto 1 Stanza 170
“He turned his lips to hers, and with his hand
Call’d back the tangles of her wandering hair
(also published by Thomas Davison 1820, eng Chas Heath)
Canto I Stanza 181
“Alfonso first examined well their fashion,
And then flew out into another passion”
Photogaph of this scene in watercolour is at the Witt Library
Photocopied b/w. Also colour photograph from Murray’s
Canto II Stanza 89
“And o’er him lent his sire, and never raised
His eyes from his face, but wiped the foam”
Photograph of this scene in watercolour is at the Witt Library
Photocopy b/w.
Canto II, Stanza 144
“And thus like to an angel o’er the dying
Who die in righteousness, she lean’d; and there
All tranquillity the shipwreck’d boy was lying”
(Published by Thomas Davison 1820 eng Chas Heath)
Childe Harold
Canto I Stanza 6 line 1 or 8 lines 2-9
And now Childe Harold was sore sick of heart
Or
Strange pangs would flash along Childe Harold’s brow
Canto I Stanza 56
Her lover sinks – she sheds no ill-timed tear
Canto II Stanza 68
Vain fear! The suliotes stretch’d the welcome hand
Eng John Romney
Canto III Stanza 30
But when I stood beneath the fresh green tree
Canto 4 Stanza 151 line 7
No drop of that clear stream its way shall miss
Childe Harold and Ianthe
Eng E.Portbury
Longman, Rees, Brown & Green 1829
In “The Life and Works of Lord Byron” (1832/33)
An engraving of Ianthe (Lady Charlotte Harley) by William Finden stated to be
“drawn by Richard Westall, from the Original Picture painted at the request of Lord Byron”
A photograph of Lady Jane Harley as a child is at the Witt library
Mazeppa
Stanza 18
The sun was sinking – still I lay
Chain’d to the chill & stiffening steed
Illustration (Whitworth)
Stanza 6
We met – we gazed – I saw and sigh’d
(conjecture)
D/149/1960(D 2585)
The Corsair
Canto I line 504
? The white sail set
Canto II line 1042
? What is that form
Canto III line 1770
? He turned not
Two further engravings from the Corsair published in “Trelawanny” by William St Clair
A drawing from The Corsair is at the Royal Academy and is in the Trelawlanny book indentified as:
“Sunburnt his cheek – his forehead high and pale
The sable curls in wild profusion veil;
And oft perforce his rising lip reveals
The haughtier thought it curbs but scarce conceals”
Manfred
Act 3
? Back, ye baffled fiends
? Thou false fiend (Scene IV near end)
Illustration Manchester Art Gallery (Whitworth)
A Vision of Astarte
D/153?/1960(2588)
From the Turkish
The Chain I gave
2nd verse
These gifts were charm’d by secret spell
The Dream
Stanza 4
A change came o’er the spirit of my dream
…and in the last he lay
Reposing from the noontide sultriness,
Couch’d among the fallen columns
The Prisoner of Chillon
Stanza 3 line 208
I listen’d but I would not hear
The Siege of Corinth
Stanza 21 line 606
Eng F. Engleheart
Bride of Abydos
Canto I Stanza 12, line 3
His keen eye shone
Eng Wm Finden
Canto II Stanza 27
Lara
Canto I stanza XIV line 241
But Lara’s prostrate form he bent beside
Canto II stanza XIX line 1109
Save that when struggling nearer to his last
The Giaour
Line 891
There will be pause
Line 1032
There’s blood upon that dinted sword
Parisiana
Stanza 14 Line 30
Then burst her voice in one long shriek
Eng F. Engleheart
Illustration circular
The meeting of Hugo & Parisina
May be Stanza III line 8
“They only for each other breathe”
Whitworth
D/151/1960(2586
Beppo
Stanza XCII (92)
Well that’s the prettiest shawl – as I’m alive!
Eng A. Warren
At John Murray’s a picture of Allegra has a pencil note on the back of the sketch.
Stated to be by R. Westall R.A. However an engaving by H. Corbould in about 1827 to illustrate Byron’s lines has it as Byron and Mary Chaworth’s daughter. There is no special
likeness between Allegra and the genuine miniature, so presumably this represents Mary Chaworth’s daughter as always claimed by the Chaworth family.
In “Claire Clairmont and the Shelley” by Robert Gittings & Jo Manton (OUP 1992 pb 1995)
is another illustration of Allegra –‘ a pretty little girl enough. And reckoned like papa’ Byron, Venice, 1818
1821
Forget Me Not
The Legend of Mab’s Cross
The Drowned Fisherman/Le Matelot Noye
Eng Lefevere & Nyon
Pub John Burnet & Boydell
Also The Drowned Fisherman or the moment of surprise
Eng James Heath
Pub 1820 by Hurst, Robinson & co
(Both BM)
1823
Reflections on the Works of God …from the German (2 Vols)
By Christopher Christian Sturm
Vol I Spring
Eng W. Greatbatch (1824)
Vignettes: January 7th Day
February 15th Day
March 4th Day
Eng. John Pye
Summer – Noon, July 18
Eng. John Pye
Vignettes: April 4th Day
May 14th Day
June 23rd Day
Eng John Pye
Vol II Autumn Evening Oct 10
Eng W. Greatbatch (1824)
All now eng J.Pye
Vignettes: July 6th Day
August 20th Day
September
Winter – Night Jany 14
Vignettes: October 23rd Day
November 6th Day (1824)
December 7th Day (1824)
1824
Poems chiefly in the Scottish Dialect
Robert Burns
Eng all by W. Finden
Pub Sharpe
Frontis The wily mother sees the conscious flame
Sparkle in Jenny’s e’e & flush her cheek
From The Cotter’s Saturday Night
Death & Dr Hornbrook
Poor Mailie
Halloween
Tom O’Shanter
1824
British Anthology Vol IV
Essays A. Pope
Pub John Sharpe
Essays on Man
But thinks admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall hear him company
Eng Jas Lewis
Essay on Criticism
Then Criticism the Muse’s handmaid prov’d
To dress her charms and make her more belov’d
Eng W. Roddon
The Rape of the Lock
Belinda still her downy pillow prest
Her guardians sylph prolonged the balmy rest
Eng W. Greatbatch
Eloisha to Abelard
In each low wind methinks a spirit calls
And more than echoes talk along the walls
Eng W. Greatbatch
1828
Market Day
Drawn and engraved by Rd Westall
Pub Colnaghi
1832
The Poet’s Dream
Eng J.Goodyear
Pub Smith, Elder & co
For Friendship Offering – Journal of Belles Lettres
“Who would not be a poet, to be
attended in his sylvan siesta”
1834
Princess Victoria, aged 11
Eng E. Finden
Pub Graves & Co Pall Mall
(republished 1897 by Kerslake & Co)
Friday, 8 January 2010
William Westall ARA 1781 - 1850
.
William Westall’s reputation has grown in Australia in recent years where he is regarded as both an Australian and a British artist. His depictions in oil of Australian scenes for the Admiralty, stemming from his visit to the continent as landscape artist on the voyage of the Investigator (1801-1803), have been receiving fresh attention. William had written of Australia’s ‘barren coast’ but in commenting on the exhibition of William Hodges’ paintings at the National Maritime Museum in 2004 Jeffrey Auerbach contended that ‘Westall’s paintings are especially important because they are so clearly at odds with his written descriptions…Here is an artist who initially was unable to find the picturesque in Australia, yet ended up depicting Australia as a land very different from his native England’
Bernard Smith had celebrated Westall’s beautiful oil painting View of Sir Edward Pellew’s Group, Gulf of Carpenteria as ‘a remarkable painting for its time’ for its ‘sustained and uncompromising high tonality’. It was exhibited at the Turner to Monet 2008 exhibition in Australia when Elisabeth Findlay argued that ‘Westall has conformed to the Picturesque, adding the obligatory variety and interest, while also demonstrating how a new aesthetic can evolve in a new land’.
William’s Australian work has been further scrutinised by Elisabeth Findlay in a valuable study which argues that the images in William’s illustrations ‘are laden with ideological significance’ and that they ‘operated to dismiss the Aborigines as having rights to the land, his oil paintings, perhaps with Admiralty influence, presenting them as stereotyped noble savages’. This ‘reinforced Britain’s act of colonising the rest of Australia’ and his pictures could be regarded as ‘a means of converting the land into scenes which the British felt comfortable with and could relate to.’ Nonetheless Findlay maintains that Westall’s original sketches reveal ‘sympathy and respect for the Aborigines’ and she considers his portraits of Aborigines ‘are quite remarkable images in the history of European art.’
The suggestion that the Admirality desired certain conceptions of Australia and Aborigines to become public might be reinforced by the disregard for William Westall’s recently found watercolour ‘An Ambush by Aborigines on two Europeans in the bush’ which was not publicised in his lifetime. The picture depicts an episode on 21st January, 1803 when Mr Whitewood, the master’s mate on Investigator was speared after his approach to Aborigines was misunderstood as an attack. This encounter led to the fatal shooting of an Aborigine.
A possible oil painting not known previously by William, of a mountainous view in Australia, has also emerged recently.
With relation to the popular theories of the picturesque at the time, Findlay sees William as ‘determined to impose this formula on the Australian landscape… he did not let the fact that he had not found picturesque scenes, full of variety and interest, interfere with introducing the aesthetic into his oil paintings’
It should be remembered that William left for his Australian adventure when he was just eighteen years old – a probationer at the Royal Academy taught by his elder brother, then a celebrated Royal Academician who was sixteen years older and acting as a father figure – their father having died in 1794. Thus a likely influence over William’s approach to the picturesque would have been his brother Richard. Indeed Farington (Diary 11, 2920) reports that ‘Westall (Richard) took his brother Wm Westall into the Exhibition room yesterday to touch upon His picture which had been injured, but Turner & Calcott finding Him so employed wd. Not allow Him to proceed’. It is not clear which of the brothers unable to proceed but the presence of the elder brother is significant.
Another publication from Australia, Matthew Flinders And His Scientific Gentlemen, 2005 contains two chapters of particular relevance. John Rourke gives us further information about the work of William and others during their short stay at the Cape in 1799. Kay Stehn and Alex George provide an account of William’s Australian experience. They describe William’s Australian art as ‘pleasant’ and deduce from his self-portrait and a portrait of him by his son Robert ‘a degree of stubbornness’ in William’s character. Also, what they term his ‘somewhat remote eyes’ ‘seeking an impossible dream’ reflect Findlay’s conception of William searching for arcadia, ‘an idyllic landscape of a golden age’. Perhaps Stehn and George read a little too much into these portraits.
They also maintain that William ‘seems to have been little interested in the specifics of the flora and fauna’ of Australia. Indeed Findlay had suggested that ‘Westall did not have the temperament for the painstaking and relentless work involved in scientific drawing’. I have contested these assertions when considering the recent surfacing of 19 botanical artworks by William Westall now at the Natural History Museum, London. Even before the public appearance of these drawings several commentators had written of William’s botanical work. Michael Rosenthal noted that the artist coped ‘easily with representing completely unfamiliar terrain and unfamiliar trees’ and referred to ‘the ease with which Westall has drawn eucalyptus’. Bernard Smith has noted the suggestion that Ferdinand Bauer, the botanical artist aboard the Investigator had assisted William because of the truth and beauty of his botanical work.
The 19 sketches by William at the Natural History Museum, nearly all drawn when Bauer and William were oceans apart, indicate that William was well able to accomplish excellent botanical drawings on his own. This is not to deny the likelihood that the forty year old Bauer was probably a tutor to young William whilst they were together.
Following a shipwreck near the Great Barrier Reef off the East Australian coast in 1803 William decided to travel to China and India. I have covered William’s sojourn in India during 1804 where his illustrations represent some of his best lifetime work. They bring together the fruits of his experiences and tutorship in Australia with his reaction to discovering the long sought after picturesque views. There is a confidence stemming from displaying an independence of mind. It is interesting to note that Felix Driver & Luciana Martins consider that several of William’s works ‘effectively synthesize the two modes of expressing Indian landscape that were competing for primacy at the turn of the nineteenth century: the topographical precision of the Daniells, joined with the luminosity of Hodges’
Some of William’s Australian pictures have featured in three recent exhibitions in Australia. In 2006 the Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory held an exhibition where six of William’s views, described as being ‘the earliest extant images of the Northern Territory by a European’ were displayed. In the same year seven of William’s original drawings of the Northern Territory, differing from the above, were exhibited with a summary by Ken Taylor. He cites William’s watercolour sketch of King George’s Sound, view from Peak Head (1801) as a good example of picturesque scenery, as understood in Britain at the time, being applied to Australian scenery ‘where the roughness and intricacies of nature might be found that could arouse admiration or reverie in the viewer’. He describes the original sketch as ‘likely to be an accurate representation’ but sees the transference of the scene to oils in which William ‘embellished the foreground to improve on nature’ as following the instructions of theory. This approach is also commented on in William’s Port Bowen view (1802) ‘in which the picturesque scene with sublime undercurrents of wild nature is adorned by three Aboriginal people by a fire at the foot of a gnarled tree.’
The third exhibition included William’s famed oil painting View of Sir Edward Pellew’s Group, Gulf of Carpentaria 1811 (originally sketched in 1802). In her catalogue entry Findlay mentions Bernard Smith’s opinion that this is ‘an innovative and remarkable painting’ and finds that William demonstrates how ‘a new aesthetic can evolve in a new land.’
England
We now know that prior to William’s marriage to Ann Sedgwick Richard Westall wrote from London (Aug 3 1820) to his brother: ‘I take it for granted that you are now one of the happiest men in the world.’
The Wordsworth Trust has amassed a worthy collection of William’s work in the Lake District and in 1983 The Trustees of Dove Cottage published The Lake District Discovered 1810 – 1850 which contains two features on William. The editors describe William’s ‘effective panoramas of the Lake scenes’. Rydal from Mr Wordworth’s Field under Rydal Mount is illustrated. An interesting letter from William to Wordsworth (October 21, 1831) describes the extent of the artist’s collaboration with the poet. In preparing his panoramas William mentions that ‘I can get a house to suit us at Ambleside or the neighbourhood to take up our abode there, and not the least part of the satisfaction I feel at this is the hope…. that we may spend many pleasant hours together and have many a saunter by the Lakes and the “bonny burn sides”. I am just going to begin the plate of Rydal, I shall send a proof, for you to get me the names of the Mountains’
The Yorkshire caves interested William Westall. As W.R. Mitchell has pointed out: ‘With the flowering of the Romantic period….gentlemen of taste and leisure developed a passion for visiting “natural curiosities”…. Weathercote and Yordas were the principal show caves in 1817, when William Westall arrived in North Craven ….Westall made the finest drawings of the Craven Caves’. Some of these drawings were engraved for Views of the Caves Near Ingleton in Yorkshire (1818). John North describes ‘the grandeur and intense beauty’ of the Yorkshire Caves and considers William made the best engravings of the area. ‘Westall’ he writes ‘descended into Weathercote “between bold irregular rocks, overhung with trees and shrubs, which give the scene a wild and picturesque character”. He made an engraving of the waterfall with the “immense stone hanging before the cave, and appearing to be but very slightly supported by the projecting rocks.”’
Juliet Barker in her wonderful biography of Wordsworth outlines the episode when the poet composed three sonnets ‘suggested by Mr W. Westall views of the Caves’. ‘William’s (Wordsworth) impotent fury’ she writes, when he learnt of ‘three sonnets he had written(which) appeared without his prior knowledge or permission…in Blackwood’s Magazine.’ ‘William had presented Westall with copies of the sonnets when he stayed at Rydal Mount…This was a significant coup for Westall and, more especially the magazine, for William (Wordsworth) loathed Blackwood’s heartily…To vent his indignation a little, William sent newly revised and updated versions of the poems to de Quincey, suggesting he might like to include them in the Westmoreland Gazette, where they duly appeared’.
William’s views of the caves were extensively used as decorations resulting in the breaking up of complete volumes. A facsimile of the Cave engravings has been produced but is out of print. Their reproduction with Wordsworth’s sonnets and a history of the Yorkshire Caves would be a welcome venture. Indeed Robert Southey remarked to William in 1822: ‘Did it ever occur to you that views as an illustration of Wordsworth poem (sic), would be a promising speculation? I do not know so promising a one.’ (copy of Letter, Private Collection)
William Westall’s Will appointed his son’s William and Robert with Adam Sedgwick among his Executors and Trustees. The painting simply entitled Deluge was bequeathed to his Trustees to be presented by them ‘to the Nation to be placed in the National Gallery’. This now resides at Tate Britain and can be seen on the Internet. In later years the eldest son William, his family and Robert shared the artist’s pictures with the bulk of his Australian sketches being sold to the Royal Colonial Institute, which became the Royal Commonwealth Society. They went thence to the National Library of Australia.
Among the shares William Westall bequeathed to his sons William, Robert & Thomas were some in the Union Bank of Australia, which indicates his continuing interest in the land he travelled to some fifty years before his death.
Provision was made for the maintenance of his fourth son named Richard. There is a passage in Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Family Letters where a son of the artist William Westall is mentioned as being at Kings College School who had a brother, not at the school ‘of weak mind and sometimes rather dangerous’ who ‘went by the undignified name of “Sillikin”.’ Today we might recognise the condition as autism. This further underlines the burden William must have had in supporting his family and the encroachment these circumstances must have made on his artistic career. William’s ‘dear wife Ann’ was bequeathed the residue of his ‘Real & Personal Estate’ during her life. After her death it was to pass to ‘my said sons William Thomas & Robert to be divided between them equally’. It has been suggested that William was very prosperous at the time of his death but it is difficult to establish this with certainty from his Will.
Sources: Dictionary of Australian Artists Online; Jeffrey Auerbach ‘The picturesque and the homogenisation of Empire’ British Art Journal Vol V No 1 Spring/Summer 2004 pp47-54;
Bernard Smith European Vision and the South Pacific Yale 1985 pp 190-197 2nd ed.; Elisabeth Findlay Turner to Monet: the triumph of Landscape exhibition Canberra 2008 Catalogue entry See ww.nga.gov.au/Exhibition/Turnertomonet; Elisabeth Findlay Arcadian Quest – William Westall’s Australian Sketches 1998 National Library of Australia. There are some errors in Findlay’s book which should be noted. In assessing William’s character she quotes Farington mentioning that Westall ‘did not appear to be very desirous of returning to the Navy from thinking it held little prospect of adventure’. A careful reading of this passage reveals that Farington is referring to his own brother William Farrington not William Westall. Farington also confuses William’s commissions with Richard’s and incorrectly states that William was not an engraver when nine publications in which William engraves his own drawings are known; Richard J. Westall ‘Recent William Westall picture discoveries’ Australiana May 2008 Note the plate on p20 of Benjamin Westall, the artist’s father has the dates (1781 – 1850) which are of his son William. Benjamin’s dates are 1737-1794; Juliet Wedge et al Matthew Flinders And His Scientific Gentlemen 2005 Western Australia Museum; Richard J.Westall ‘Westall’s New Botanical Drawings’ National Library of Australia News Dec 2007; Michael Rosenthal lecture to the National Maritime Museum Greenwich 20 Oct 2006 ‘Going to the Pictures in Australia’ www.nmm.ac.uk ; ed Thomas Perry & Donald Simpson ‘Westall’s Drawings’ Royal Commonwealth Society 1962; Richard J. Westall ‘The Westall Turner Studies Tate, London 1984 Vol 4 no 1; Richard J. Westall ‘William Westall in India’ Marg Publications, Mumbai Vol XLVII No 4 June 1996; Richard J. Westall ‘William Westall in India’ Journal of the Families in British India Society No 13 Spring 2005; Felix Driver & Luciana Martins Tropical visions in an age of empire University of Chicago 2005; The Sound of the Sky 2006 Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Australia; Ken Taylor ‘Country Landscape’ Australian National University 2006; W.R. Mitchell ‘The Hollow Mountains’ Settle, Yorks May 1961; William Westall ‘Views of the Caves Near Ingleton in Yorkshire’ John Murray 1818; Country Life Nov 26 1959; Juliet Barker ‘Wordsworth A Life’ Viking 2000; Trevor Shaw facsimile reproduction and introduction to Westall’s Cave Drawings Anne Oldham May 1983.
National Archives Will PROB 11/2114; Richard J. Westall ‘The Westall Pictures’ National Library of Australia News Feb 2007; Dante GabrielRossetti Family Letters 1895.
.
William Westall’s reputation has grown in Australia in recent years where he is regarded as both an Australian and a British artist. His depictions in oil of Australian scenes for the Admiralty, stemming from his visit to the continent as landscape artist on the voyage of the Investigator (1801-1803), have been receiving fresh attention. William had written of Australia’s ‘barren coast’ but in commenting on the exhibition of William Hodges’ paintings at the National Maritime Museum in 2004 Jeffrey Auerbach contended that ‘Westall’s paintings are especially important because they are so clearly at odds with his written descriptions…Here is an artist who initially was unable to find the picturesque in Australia, yet ended up depicting Australia as a land very different from his native England’
Bernard Smith had celebrated Westall’s beautiful oil painting View of Sir Edward Pellew’s Group, Gulf of Carpenteria as ‘a remarkable painting for its time’ for its ‘sustained and uncompromising high tonality’. It was exhibited at the Turner to Monet 2008 exhibition in Australia when Elisabeth Findlay argued that ‘Westall has conformed to the Picturesque, adding the obligatory variety and interest, while also demonstrating how a new aesthetic can evolve in a new land’.
William’s Australian work has been further scrutinised by Elisabeth Findlay in a valuable study which argues that the images in William’s illustrations ‘are laden with ideological significance’ and that they ‘operated to dismiss the Aborigines as having rights to the land, his oil paintings, perhaps with Admiralty influence, presenting them as stereotyped noble savages’. This ‘reinforced Britain’s act of colonising the rest of Australia’ and his pictures could be regarded as ‘a means of converting the land into scenes which the British felt comfortable with and could relate to.’ Nonetheless Findlay maintains that Westall’s original sketches reveal ‘sympathy and respect for the Aborigines’ and she considers his portraits of Aborigines ‘are quite remarkable images in the history of European art.’
The suggestion that the Admirality desired certain conceptions of Australia and Aborigines to become public might be reinforced by the disregard for William Westall’s recently found watercolour ‘An Ambush by Aborigines on two Europeans in the bush’ which was not publicised in his lifetime. The picture depicts an episode on 21st January, 1803 when Mr Whitewood, the master’s mate on Investigator was speared after his approach to Aborigines was misunderstood as an attack. This encounter led to the fatal shooting of an Aborigine.
A possible oil painting not known previously by William, of a mountainous view in Australia, has also emerged recently.
With relation to the popular theories of the picturesque at the time, Findlay sees William as ‘determined to impose this formula on the Australian landscape… he did not let the fact that he had not found picturesque scenes, full of variety and interest, interfere with introducing the aesthetic into his oil paintings’
It should be remembered that William left for his Australian adventure when he was just eighteen years old – a probationer at the Royal Academy taught by his elder brother, then a celebrated Royal Academician who was sixteen years older and acting as a father figure – their father having died in 1794. Thus a likely influence over William’s approach to the picturesque would have been his brother Richard. Indeed Farington (Diary 11, 2920) reports that ‘Westall (Richard) took his brother Wm Westall into the Exhibition room yesterday to touch upon His picture which had been injured, but Turner & Calcott finding Him so employed wd. Not allow Him to proceed’. It is not clear which of the brothers unable to proceed but the presence of the elder brother is significant.
Another publication from Australia, Matthew Flinders And His Scientific Gentlemen, 2005 contains two chapters of particular relevance. John Rourke gives us further information about the work of William and others during their short stay at the Cape in 1799. Kay Stehn and Alex George provide an account of William’s Australian experience. They describe William’s Australian art as ‘pleasant’ and deduce from his self-portrait and a portrait of him by his son Robert ‘a degree of stubbornness’ in William’s character. Also, what they term his ‘somewhat remote eyes’ ‘seeking an impossible dream’ reflect Findlay’s conception of William searching for arcadia, ‘an idyllic landscape of a golden age’. Perhaps Stehn and George read a little too much into these portraits.
They also maintain that William ‘seems to have been little interested in the specifics of the flora and fauna’ of Australia. Indeed Findlay had suggested that ‘Westall did not have the temperament for the painstaking and relentless work involved in scientific drawing’. I have contested these assertions when considering the recent surfacing of 19 botanical artworks by William Westall now at the Natural History Museum, London. Even before the public appearance of these drawings several commentators had written of William’s botanical work. Michael Rosenthal noted that the artist coped ‘easily with representing completely unfamiliar terrain and unfamiliar trees’ and referred to ‘the ease with which Westall has drawn eucalyptus’. Bernard Smith has noted the suggestion that Ferdinand Bauer, the botanical artist aboard the Investigator had assisted William because of the truth and beauty of his botanical work.
The 19 sketches by William at the Natural History Museum, nearly all drawn when Bauer and William were oceans apart, indicate that William was well able to accomplish excellent botanical drawings on his own. This is not to deny the likelihood that the forty year old Bauer was probably a tutor to young William whilst they were together.
Following a shipwreck near the Great Barrier Reef off the East Australian coast in 1803 William decided to travel to China and India. I have covered William’s sojourn in India during 1804 where his illustrations represent some of his best lifetime work. They bring together the fruits of his experiences and tutorship in Australia with his reaction to discovering the long sought after picturesque views. There is a confidence stemming from displaying an independence of mind. It is interesting to note that Felix Driver & Luciana Martins consider that several of William’s works ‘effectively synthesize the two modes of expressing Indian landscape that were competing for primacy at the turn of the nineteenth century: the topographical precision of the Daniells, joined with the luminosity of Hodges’
Some of William’s Australian pictures have featured in three recent exhibitions in Australia. In 2006 the Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory held an exhibition where six of William’s views, described as being ‘the earliest extant images of the Northern Territory by a European’ were displayed. In the same year seven of William’s original drawings of the Northern Territory, differing from the above, were exhibited with a summary by Ken Taylor. He cites William’s watercolour sketch of King George’s Sound, view from Peak Head (1801) as a good example of picturesque scenery, as understood in Britain at the time, being applied to Australian scenery ‘where the roughness and intricacies of nature might be found that could arouse admiration or reverie in the viewer’. He describes the original sketch as ‘likely to be an accurate representation’ but sees the transference of the scene to oils in which William ‘embellished the foreground to improve on nature’ as following the instructions of theory. This approach is also commented on in William’s Port Bowen view (1802) ‘in which the picturesque scene with sublime undercurrents of wild nature is adorned by three Aboriginal people by a fire at the foot of a gnarled tree.’
The third exhibition included William’s famed oil painting View of Sir Edward Pellew’s Group, Gulf of Carpentaria 1811 (originally sketched in 1802). In her catalogue entry Findlay mentions Bernard Smith’s opinion that this is ‘an innovative and remarkable painting’ and finds that William demonstrates how ‘a new aesthetic can evolve in a new land.’
England
We now know that prior to William’s marriage to Ann Sedgwick Richard Westall wrote from London (Aug 3 1820) to his brother: ‘I take it for granted that you are now one of the happiest men in the world.’
The Wordsworth Trust has amassed a worthy collection of William’s work in the Lake District and in 1983 The Trustees of Dove Cottage published The Lake District Discovered 1810 – 1850 which contains two features on William. The editors describe William’s ‘effective panoramas of the Lake scenes’. Rydal from Mr Wordworth’s Field under Rydal Mount is illustrated. An interesting letter from William to Wordsworth (October 21, 1831) describes the extent of the artist’s collaboration with the poet. In preparing his panoramas William mentions that ‘I can get a house to suit us at Ambleside or the neighbourhood to take up our abode there, and not the least part of the satisfaction I feel at this is the hope…. that we may spend many pleasant hours together and have many a saunter by the Lakes and the “bonny burn sides”. I am just going to begin the plate of Rydal, I shall send a proof, for you to get me the names of the Mountains’
The Yorkshire caves interested William Westall. As W.R. Mitchell has pointed out: ‘With the flowering of the Romantic period….gentlemen of taste and leisure developed a passion for visiting “natural curiosities”…. Weathercote and Yordas were the principal show caves in 1817, when William Westall arrived in North Craven ….Westall made the finest drawings of the Craven Caves’. Some of these drawings were engraved for Views of the Caves Near Ingleton in Yorkshire (1818). John North describes ‘the grandeur and intense beauty’ of the Yorkshire Caves and considers William made the best engravings of the area. ‘Westall’ he writes ‘descended into Weathercote “between bold irregular rocks, overhung with trees and shrubs, which give the scene a wild and picturesque character”. He made an engraving of the waterfall with the “immense stone hanging before the cave, and appearing to be but very slightly supported by the projecting rocks.”’
Juliet Barker in her wonderful biography of Wordsworth outlines the episode when the poet composed three sonnets ‘suggested by Mr W. Westall views of the Caves’. ‘William’s (Wordsworth) impotent fury’ she writes, when he learnt of ‘three sonnets he had written(which) appeared without his prior knowledge or permission…in Blackwood’s Magazine.’ ‘William had presented Westall with copies of the sonnets when he stayed at Rydal Mount…This was a significant coup for Westall and, more especially the magazine, for William (Wordsworth) loathed Blackwood’s heartily…To vent his indignation a little, William sent newly revised and updated versions of the poems to de Quincey, suggesting he might like to include them in the Westmoreland Gazette, where they duly appeared’.
William’s views of the caves were extensively used as decorations resulting in the breaking up of complete volumes. A facsimile of the Cave engravings has been produced but is out of print. Their reproduction with Wordsworth’s sonnets and a history of the Yorkshire Caves would be a welcome venture. Indeed Robert Southey remarked to William in 1822: ‘Did it ever occur to you that views as an illustration of Wordsworth poem (sic), would be a promising speculation? I do not know so promising a one.’ (copy of Letter, Private Collection)
William Westall’s Will appointed his son’s William and Robert with Adam Sedgwick among his Executors and Trustees. The painting simply entitled Deluge was bequeathed to his Trustees to be presented by them ‘to the Nation to be placed in the National Gallery’. This now resides at Tate Britain and can be seen on the Internet. In later years the eldest son William, his family and Robert shared the artist’s pictures with the bulk of his Australian sketches being sold to the Royal Colonial Institute, which became the Royal Commonwealth Society. They went thence to the National Library of Australia.
Among the shares William Westall bequeathed to his sons William, Robert & Thomas were some in the Union Bank of Australia, which indicates his continuing interest in the land he travelled to some fifty years before his death.
Provision was made for the maintenance of his fourth son named Richard. There is a passage in Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Family Letters where a son of the artist William Westall is mentioned as being at Kings College School who had a brother, not at the school ‘of weak mind and sometimes rather dangerous’ who ‘went by the undignified name of “Sillikin”.’ Today we might recognise the condition as autism. This further underlines the burden William must have had in supporting his family and the encroachment these circumstances must have made on his artistic career. William’s ‘dear wife Ann’ was bequeathed the residue of his ‘Real & Personal Estate’ during her life. After her death it was to pass to ‘my said sons William Thomas & Robert to be divided between them equally’. It has been suggested that William was very prosperous at the time of his death but it is difficult to establish this with certainty from his Will.
Sources: Dictionary of Australian Artists Online; Jeffrey Auerbach ‘The picturesque and the homogenisation of Empire’ British Art Journal Vol V No 1 Spring/Summer 2004 pp47-54;
Bernard Smith European Vision and the South Pacific Yale 1985 pp 190-197 2nd ed.; Elisabeth Findlay Turner to Monet: the triumph of Landscape exhibition Canberra 2008 Catalogue entry See ww.nga.gov.au/Exhibition/Turnertomonet; Elisabeth Findlay Arcadian Quest – William Westall’s Australian Sketches 1998 National Library of Australia. There are some errors in Findlay’s book which should be noted. In assessing William’s character she quotes Farington mentioning that Westall ‘did not appear to be very desirous of returning to the Navy from thinking it held little prospect of adventure’. A careful reading of this passage reveals that Farington is referring to his own brother William Farrington not William Westall. Farington also confuses William’s commissions with Richard’s and incorrectly states that William was not an engraver when nine publications in which William engraves his own drawings are known; Richard J. Westall ‘Recent William Westall picture discoveries’ Australiana May 2008 Note the plate on p20 of Benjamin Westall, the artist’s father has the dates (1781 – 1850) which are of his son William. Benjamin’s dates are 1737-1794; Juliet Wedge et al Matthew Flinders And His Scientific Gentlemen 2005 Western Australia Museum; Richard J.Westall ‘Westall’s New Botanical Drawings’ National Library of Australia News Dec 2007; Michael Rosenthal lecture to the National Maritime Museum Greenwich 20 Oct 2006 ‘Going to the Pictures in Australia’ www.nmm.ac.uk ; ed Thomas Perry & Donald Simpson ‘Westall’s Drawings’ Royal Commonwealth Society 1962; Richard J. Westall ‘The Westall Turner Studies Tate, London 1984 Vol 4 no 1; Richard J. Westall ‘William Westall in India’ Marg Publications, Mumbai Vol XLVII No 4 June 1996; Richard J. Westall ‘William Westall in India’ Journal of the Families in British India Society No 13 Spring 2005; Felix Driver & Luciana Martins Tropical visions in an age of empire University of Chicago 2005; The Sound of the Sky 2006 Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Australia; Ken Taylor ‘Country Landscape’ Australian National University 2006; W.R. Mitchell ‘The Hollow Mountains’ Settle, Yorks May 1961; William Westall ‘Views of the Caves Near Ingleton in Yorkshire’ John Murray 1818; Country Life Nov 26 1959; Juliet Barker ‘Wordsworth A Life’ Viking 2000; Trevor Shaw facsimile reproduction and introduction to Westall’s Cave Drawings Anne Oldham May 1983.
National Archives Will PROB 11/2114; Richard J. Westall ‘The Westall Pictures’ National Library of Australia News Feb 2007; Dante GabrielRossetti Family Letters 1895.
Thursday, 7 January 2010
Westall publications by Richard J. Westall
'Art and Australia' Summer 1982 Vol 20 No 2 'William Westall in Australia' pp 252-256.
'Turner Studies' (Tate) Vol 4 No 1 Summer 1984 'The Westall Brothers' pp 23-38.
'The Sedbergh Historian' Vol 2 no 1 Autumn 1985 'William Westall's Northern Prints' pp 13-18
'Antiquarian Book Monthly Review' Vol XIII Number 12, Issue 152, December 1986 'William Westall ARA (1781-1850) A Catalogue of his Book Illustrations' pp 448-455.
'Antiquarian Book Monthly Review' Issue 251, Vol XXII no 4, April 1995 'An Unrecognised Heritage' pp 10-15.
'Marg' (Mumbai) Vol XLVII no 4, June 1996 'William Westall in India' pp 94-96.
'Antiquarian Book Monthly' Vol XXVII Number 11 Issue 313, December 2000 'Towards a Catalogue of Richard Westall Prints' pp 17-21.
'National Library of Australia News' Vol XVII no 5, Feb 2007 'The Westall Pictures' pp 7-10
'National Library of Australia News' Vol XVII no 3, December 2007 'Westall's New Botanical Prints' pp 14-17.
'Journal of the Families in British India Society' No 13 Spring 2005, 'William Westall in India'
pp 2-5.
'Cook's Log' Vol 28 no 4 Oct-Dec 2005 'The Hodges/Westall Connection' pp 23-24.
'Cook's Log' Vol 29 no 2 April-June 2006 'The Hodges/Westall Connection' p 10.
'Ancestors' Issue 50 October 2006 'Brushed by Fame' 42-44.
'Trafalgar Chronicle' Yearbook of the 1805 Club No 16 2006 ' "The Story is Admirably Told" The Nelson Pictures by Richard Westall R.A. (1765-1836)' pp 171-179 & Plate 5 with Westall's four Nelson paintings exhibited at the Royal Academy.
'Australiana' Vol 30 no 2 May 2008 pp 18-23 'Recent William Westall picture discoveries'
pp 18-23
'Oxford Dictionary of National Biography' entries on Richard Westall and William Westall can be seen online at most libraries. The printed version has an image said to be William Westall which is, in fact, Richard Westall. This and some other errors have been corrected online.
'Dictionary of Australian Artists Online' has two biographies on William Westall, by Thomas Perry and Richard J. Westall.
The Witt Library at Somerset House, London has several boxes of images and printed material on both Richard & William Westall, including 'William Westall in India' (Marg), and 'Brushed by Fame' (Ancestors). The Guildhall Library has the 'Catalogue of William Westall Prints' (ABMR).
I can supply photocopies of any article for research purposes email richardjwestall@yahoo.co.uk.
'Art and Australia' Summer 1982 Vol 20 No 2 'William Westall in Australia' pp 252-256.
'Turner Studies' (Tate) Vol 4 No 1 Summer 1984 'The Westall Brothers' pp 23-38.
'The Sedbergh Historian' Vol 2 no 1 Autumn 1985 'William Westall's Northern Prints' pp 13-18
'Antiquarian Book Monthly Review' Vol XIII Number 12, Issue 152, December 1986 'William Westall ARA (1781-1850) A Catalogue of his Book Illustrations' pp 448-455.
'Antiquarian Book Monthly Review' Issue 251, Vol XXII no 4, April 1995 'An Unrecognised Heritage' pp 10-15.
'Marg' (Mumbai) Vol XLVII no 4, June 1996 'William Westall in India' pp 94-96.
'Antiquarian Book Monthly' Vol XXVII Number 11 Issue 313, December 2000 'Towards a Catalogue of Richard Westall Prints' pp 17-21.
'National Library of Australia News' Vol XVII no 5, Feb 2007 'The Westall Pictures' pp 7-10
'National Library of Australia News' Vol XVII no 3, December 2007 'Westall's New Botanical Prints' pp 14-17.
'Journal of the Families in British India Society' No 13 Spring 2005, 'William Westall in India'
pp 2-5.
'Cook's Log' Vol 28 no 4 Oct-Dec 2005 'The Hodges/Westall Connection' pp 23-24.
'Cook's Log' Vol 29 no 2 April-June 2006 'The Hodges/Westall Connection' p 10.
'Ancestors' Issue 50 October 2006 'Brushed by Fame' 42-44.
'Trafalgar Chronicle' Yearbook of the 1805 Club No 16 2006 ' "The Story is Admirably Told" The Nelson Pictures by Richard Westall R.A. (1765-1836)' pp 171-179 & Plate 5 with Westall's four Nelson paintings exhibited at the Royal Academy.
'Australiana' Vol 30 no 2 May 2008 pp 18-23 'Recent William Westall picture discoveries'
pp 18-23
'Oxford Dictionary of National Biography' entries on Richard Westall and William Westall can be seen online at most libraries. The printed version has an image said to be William Westall which is, in fact, Richard Westall. This and some other errors have been corrected online.
'Dictionary of Australian Artists Online' has two biographies on William Westall, by Thomas Perry and Richard J. Westall.
The Witt Library at Somerset House, London has several boxes of images and printed material on both Richard & William Westall, including 'William Westall in India' (Marg), and 'Brushed by Fame' (Ancestors). The Guildhall Library has the 'Catalogue of William Westall Prints' (ABMR).
I can supply photocopies of any article for research purposes email richardjwestall@yahoo.co.uk.
Hodges/Westall Connection
The Hodges/Westall connection
In “Cook’s Log” (Vol 16 Nos 1 & 2 1993) Gordon Crompton drew attention to extracts from the Dairy of Joseph Farington where the death of William Hodges R.A. (1744 -1797) is mentioned. Hodges, landscape artist on the “Resolution” with Captain Cook, figures in other volumes of the Farington’s Diaries adding further light on the fate of his family after he died.
In addition I have established that William Hodges and William Westall A.R.A. (1781 – 1850), landscape artist on the voyage of the “Investigator (1801 -1803) captained by Matthew Flinders, were related through the marriage of Hodges to Anne Carr, Westall’s 2nd cousin. (See “The Journal of the Families in British India Society” No 13 Spring 2005)
The fact that the Westalls were in touch with Hodges is demonstrated by a painting exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1790 by Richard Westall R.A. (1765 – 1836), entitled “Portraits of a lady and her daughter (Mrs Hodges)”. In the next year Westall’s portrait of William Hodges was exhibited. This is likely to have been the source of an engraved portrait of Hodges after Richard Westall which appeared in the Literary Magazine in 1792.
In 1793 Farington has Westall sitting adjacent to Hodges at the Royal Academy dinner on 31 December and on Feb 10th, 1794 Farington notes that Hodges was among the RA’s who voted for Westall to be elected an R.A..
The death of Hodges is mentioned by Farington several times in 1797 and concerns mainly the plight of his widow and children. Sir John Carr, the widow’s brother, “describes pathetically the deep distress of Hrs Hodges” and financial support that might be obtained (March 9). Other information about the collapse of Hodges’ banking enterprise in Totnes is reported. (March 13). It is further noted (March 27) that Hodges “Lost £1400 by his publication of India Views”.
The Royal Academy provided Mrs Hodges with £100 a year and the children a further £60 per annum. There is much information concerning Hodges’ debts and news of £12000 for him “from India”. On July 3rd Farington notes: “William Hodges, married to Anne, Mary Carr at Saint Martins in the Fields December 1st – 1785. Henry Willm Hodges born Nov 28 1788 – Christened at St Georges Hanover Square.”
In 1803 an incident concerning Henry Hodges is reported on September 1 and 3 in which Westall advises that “Henry Hodges had gone away from Christ’s Hospital (recently) from an apprehension of being punished for having told an untruth abt. Purchasing a gun”. On January 29, 1811 Farington reports that Carr “told me of his two nieces Misses Hodges, with Miss Lindegreen having formed a plan for extending their Seminary for Young Ladies. He also told me that his nephew Henry Hodges who went a Cadet to India is advanced to the rank of Lieutenant on the Military establishement at Madras . He mentioned that it wd. Be useful to the Misses Hodges, to have some of the money which was raised after the death of their mother by the sale of her music”. Finally on 28th May, 1821 Farington writes: “Sir John Carr told me that he had made Henry Hodges the Heir of his estate in Essex consisting of 4 or 500 acres, and had divided his other property among his nieces, sisters of Henry Hodges”
Rex and Thea Reinits in their book “Early Artists in Australia” (1963) wrote: “Hodges was an artist of very considerable ability and imagination…after his return to England (he) became friendly with Richard Westall RA and through this friendship he met as a schoolboy Westall’s half-brother William, who as topographical draughtsman to Matthew Flinders, was to become the first artist to circumnavigate Australia and the best to portray its landscape for many years” In another reference the Reinits’ speculate that “it seems probable his (William Westall’s) own determination to travel sprang from listening to the stories this much travelled artist (Hodges) would have had to tell”.
Hodges was never in Australian territory with “Resolution”. He depicted idyllic views and dramatic paintings in the picturesque fashion of the day which we have been able to see at the exhibition of his work at the National Maritime Museum last year. An interesting review of that exhibition by Jeffrey Auerbach “The picturesque and the homogenisation of Empire” in “The British Art Journal” Vol V, No 1 Spring/Summer 2004 notes that “for (William) Westall the coastline (of Australia) did not yield the exotic subject matter he had hoped to find”. He also had the example of his brother- in-law William Daniell R.A. (1769 – 1837) to put alongside Hodges, where Indian scenery was far more exciting to a young artist in search of picturesque views. William Westall for many Australians made a mistaken statement by describing the continent as barren, although he may have witnessed this impact during most of the circumnavigation. Auerbach, however, makes the pertinent observation that “Westalls paintings are so clearly at odds with his written descriptions”. In his oil paintings for the Admiralty he has attractive scenery and his portrayals of aborigine people are far more accurate than contemporaries. (See “Art and Austrlalia” Vol 20 no 2 & “Westall’s Drawings” 1962).
Another link between Cook and Flinders is through Sir Joseph Banks, a traveller with Cook and the manager, in effect, of the Flinders voyage and its aftermath for the Admiralty. A further example is Daniel Solander, also on “Endeavour” who was among those proposing Westall, on his return to Britain, for membership of the Linnean Society.
Comparisons among the British artists who travelled to the Pacific region between the 1760s and 1810 are inevitable. For John Landseer William Westall “was more accomplished than Cook’s artists, Hodges and Webber”. For Dr Bernard Smith, the first person to provide a thorough study of European vision in the region, Westalls “costal profiles were more elaborate and more skilful than the profiles drawn by either Hodges or Webber.”
It is to be hoped that we shall be given a chance one day to see an exhibition which compares these three artists and possibly their French contemporaries.
Richard J. Westall
In “Cook’s Log” (Vol 16 Nos 1 & 2 1993) Gordon Crompton drew attention to extracts from the Dairy of Joseph Farington where the death of William Hodges R.A. (1744 -1797) is mentioned. Hodges, landscape artist on the “Resolution” with Captain Cook, figures in other volumes of the Farington’s Diaries adding further light on the fate of his family after he died.
In addition I have established that William Hodges and William Westall A.R.A. (1781 – 1850), landscape artist on the voyage of the “Investigator (1801 -1803) captained by Matthew Flinders, were related through the marriage of Hodges to Anne Carr, Westall’s 2nd cousin. (See “The Journal of the Families in British India Society” No 13 Spring 2005)
The fact that the Westalls were in touch with Hodges is demonstrated by a painting exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1790 by Richard Westall R.A. (1765 – 1836), entitled “Portraits of a lady and her daughter (Mrs Hodges)”. In the next year Westall’s portrait of William Hodges was exhibited. This is likely to have been the source of an engraved portrait of Hodges after Richard Westall which appeared in the Literary Magazine in 1792.
In 1793 Farington has Westall sitting adjacent to Hodges at the Royal Academy dinner on 31 December and on Feb 10th, 1794 Farington notes that Hodges was among the RA’s who voted for Westall to be elected an R.A..
The death of Hodges is mentioned by Farington several times in 1797 and concerns mainly the plight of his widow and children. Sir John Carr, the widow’s brother, “describes pathetically the deep distress of Hrs Hodges” and financial support that might be obtained (March 9). Other information about the collapse of Hodges’ banking enterprise in Totnes is reported. (March 13). It is further noted (March 27) that Hodges “Lost £1400 by his publication of India Views”.
The Royal Academy provided Mrs Hodges with £100 a year and the children a further £60 per annum. There is much information concerning Hodges’ debts and news of £12000 for him “from India”. On July 3rd Farington notes: “William Hodges, married to Anne, Mary Carr at Saint Martins in the Fields December 1st – 1785. Henry Willm Hodges born Nov 28 1788 – Christened at St Georges Hanover Square.”
In 1803 an incident concerning Henry Hodges is reported on September 1 and 3 in which Westall advises that “Henry Hodges had gone away from Christ’s Hospital (recently) from an apprehension of being punished for having told an untruth abt. Purchasing a gun”. On January 29, 1811 Farington reports that Carr “told me of his two nieces Misses Hodges, with Miss Lindegreen having formed a plan for extending their Seminary for Young Ladies. He also told me that his nephew Henry Hodges who went a Cadet to India is advanced to the rank of Lieutenant on the Military establishement at Madras . He mentioned that it wd. Be useful to the Misses Hodges, to have some of the money which was raised after the death of their mother by the sale of her music”. Finally on 28th May, 1821 Farington writes: “Sir John Carr told me that he had made Henry Hodges the Heir of his estate in Essex consisting of 4 or 500 acres, and had divided his other property among his nieces, sisters of Henry Hodges”
Rex and Thea Reinits in their book “Early Artists in Australia” (1963) wrote: “Hodges was an artist of very considerable ability and imagination…after his return to England (he) became friendly with Richard Westall RA and through this friendship he met as a schoolboy Westall’s half-brother William, who as topographical draughtsman to Matthew Flinders, was to become the first artist to circumnavigate Australia and the best to portray its landscape for many years” In another reference the Reinits’ speculate that “it seems probable his (William Westall’s) own determination to travel sprang from listening to the stories this much travelled artist (Hodges) would have had to tell”.
Hodges was never in Australian territory with “Resolution”. He depicted idyllic views and dramatic paintings in the picturesque fashion of the day which we have been able to see at the exhibition of his work at the National Maritime Museum last year. An interesting review of that exhibition by Jeffrey Auerbach “The picturesque and the homogenisation of Empire” in “The British Art Journal” Vol V, No 1 Spring/Summer 2004 notes that “for (William) Westall the coastline (of Australia) did not yield the exotic subject matter he had hoped to find”. He also had the example of his brother- in-law William Daniell R.A. (1769 – 1837) to put alongside Hodges, where Indian scenery was far more exciting to a young artist in search of picturesque views. William Westall for many Australians made a mistaken statement by describing the continent as barren, although he may have witnessed this impact during most of the circumnavigation. Auerbach, however, makes the pertinent observation that “Westalls paintings are so clearly at odds with his written descriptions”. In his oil paintings for the Admiralty he has attractive scenery and his portrayals of aborigine people are far more accurate than contemporaries. (See “Art and Austrlalia” Vol 20 no 2 & “Westall’s Drawings” 1962).
Another link between Cook and Flinders is through Sir Joseph Banks, a traveller with Cook and the manager, in effect, of the Flinders voyage and its aftermath for the Admiralty. A further example is Daniel Solander, also on “Endeavour” who was among those proposing Westall, on his return to Britain, for membership of the Linnean Society.
Comparisons among the British artists who travelled to the Pacific region between the 1760s and 1810 are inevitable. For John Landseer William Westall “was more accomplished than Cook’s artists, Hodges and Webber”. For Dr Bernard Smith, the first person to provide a thorough study of European vision in the region, Westalls “costal profiles were more elaborate and more skilful than the profiles drawn by either Hodges or Webber.”
It is to be hoped that we shall be given a chance one day to see an exhibition which compares these three artists and possibly their French contemporaries.
Richard J. Westall
Wednesday, 6 January 2010
In adding to this blog you will find I have covered certain subjects in more than one place. I shall endeavour to join the various strands together and to incorporate the images, properly listed and acknowledged, into the texts as appropriate. Until then I hope you will bear with the muddle and find those areas of interest that are particularly your own.
The Life of George Romney” by William Hayley (T. Payne London 1809)
p. 257 letter March 17, 1797
(George Romney used William Hodges' wife Anne, nee Carr, as one of his models for his paintings).
to a ‘dear Friend’
‘Alas poor Hodges! His wife more to be lamented1 I shall never forget what I saw one morning when I found her at breakfast with her little children; her voice and face most enchanting and beautiful than I had ever thought them before. The scene dwells upon my mind when I hear of her, poor woman1 For the gratification of the same looks and voice, I think I could travel a hundred miles. I must content myself with the vision; the reality I shall never see again.’
pp258/9
Romney had great esteem, and great pity for the amiable man, and unfortunate artist whose calamitous death he lamented in the last letter….Ill fortune seemed continually to attend all the exertions, and all the wishes of the kind-hearted and high-spirited Hodges. With uncommon industry, and considerable talents, he could not gain a comparable subsistence by his art, and when, in honest indignation, he renounced the pencil for the lucrative business of a provincial banker, the public storm, that shook even the bank of the nation, utterly overwhelmed the hapless adventurer, and all his hopes. Death delivered him from a scene of unmerited distress. Unhappy as he was, to an astonishing degree, in several incidents of his life, his destiny had given him one blessing of superlative excellence. Perhaps there never existed a woman more truly amiable in person and talents, in manners and in heart than Mrs Hodges. I believe I cannot act more in conformity to the feelings of Romney, than by inserting in the volume devoted to the personal history, a poetical tribute paid to the memory of this couple, (whom he tenderly regarded) in the following
EPITATH
on
WILLIAM AND ANNE HODGES
Ye men of genius, join’d to moral worth’
Whose merits meet no just rewards on earth,
Ye fair, who in your lot, tho’ lovely, find
To grace and virtue fortune still is blind,
Sigh o’er the names recorded on this stone!
And feel the characters so like your own!
To active Hodges, who lived with zeal sublime,
Pursued the art, he lov’d, in every clime;
Who early traversing the globe with Cook,
Painted new life from nature’s latent book;
Who with a spirit that no bars controul’d,
Labour’d in Indian heat, and Russian cold,
Yet clos’d (with virtues by the world allow’d)
A life of labour in affliction’s cloud;
To him, whose name has well deserved to live,
This faithful record truth and friendship give,
Nor give to him alone, but doubly just
Hail his angelic Anna’s hallow’d dust.
She lovely victim of affection true,
In pangs that piety could not subdue,
Perceiv’d (and felt the prospect of relief)
Her fair and gentle frame dissolv’d by grief.
Ye! who in virtuous love take tender pride,
Here honor her who as its martyr died.
p. 257 letter March 17, 1797
(George Romney used William Hodges' wife Anne, nee Carr, as one of his models for his paintings).
to a ‘dear Friend’
‘Alas poor Hodges! His wife more to be lamented1 I shall never forget what I saw one morning when I found her at breakfast with her little children; her voice and face most enchanting and beautiful than I had ever thought them before. The scene dwells upon my mind when I hear of her, poor woman1 For the gratification of the same looks and voice, I think I could travel a hundred miles. I must content myself with the vision; the reality I shall never see again.’
pp258/9
Romney had great esteem, and great pity for the amiable man, and unfortunate artist whose calamitous death he lamented in the last letter….Ill fortune seemed continually to attend all the exertions, and all the wishes of the kind-hearted and high-spirited Hodges. With uncommon industry, and considerable talents, he could not gain a comparable subsistence by his art, and when, in honest indignation, he renounced the pencil for the lucrative business of a provincial banker, the public storm, that shook even the bank of the nation, utterly overwhelmed the hapless adventurer, and all his hopes. Death delivered him from a scene of unmerited distress. Unhappy as he was, to an astonishing degree, in several incidents of his life, his destiny had given him one blessing of superlative excellence. Perhaps there never existed a woman more truly amiable in person and talents, in manners and in heart than Mrs Hodges. I believe I cannot act more in conformity to the feelings of Romney, than by inserting in the volume devoted to the personal history, a poetical tribute paid to the memory of this couple, (whom he tenderly regarded) in the following
EPITATH
on
WILLIAM AND ANNE HODGES
Ye men of genius, join’d to moral worth’
Whose merits meet no just rewards on earth,
Ye fair, who in your lot, tho’ lovely, find
To grace and virtue fortune still is blind,
Sigh o’er the names recorded on this stone!
And feel the characters so like your own!
To active Hodges, who lived with zeal sublime,
Pursued the art, he lov’d, in every clime;
Who early traversing the globe with Cook,
Painted new life from nature’s latent book;
Who with a spirit that no bars controul’d,
Labour’d in Indian heat, and Russian cold,
Yet clos’d (with virtues by the world allow’d)
A life of labour in affliction’s cloud;
To him, whose name has well deserved to live,
This faithful record truth and friendship give,
Nor give to him alone, but doubly just
Hail his angelic Anna’s hallow’d dust.
She lovely victim of affection true,
In pangs that piety could not subdue,
Perceiv’d (and felt the prospect of relief)
Her fair and gentle frame dissolv’d by grief.
Ye! who in virtuous love take tender pride,
Here honor her who as its martyr died.
WESTALL TALES
Geoffrey Chaucer (c1340 – 1400), the author of “The Canterbury Tales” is said to have based his Wife Of Bath on his grandmother Mary, who had three husbands. She was Mary de Westhale and Robert Chaucer her husband had a sister Agnes who married Walter de Westhale. Agnes and Walter had two daughters – Sibyll and Joan.
Joan de Westhale was forcibly abducted and some suggest married to Robert Chaucer’s son, John. Apparently there was no marriage and Joan married Robert de Beverley whilst John bore the child Geoffrey Chaucer from his marriage to Agnes de Copton, niece and heiress of Homo de Copton.
John and Agnes Chaucer granted to one William atte Hale “citizen and taverner, and Agnes his wife” rent for tenements in St Botolph’s Without in London “which rent descended to Agnes Chaucer after the death of Hamo de Copton”. Geoffrey Chaucer adjudicated a case involving William ate Hall and their daughter Isabella who was abducted as a minor.
There is more evidence of family entanglements of the Chaucers and a family which is likely to be Westhall. One person Thomas de Westhale (who was associated with the abductors of of Joan de Westhale with respect to John Chaucer) had his name spelt variously as de Westhale, de Westhall and Thomas Westhall.
Although it is doubtful that Geoffrey Chaucer's place of birth was Lynn in Norfolk, he certainly had relations in the area and knew Norfolk intimately. His son Thomas married Maud, the great grand-daughterof Sir William de Kerdiston. The manor of Kerdiston, near Reepham in Norfolk was named after this family. Geoffrey Chaucer’s grand-daughter Alice married William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk as her father’s heir released all rights to the manor. The property was with the de la Pole family until the last member of that family was executed in 1514.
During the Reformation it was taken over by the Crown but the Heyward family came into ownership during the 16th century and Daniell Westall and his wife and heiress Elizabeth Heyward inherited part of the property of Kerdiston.
Geoffrey Chaucer (c1340 – 1400), the author of “The Canterbury Tales” is said to have based his Wife Of Bath on his grandmother Mary, who had three husbands. She was Mary de Westhale and Robert Chaucer her husband had a sister Agnes who married Walter de Westhale. Agnes and Walter had two daughters – Sibyll and Joan.
Joan de Westhale was forcibly abducted and some suggest married to Robert Chaucer’s son, John. Apparently there was no marriage and Joan married Robert de Beverley whilst John bore the child Geoffrey Chaucer from his marriage to Agnes de Copton, niece and heiress of Homo de Copton.
John and Agnes Chaucer granted to one William atte Hale “citizen and taverner, and Agnes his wife” rent for tenements in St Botolph’s Without in London “which rent descended to Agnes Chaucer after the death of Hamo de Copton”. Geoffrey Chaucer adjudicated a case involving William ate Hall and their daughter Isabella who was abducted as a minor.
There is more evidence of family entanglements of the Chaucers and a family which is likely to be Westhall. One person Thomas de Westhale (who was associated with the abductors of of Joan de Westhale with respect to John Chaucer) had his name spelt variously as de Westhale, de Westhall and Thomas Westhall.
Although it is doubtful that Geoffrey Chaucer's place of birth was Lynn in Norfolk, he certainly had relations in the area and knew Norfolk intimately. His son Thomas married Maud, the great grand-daughterof Sir William de Kerdiston. The manor of Kerdiston, near Reepham in Norfolk was named after this family. Geoffrey Chaucer’s grand-daughter Alice married William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk as her father’s heir released all rights to the manor. The property was with the de la Pole family until the last member of that family was executed in 1514.
During the Reformation it was taken over by the Crown but the Heyward family came into ownership during the 16th century and Daniell Westall and his wife and heiress Elizabeth Heyward inherited part of the property of Kerdiston.
Will of Richard Westall R. A. 1765 – 1836
This is the last Will and Testament of me Richard Westall of 28 Russell Place Fitzroy Square in the county of Middlesex Esquire. I give ? and bequeath my leasehold _ ? with __ and out buildings thereto belonging _ _ _and all my Estate and interest therein and all my paintings furniture__ Estate of whatever description the same may be unto my Brother in Law William Daniell of ? 14 Russell Place in said county Esquire ?? and my Brother William Westall No 5 North Bank Regents Park in the said county Esquire ___ upon the? Trusts/trustees? _ for the intents and purposes hereafter? Expressed? & _ of and _ the said___way_ trust as soon as ___may be after my decease to ___all such monies and debts as shall or may be But? & owing to me at the time of my decease and also for? Trust? To sell and dispose of the said Leasehold __ and __ & all other my said personal Estate not – of income, either by public sale? Or private contract as to those my said Trustees shall ___and in trust__ of the monies to be begotten? In and by such sale arriving in the first place to __ satisfy & discharge? All my just debts the expenses of the funeral & the expenses of proving? This my last will and to stand possessed? Of the residue of the said monies in trust to __ the value upon __ or Government Securities at interest from time to time __ or all in the securities wherever the same shall be invested and to lay out the proceeds? __ upon other securities of the like nature at interst and upon trust as to our? --- moiety or half part of the said Trust monies funds? And securities to pay the interest? And __ therefrom__ unto my Sister Mary Daniell wife of the said William Daniell or her __ for her life and the same shall not be subject to the ____ disposition or __ of the present or any after taken __ and for whether? __ or alone shall be sufficient __ and In Trust upon the death of the said Mary? Daniell to pay or transfer the same half part of the said stocks funds & securities to _ person or persons and in such manner as the said Mary Daniell by her last Will & Testament or any writing under her hand & attested by two or more ___ notwithstanding her __ may first __ or appoint and in default of __ invitation? Or appoint unto the __ or __ of the said Mary Daniell and the other moiety or half part of the said trust funds and _ the said William Daniell & William Westall their Executors? __ stand possesses? Of & interested in the same In trust to pay the interest---therefrom arriving unto my sister Ann Westall & her _ for her life and from & _ after her decease in trust to pay or transfer out any part of the said last mentioned moiety of the said Trust stocks shares & securities to my Brother William Westall his ___ or __ & as to the other ___ part of the same moiety upon __ to pay the same unto __ of the sons of my late Brother Benjamin Westall as shall be living at the time of my ____ shares and proportions and I hereby will and direct that whomsoever it may please Almighty God that I shall die my body may be buried in the vault which I have purchased on the North side of the Parish Church of St Pancras in the county of Middx __ of the body of my most dear and moest __ friend John Ayton Esquire I __ that the locket? Which I always wear in memory of him shall be placed round my __ and buried with me and I __ & enjoin my Executors always and I __ that in __my said trustees therein? Named? Or either of them or any __ trustees to be appointed hereafter shall depart this life or be desirous of ___ of and from the aforesaid trusts or shall go to visit beyond the seas or __interest or refuse? Or ____ in the trusts aforesaid then? And in __ as soon and as often as the _ shall happen it shall & may be __ the said Trustee or Trustees for the time being or the last acting Trustee (in margin or the Executors or Advisors of the last acting Trustee) of __ Estate under this my will to _ and appoint any – fit person or __ to supply the __ of the Trustee or Trustees respectively to __ desiring to ___ or going abroad or __ seas or refusing or _ or _ in a __ to all as aforesaid and that Immediately after such appointment the trust __ and efforts then vested in __ by virtue of this my will in the Trustee or Trustees ___ to be __ or going to reside beyond the seas or refusing __ or becoming incapable to __ as aforesaid shall __ transfer __ and in such manner that the same may vest in __ now trustee or trustees __ or together with the surviving or __ or _ trustee or trustees or __ last may require and __ or their __ or __ upon the trusts for __ and _ of the recurring the same and I _ that _ trustees hereby nominated and appointed and any future trustees to be hereafter appointed? And _ and every of them and the Executors _ and ___ and _ of their _ shall be _ and ___ and _ of their _ shal be _ and __ for such _ as they shall actually _ notwithstanding he or they shall or may give or sign or join in giving or _ any receipt or receipts for the sake of conformity? And that they shall not be answerable or accountable for _ other ___ then only and _ for __ __ and _ that it shall and may be lawful to and for the said William Daniell and William Westall _ Executors _ or _ for the __ shall be a sufficient _ to the purchased or purchasers _ who _ _ be _ to see to the application of the ___ money or to __ into __ of the date __ I do hereby __ the said William Daniell and William Westall Executors of this my will and I hereby revoke allformer wills heretofore by me ___ made in witness __ I have _ set my hand and seal this thirty first day of July one thousand eight hundred years and thirty (1830) Richd Westall
(___published & _ by the _ named Richard Westall as & for his last will and Testament in the presence of Sophia Anne Roberts = Edward Travers Temple?Pliumpton? )
On the 12th April 1837 with the will __of the law _ credits of Richard Westall late of Russell Place Fiztroy Square in the County of Middlesex Esq deceased was granted to Peter? Norton? Esquire a creditor? By Bow? Of the said _ having been first _ being _ William Daniell Esquire and William Westall Esq the Brother of the said deceased the Executor & ___In trust named. The said will _ first _ the probate and _ thereof and ____ with the said will _ of __ of the said deceased Mary Daniell
Note William Daniell died in 1837 which must have left William Westall as the sole Executor of the Will. A record exists of Richard Westall being buried at St Pancras Parish Church, which is almost opposite Euston Station, but there is no record of John Ayton being buried there. Letters at the Royal Academy from Richard Westall to Sir Thomas Lawrence, President of the Royal Academy indicate that Richard was particularly keen to be buried in proximity to John Ayton – extracts from these letters can be found on the website www.bradonpace/westall The crypt of the Church was used as a shelter in World War II and the tombs have been dislodged and broken in many cases. The exact location of Richard Westall’s tomb has not been established.
This is the last Will and Testament of me Richard Westall of 28 Russell Place Fitzroy Square in the county of Middlesex Esquire. I give ? and bequeath my leasehold _ ? with __ and out buildings thereto belonging _ _ _and all my Estate and interest therein and all my paintings furniture__ Estate of whatever description the same may be unto my Brother in Law William Daniell of ? 14 Russell Place in said county Esquire ?? and my Brother William Westall No 5 North Bank Regents Park in the said county Esquire ___ upon the? Trusts/trustees? _ for the intents and purposes hereafter? Expressed? & _ of and _ the said___way_ trust as soon as ___may be after my decease to ___all such monies and debts as shall or may be But? & owing to me at the time of my decease and also for? Trust? To sell and dispose of the said Leasehold __ and __ & all other my said personal Estate not – of income, either by public sale? Or private contract as to those my said Trustees shall ___and in trust__ of the monies to be begotten? In and by such sale arriving in the first place to __ satisfy & discharge? All my just debts the expenses of the funeral & the expenses of proving? This my last will and to stand possessed? Of the residue of the said monies in trust to __ the value upon __ or Government Securities at interest from time to time __ or all in the securities wherever the same shall be invested and to lay out the proceeds? __ upon other securities of the like nature at interst and upon trust as to our? --- moiety or half part of the said Trust monies funds? And securities to pay the interest? And __ therefrom__ unto my Sister Mary Daniell wife of the said William Daniell or her __ for her life and the same shall not be subject to the ____ disposition or __ of the present or any after taken __ and for whether? __ or alone shall be sufficient __ and In Trust upon the death of the said Mary? Daniell to pay or transfer the same half part of the said stocks funds & securities to _ person or persons and in such manner as the said Mary Daniell by her last Will & Testament or any writing under her hand & attested by two or more ___ notwithstanding her __ may first __ or appoint and in default of __ invitation? Or appoint unto the __ or __ of the said Mary Daniell and the other moiety or half part of the said trust funds and _ the said William Daniell & William Westall their Executors? __ stand possesses? Of & interested in the same In trust to pay the interest---therefrom arriving unto my sister Ann Westall & her _ for her life and from & _ after her decease in trust to pay or transfer out any part of the said last mentioned moiety of the said Trust stocks shares & securities to my Brother William Westall his ___ or __ & as to the other ___ part of the same moiety upon __ to pay the same unto __ of the sons of my late Brother Benjamin Westall as shall be living at the time of my ____ shares and proportions and I hereby will and direct that whomsoever it may please Almighty God that I shall die my body may be buried in the vault which I have purchased on the North side of the Parish Church of St Pancras in the county of Middx __ of the body of my most dear and moest __ friend John Ayton Esquire I __ that the locket? Which I always wear in memory of him shall be placed round my __ and buried with me and I __ & enjoin my Executors always and I __ that in __my said trustees therein? Named? Or either of them or any __ trustees to be appointed hereafter shall depart this life or be desirous of ___ of and from the aforesaid trusts or shall go to visit beyond the seas or __interest or refuse? Or ____ in the trusts aforesaid then? And in __ as soon and as often as the _ shall happen it shall & may be __ the said Trustee or Trustees for the time being or the last acting Trustee (in margin or the Executors or Advisors of the last acting Trustee) of __ Estate under this my will to _ and appoint any – fit person or __ to supply the __ of the Trustee or Trustees respectively to __ desiring to ___ or going abroad or __ seas or refusing or _ or _ in a __ to all as aforesaid and that Immediately after such appointment the trust __ and efforts then vested in __ by virtue of this my will in the Trustee or Trustees ___ to be __ or going to reside beyond the seas or refusing __ or becoming incapable to __ as aforesaid shall __ transfer __ and in such manner that the same may vest in __ now trustee or trustees __ or together with the surviving or __ or _ trustee or trustees or __ last may require and __ or their __ or __ upon the trusts for __ and _ of the recurring the same and I _ that _ trustees hereby nominated and appointed and any future trustees to be hereafter appointed? And _ and every of them and the Executors _ and ___ and _ of their _ shall be _ and ___ and _ of their _ shal be _ and __ for such _ as they shall actually _ notwithstanding he or they shall or may give or sign or join in giving or _ any receipt or receipts for the sake of conformity? And that they shall not be answerable or accountable for _ other ___ then only and _ for __ __ and _ that it shall and may be lawful to and for the said William Daniell and William Westall _ Executors _ or _ for the __ shall be a sufficient _ to the purchased or purchasers _ who _ _ be _ to see to the application of the ___ money or to __ into __ of the date __ I do hereby __ the said William Daniell and William Westall Executors of this my will and I hereby revoke allformer wills heretofore by me ___ made in witness __ I have _ set my hand and seal this thirty first day of July one thousand eight hundred years and thirty (1830) Richd Westall
(___published & _ by the _ named Richard Westall as & for his last will and Testament in the presence of Sophia Anne Roberts = Edward Travers Temple?Pliumpton? )
On the 12th April 1837 with the will __of the law _ credits of Richard Westall late of Russell Place Fiztroy Square in the County of Middlesex Esq deceased was granted to Peter? Norton? Esquire a creditor? By Bow? Of the said _ having been first _ being _ William Daniell Esquire and William Westall Esq the Brother of the said deceased the Executor & ___In trust named. The said will _ first _ the probate and _ thereof and ____ with the said will _ of __ of the said deceased Mary Daniell
Note William Daniell died in 1837 which must have left William Westall as the sole Executor of the Will. A record exists of Richard Westall being buried at St Pancras Parish Church, which is almost opposite Euston Station, but there is no record of John Ayton being buried there. Letters at the Royal Academy from Richard Westall to Sir Thomas Lawrence, President of the Royal Academy indicate that Richard was particularly keen to be buried in proximity to John Ayton – extracts from these letters can be found on the website www.bradonpace/westall The crypt of the Church was used as a shelter in World War II and the tombs have been dislodged and broken in many cases. The exact location of Richard Westall’s tomb has not been established.
WILL of William Heyward
1. Listed as Somerset House PCC Coke 18 Will of William Heyward – taken from a copy made in 1960’s? By Mr A. Rowe
Summary of Will of William Heyward based on the above: See Westall genealogy on blog.
11th Jan 1667. William Heyward of Norwich Alderman.
To Samewell Westall third son unto my son in law
Danyell Westall houses lands tenements, heridaments in Cheaddall or Cheaddall Grange in Staffordshire to him and his heirs for ever.
To Samewell Westall all my plate, my cape and all those things that have any plate of them .
To Samuell Westall my steel glasses and all my pictures and landcripes (pictures and landscapes) and thee Ring that I wear on my finger and the little iron Trunk and the Cabinet that is in my closet and all that is in it.
To my son Westall’s other four children £150 apiece to be put out for them till they come of age of 21 years and if I die before they come of age portion to survivors.
To Samuel Westall my grandchild all my gowns and all that belong to them and his father to have use of them and so long as he needs them.
Unto Samuel Westall my little cabinet and the other clothing my daughter Westall did borrow of me when she lay in.
Unto Samewell Annison the eldest son of my son in law Francis Annison £150 and to his two daughters £100 apiece.
My kinsman Francis Hayward £90
Unto St Lawrence £2. 10 . 0 for the poor
To St Margaret £1. 10. 0 for the poor
Unto St Swithin £1 for the poor
Unto Mr Chapman £2 for my funeral sermon
Unto my daughters all my linen
Unto my son Westall and my son Annison all my goods whatsoever except what I have given to my grandson Samuel Westall as above
Unto my Westall and my son Annison all my lands and lesses whatsoever and copyhold
Tenements heriditaments whatsoever except those given to my grand child Samuel Westall in Staffordshire as above.
My son in laws shall pay all my legacies and debts
Unto my sons th Cabinet with all that was in it and a diamond ring that my wife have of mine and a gold ring my wife have of mine.
Constitute my son Westall and my son Annison Sole Executors – Wm Heyward signed Witnesses Richard Perkins, William Curtis, Danyell Territer (?)
Proved 9th Feb 1668 by Francis Annison and Danyel Westall executors named in the will.
Pencilled underneath – Daniel Westall died circa Nov 1669 (presumably this is Rowe’s addition)
Note William Heyward was Mayor of Norwich. Names of people are spelt as in the document – the spelling can vary. Otherwise spelling has been corrected.
Rowe has on another page : Somerset House P.C.C. Administrations 1669 Nov: Daniel Westall. Secundo die… translation (from Latin) “Daniel Westall on the 2nd Day of November 1669. A Commission issued to Elizabeth Westall, widow, relict of Daniel Westall formerly of the city of Norwich deceased having and claiming wealth. The Commissary swears well and efficiently to administer the goods rights and credits of the said deceased.
Somerset House PCC Wotton 572 Will of Edward Heyward (Uncle of Elizabeth Westall nee Heyward) Abstract
13th Jan 1656 Edward Heyward of Kerdiston in the County of Suffok (should be Norfolk).
To Daniell Heyward the third son of my kinsman William Heyward of St Lawrence Parish Norwich to the heirs male of his body lawfully begotten my Manor Lands free or copyhold or otherwise within the hundred of Blofield and Walsham co Norfolk aforementioned..
To Francis Heyward the second son now living of my kinsman William Heyward aforesaid and to his heirs male lawfully etc All my Manors lands free and copyhold within the hundred of Eynsford in co of Norfolk
More about land to various Heyward relatives
Also I will and bequeath to such kindred lineally descended from my grandfather Richard Heyward deceased small sums totalling £1530
Money for the poor
Appoint William Heyward sole executor
Codicil – nothing significant
Edward Heyward died 25th September 1658
Will & Codicil proved Oct 1658
( note: All the sons of William Heyward died by 1666. With Daniel Westall dying in 1669, his widow had to establish her four sons on the basis of these wills. Francis Annyson and Rebbeca his wife also benefited from these wills. Cheadle Grange was sold by Samuel Westall in 1688 for £1050).
1. Listed as Somerset House PCC Coke 18 Will of William Heyward – taken from a copy made in 1960’s? By Mr A. Rowe
Summary of Will of William Heyward based on the above: See Westall genealogy on blog.
11th Jan 1667. William Heyward of Norwich Alderman.
To Samewell Westall third son unto my son in law
Danyell Westall houses lands tenements, heridaments in Cheaddall or Cheaddall Grange in Staffordshire to him and his heirs for ever.
To Samewell Westall all my plate, my cape and all those things that have any plate of them .
To Samuell Westall my steel glasses and all my pictures and landcripes (pictures and landscapes) and thee Ring that I wear on my finger and the little iron Trunk and the Cabinet that is in my closet and all that is in it.
To my son Westall’s other four children £150 apiece to be put out for them till they come of age of 21 years and if I die before they come of age portion to survivors.
To Samuel Westall my grandchild all my gowns and all that belong to them and his father to have use of them and so long as he needs them.
Unto Samuel Westall my little cabinet and the other clothing my daughter Westall did borrow of me when she lay in.
Unto Samewell Annison the eldest son of my son in law Francis Annison £150 and to his two daughters £100 apiece.
My kinsman Francis Hayward £90
Unto St Lawrence £2. 10 . 0 for the poor
To St Margaret £1. 10. 0 for the poor
Unto St Swithin £1 for the poor
Unto Mr Chapman £2 for my funeral sermon
Unto my daughters all my linen
Unto my son Westall and my son Annison all my goods whatsoever except what I have given to my grandson Samuel Westall as above
Unto my Westall and my son Annison all my lands and lesses whatsoever and copyhold
Tenements heriditaments whatsoever except those given to my grand child Samuel Westall in Staffordshire as above.
My son in laws shall pay all my legacies and debts
Unto my sons th Cabinet with all that was in it and a diamond ring that my wife have of mine and a gold ring my wife have of mine.
Constitute my son Westall and my son Annison Sole Executors – Wm Heyward signed Witnesses Richard Perkins, William Curtis, Danyell Territer (?)
Proved 9th Feb 1668 by Francis Annison and Danyel Westall executors named in the will.
Pencilled underneath – Daniel Westall died circa Nov 1669 (presumably this is Rowe’s addition)
Note William Heyward was Mayor of Norwich. Names of people are spelt as in the document – the spelling can vary. Otherwise spelling has been corrected.
Rowe has on another page : Somerset House P.C.C. Administrations 1669 Nov: Daniel Westall. Secundo die… translation (from Latin) “Daniel Westall on the 2nd Day of November 1669. A Commission issued to Elizabeth Westall, widow, relict of Daniel Westall formerly of the city of Norwich deceased having and claiming wealth. The Commissary swears well and efficiently to administer the goods rights and credits of the said deceased.
Somerset House PCC Wotton 572 Will of Edward Heyward (Uncle of Elizabeth Westall nee Heyward) Abstract
13th Jan 1656 Edward Heyward of Kerdiston in the County of Suffok (should be Norfolk).
To Daniell Heyward the third son of my kinsman William Heyward of St Lawrence Parish Norwich to the heirs male of his body lawfully begotten my Manor Lands free or copyhold or otherwise within the hundred of Blofield and Walsham co Norfolk aforementioned..
To Francis Heyward the second son now living of my kinsman William Heyward aforesaid and to his heirs male lawfully etc All my Manors lands free and copyhold within the hundred of Eynsford in co of Norfolk
More about land to various Heyward relatives
Also I will and bequeath to such kindred lineally descended from my grandfather Richard Heyward deceased small sums totalling £1530
Money for the poor
Appoint William Heyward sole executor
Codicil – nothing significant
Edward Heyward died 25th September 1658
Will & Codicil proved Oct 1658
( note: All the sons of William Heyward died by 1666. With Daniel Westall dying in 1669, his widow had to establish her four sons on the basis of these wills. Francis Annyson and Rebbeca his wife also benefited from these wills. Cheadle Grange was sold by Samuel Westall in 1688 for £1050).
Will of William Westall
This is the last Will and Testament of me William Westall of No 5 North Bank Regents Park in the County of Middlesex Esquire A.R.A. bearing date this Twenty first day of January in the year of our Lord One thousand eight hundred and fifty as follows (that is to say) ? that all my funeral ____shall be paid by my Executors as __ after my decease out of my personal estate I appoint my sons William Westall Robert Westall and my friends Professor Sedgwick of Trinity College Cambridge and Frederick ? Esquire F.R.S. to be Executors and Trustees and my friend William Stevens of No 6 ? Villas Old Brompton Esquire to be a Trustee of this my Will
I give and bequeath to my said son William the sum of Nineteen guineas To my said son Thomas Westall the like sum of Nineteen guineas To my friend Mrs Gardiner the sum of five pounds sterling as a small token of my regard for her
the above legacies to be paid as soon as convieniently ? may be after my decease
I give and bequeath my oil painting of the “Deluge” to my said Trustees William Westall Robert Westall Professor Sedgwick Frederick Frobisher? And William Stevens in Trust to be presented by them to the Nation to be placed in the National Gallery such? Presentation to be made by my said Trustees in such a way and manner and at such time and subject in all respects to the _ of my said Trustees or the survivors or survivor of them
I give and bequeath to my said son Robert all my Steel and Copper Engraved Plates together with all my Prints and Engravings of whatsoever nature or kind to and for his own use and benefit absolutely
I bequeath my Leasehold __ or __ with the appurtenencies at No 5 North Bank aforesaid together with Forty shares standing? In my name in the Regents Canal Company or by whatsoever name or description the the said Shares my be respectively called or known to my said Trustees William Westall Robert Westall Professor Sedgwick Frederick Frobisher? And William Stevens their executors administrators and ____trust to apply the ___interest and other yearly ___thereof respectively to _____for and towards the maintenance of my sons Richard Westall and Robert Westall in a way and manner they my said Trustees or the survivors or survivor of them or the Trustee or Trustees for the time being shall think fit
To the ___ that my said Trustees ___ may be ___to adopt the disposition of the said Trust property to the circumstances for the time being of the said Richard Westall and Robert Westall so as thereby to secure as far as possible their personal ____ thereof and subject to the aforesaid Trust in favour of my sons Richard and Robert and from and immediately after the ___ of my said son Richard as well the Capital as the annual ___thereof In trust for my said sons William Robert and Thomas to be divided between them __ and __alike my intention__ that the above Property should be divided equally between my sons William Robert and Thomas after my son Richard’s
decease
I give and bequeath to my sons William, Thomas & Robert the remaining shares standing in my name in the aforesaid Regents Canal Company and all my Shares in the Union Bank of Australia to be divided between and amongst them equally share and share alike
I bequeath all the residue of my Real and Personal Estate towards? I shall be __ at the time of my (except Estates vested in me as the Mortgagee and excepting also my valuable collection of Paintings which I have otherwise disposed of) [note – no end of bracket appears but this seems an appropriate point] unto my said Trustees for the use and benefit of my dear Wife Ann during her life and and from and immediately after her decease In Trust for my said sons William Thomas & Robert to be divided between them equally share and share alike I __ all the real Estates which shall at my decease be vested in me as Mortgagee unto my said Executors subject to the Equities ___the same absolutely.
I empower my said Trustees to give ___for all ____and ___ to be paid or delivered to them by virtue of my will and ___that such___shall ___ the persons taking the same from all responsibity to see the application and disposition of the ___or ___ therein mentioned.
I declare that if my said Trustees or Trustee to be appointed under this Clause shall die be unwilling or incompetent to accept or execute the trusts of my Will it shall be lawful for the competent ? Trustees or Trustee for the ___ whether retired from the office of Trustee or not or if _ for the executors or administrators or other of the executors or administrators of the last ___ Trustee to substitute ? by any writing under their his or her ____ any person or persons in whom alone or as ___ may be jointly with the survivor or continued Trustees or Trustee my Trust Estate shall be vested and I exempt every Trustee of my Will from responsibility for losses occurring without his own wilful default and authorize him to retain or allow to his co-Trustees or co-Trustee any expenses __ to the Trusteeship and I declare that the powers and instructions? Therein vested in the Trustees hereinbefore named shall be exercisable? By the Trustees or Trustee for the time being of my Will
Lastly I revoke all other Wills by me at any time heretofore made and do declare this present writing comprised in our ? of Paper to be and contain the whole of my Last Will & Testament witness whereof I have _ to set my hand at the foot or end thereof the day and year first above written in the presence of the two witnesses whose names are herewith subscribed
William Westall
Memorandum. The foregoing writing was signed by the said Testator at the foot or end thereof and acknowledged by him to be his last Will & Testament in the presence of us who were present at the same time and we do hereby attest and subscribe our names as Witnesses to the said Will in his presence and in the presence of said others accordingly?
Margaret Mason, Dent, Yorkshire
Mary Sitchell, 19 Sussex Mews, Regents Park
Proved at London 7th May 1850 before the Worshipful __ Thomas Pratt Doctor of Laws and surrogate by the Earls? of the Reverend William Westall Clerk and Robert Westall the sons The Reverend Adam Sedgwick and Frederick Frobisher? Esquire the Executors to whom the _ was granted having been first sworn only to administer
Note. Most of the blanks and question marks are in the area of legal terminology. The overall sense of the Will is largely discernible.
This is the last Will and Testament of me William Westall of No 5 North Bank Regents Park in the County of Middlesex Esquire A.R.A. bearing date this Twenty first day of January in the year of our Lord One thousand eight hundred and fifty as follows (that is to say) ? that all my funeral ____shall be paid by my Executors as __ after my decease out of my personal estate I appoint my sons William Westall Robert Westall and my friends Professor Sedgwick of Trinity College Cambridge and Frederick ? Esquire F.R.S. to be Executors and Trustees and my friend William Stevens of No 6 ? Villas Old Brompton Esquire to be a Trustee of this my Will
I give and bequeath to my said son William the sum of Nineteen guineas To my said son Thomas Westall the like sum of Nineteen guineas To my friend Mrs Gardiner the sum of five pounds sterling as a small token of my regard for her
the above legacies to be paid as soon as convieniently ? may be after my decease
I give and bequeath my oil painting of the “Deluge” to my said Trustees William Westall Robert Westall Professor Sedgwick Frederick Frobisher? And William Stevens in Trust to be presented by them to the Nation to be placed in the National Gallery such? Presentation to be made by my said Trustees in such a way and manner and at such time and subject in all respects to the _ of my said Trustees or the survivors or survivor of them
I give and bequeath to my said son Robert all my Steel and Copper Engraved Plates together with all my Prints and Engravings of whatsoever nature or kind to and for his own use and benefit absolutely
I bequeath my Leasehold __ or __ with the appurtenencies at No 5 North Bank aforesaid together with Forty shares standing? In my name in the Regents Canal Company or by whatsoever name or description the the said Shares my be respectively called or known to my said Trustees William Westall Robert Westall Professor Sedgwick Frederick Frobisher? And William Stevens their executors administrators and ____trust to apply the ___interest and other yearly ___thereof respectively to _____for and towards the maintenance of my sons Richard Westall and Robert Westall in a way and manner they my said Trustees or the survivors or survivor of them or the Trustee or Trustees for the time being shall think fit
To the ___ that my said Trustees ___ may be ___to adopt the disposition of the said Trust property to the circumstances for the time being of the said Richard Westall and Robert Westall so as thereby to secure as far as possible their personal ____ thereof and subject to the aforesaid Trust in favour of my sons Richard and Robert and from and immediately after the ___ of my said son Richard as well the Capital as the annual ___thereof In trust for my said sons William Robert and Thomas to be divided between them __ and __alike my intention__ that the above Property should be divided equally between my sons William Robert and Thomas after my son Richard’s
decease
I give and bequeath to my sons William, Thomas & Robert the remaining shares standing in my name in the aforesaid Regents Canal Company and all my Shares in the Union Bank of Australia to be divided between and amongst them equally share and share alike
I bequeath all the residue of my Real and Personal Estate towards? I shall be __ at the time of my (except Estates vested in me as the Mortgagee and excepting also my valuable collection of Paintings which I have otherwise disposed of) [note – no end of bracket appears but this seems an appropriate point] unto my said Trustees for the use and benefit of my dear Wife Ann during her life and and from and immediately after her decease In Trust for my said sons William Thomas & Robert to be divided between them equally share and share alike I __ all the real Estates which shall at my decease be vested in me as Mortgagee unto my said Executors subject to the Equities ___the same absolutely.
I empower my said Trustees to give ___for all ____and ___ to be paid or delivered to them by virtue of my will and ___that such___shall ___ the persons taking the same from all responsibity to see the application and disposition of the ___or ___ therein mentioned.
I declare that if my said Trustees or Trustee to be appointed under this Clause shall die be unwilling or incompetent to accept or execute the trusts of my Will it shall be lawful for the competent ? Trustees or Trustee for the ___ whether retired from the office of Trustee or not or if _ for the executors or administrators or other of the executors or administrators of the last ___ Trustee to substitute ? by any writing under their his or her ____ any person or persons in whom alone or as ___ may be jointly with the survivor or continued Trustees or Trustee my Trust Estate shall be vested and I exempt every Trustee of my Will from responsibility for losses occurring without his own wilful default and authorize him to retain or allow to his co-Trustees or co-Trustee any expenses __ to the Trusteeship and I declare that the powers and instructions? Therein vested in the Trustees hereinbefore named shall be exercisable? By the Trustees or Trustee for the time being of my Will
Lastly I revoke all other Wills by me at any time heretofore made and do declare this present writing comprised in our ? of Paper to be and contain the whole of my Last Will & Testament witness whereof I have _ to set my hand at the foot or end thereof the day and year first above written in the presence of the two witnesses whose names are herewith subscribed
William Westall
Memorandum. The foregoing writing was signed by the said Testator at the foot or end thereof and acknowledged by him to be his last Will & Testament in the presence of us who were present at the same time and we do hereby attest and subscribe our names as Witnesses to the said Will in his presence and in the presence of said others accordingly?
Margaret Mason, Dent, Yorkshire
Mary Sitchell, 19 Sussex Mews, Regents Park
Proved at London 7th May 1850 before the Worshipful __ Thomas Pratt Doctor of Laws and surrogate by the Earls? of the Reverend William Westall Clerk and Robert Westall the sons The Reverend Adam Sedgwick and Frederick Frobisher? Esquire the Executors to whom the _ was granted having been first sworn only to administer
Note. Most of the blanks and question marks are in the area of legal terminology. The overall sense of the Will is largely discernible.
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