Westall Brothers Update

Richard Westall RA 1765 1836

William Westall ARA 1781 - 1850

Richard J. Westall
richardjwestall@yahoo.co.uk


Richard Westall’s obituary in the Athenaeum in 1836 declared that : ‘At the time when Lawrence became a leading star in our Exhibitions, Westall was in possession of the town; and he found in the youthful aspirant and future President a formidable competitor; the lead, however, which he till then enjoyed, may be said to have been fairly won; as he was in great measure, the parent of the style of drawing in portrait and poetical composition’.(1) Richard’s close association with Thomas Lawrence, commenced with their sharing accommodation from 1790-1794 and lasted throughout their lives. The most intimate experiences are described to Lawrence in a series of letters from Richard now at the Royal Academy. (2)

A famous chronicler of the Regency period, William Hazlitt complained that Westall had ‘run away with the popularity of the time. It was one of the errors of my youth that I did not think him equal to Raphael and Rubens united, as Payne Knight contended’.(3) Richard Payne Knight had been Westall’s main patron and he noted that ‘some of the most interesting and affecting pictures that art has ever produced…are treated in similar style; such as…Mr Westall’s Storm in Harvest’.(4) He also observed in 1814 of instances in late exhibitions ‘of the utmost purity and dignity of heroic character and composition, embellished and not impaired by the most rich and splendid harmony of colouring, in Mr Westall’s Grecian Marriage’ (5) Knight bought this painting for one thousand guineas – not far short of a million pounds in today’s money.

An exultant review of Richard Westall’s ‘Mary Queen of Scots, after her defeat at the battle of Langside’ conveys the type of praise he was receiving: ‘Mr Westall has in this excellent illustration of this no less excellent and well chosen subject, equalled any of his former and much admired productions. The composition and grouping are natural and unaffected, the colouring brilliant and clear, the pencilling characteristic, and though finely finished, tender and delicate. There are few, if any, better specimens of this excellent painter in existence.’ (6)

Richard Westall had a period of fame between 1785 and 1815 when he commanded the highest
praise and prices for his work. He lost his reputation to some extent in Britain after 1815, but
his influence overseas, especially in France, continued. Whether one likes or dislikes
Richard’s work his place in British art between 1785 and 1835 can be demonstrated.
In 1984 the Tate Publications Department published my article The Westall Brothers in Turner Studies. (7) Since then further books and articles have been published about the Richard and William Westall - often concentrating on one or the other. In 1984 I lamented that we had ‘insufficient works by Richard Westall on public display’. (8) Now with a search of the Internet this problem can be overcome.


William Westall’s reputation has grown in Australia in recent years and the fact that he was the first proficient landscape artist to visit the country assures him of a place in Australian history, not just art history. He is regarded as both an Australian and British artist. William is known mainly through engravings after his drawings, he also engraved himself. Researchers and critics have relied heavily on engraved impressions of William’s pieces to come to conclusions about his British work. (9) But this means they can overlook his very real flair for landscape – an element to be addressed if we want to gain a more comprehensive appreciation of his work. The emergence of some of his original drawings, together with already well known Australian sketches, gives us a clearer picture of his talent as a landscape artist.

It is very likely that William Westall saw William Hodges’ picturesque views of the South Pacific before he set out to emulate him through his own journey to the area. (10) The voyages of Cook and Bligh to the South Pacific were followed by the voyage of Matthew Flinders to the region between 1801 and 1803 which sought to discover more about the vast country then known as New Holland and to counter French and Dutch influence in the region. The paintings of Hodges may have encouraged William to journey to China and India before returning to England after the Australian voyage ended after a shipwreck in 1803. He had experienced what he referred to as ‘the barren coast’ of Australia and was seeking more colourful scenes. (11)

Nonetheless,for Jeffrey Auerbach commenting on William’s oil paintings which resulted from the Australian journey ‘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’ (12)

Bernard Smith celebrates 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’. (13) It was exhibited at the ‘Turner to Monet’ 2008 exhibition recently in Australia when Elisabeth Findlay described it as ‘an intriguing work. 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’. (14)

Williams 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.’ (15)

Bernard Smith maintains that Westall’s original artwork is ‘among the more accomplished in Australia’s pictorial history’ and that his ‘Australian sketches, paintings and engravings are a rich and complex set of images which shaped nineteenth century perceptions of Terra Australis and offer a fascinating insight into the history of Britain’s colonisation of it.’ (16)

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’ (Plate 1 An Ambush by Aborigines on two Europeans in the bush pencil & watercolour c 1802 William Westall Courtesy Anthony Spink)) 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. (17) A possible oil painting not known previously by William, of a mountainous view in Australia, has also emerged recently. (18)

With relation to the contemporary popular theories of the picturesque, 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’ (19)

Bernard Smith views William’s sketches as ‘not simply topographical transcripts of nature but landscapes’ with his oil paintings revealing ‘greater fluency of treatment and a keener desire to render the truths of light and atmosphere’. (20)

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 acting as a father figure – their father having died in 1794. A certain degree of family influence may well have persuaded Joseph Banks, the ‘architect’ of the Flinders voyage, to accept William as the ship’s landscape artist after William Daniell, who was originally to take the journey, withdrew to marry William’s sister Mary. Benjamin West, President of the Royal Academy is said to have had a decisive role in gaining the appointment for William and his elder brother most probably oiled the wheels in order to secure the appointment. (21) Thus a likely influence over William’s approach to the picturesque would have been his brother Richard. Indeed Farington 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’. (22) It is not clear which of the brothers is not able to proceed but the presence of the elder brother is significant.

Another publication from Australia contains two chapters of particular relevance together with wonderful illustrations of the work of Ferdinand Bauer the botanical artist on the Flinders expedition.(23) John Rourke gives us further information about the work of William and others during their short stay at the Cape in 1799. (24) Kay Stehn and Alex George provide an account of William’s Australian experience. (25) The authors 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’. (26) Perhaps Stehn and George to 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. (27) Findlay suggests that ‘Westall did not have the temperament for the painstaking and relentless work involved in scientific drawing’. (28)
I have contested these assertions when considering the recent surfacing of 19 botanical artworks by William Westall now at the Natural History Museum, London. (29) 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’. (30) Rex Reinits wrote of the ‘remarkable fidelity’ of his botanical work and noted that ‘Westall’s trees were to become quite a feature of his work in Australia’. (31) Bernard Smith noted the suggestion that Ferdinand Bauer had assisted William because of the truth and beauty of his botanical work.(32) Thomas Perry thought that perhaps William had Bauer by his side showing him how to portray ‘accurately the form and foliage of the vegetation’. (33)

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.

Further confirmation of William’s ability in the sphere of botanical work is shown by the fact that four founder members of the Linnean Society recommended him to become a member of the Linnean Society, to which he was elected in 1805.

Following a shipwreck near the Great Barrier Reef off the East Australian coast in 1803 William decided to travel to China. He has been berated for this action by Australian historian G.B. Barton and in terms of naval discipline he made a bad error of judgement in not returning to England, as he should have, immediately following the shipwreck. (34) However, William’s artistic contribution was enhanced considerably by his travelling to China and India.

Whilst in China he made a number of drawings but the most notable work was a watercolour, later an oil painting, entitled A Hong Kong Merchant’s Garden. There is an attractive watercolour of a Chinese Junk by William painted in 1808 at the National Maritime Museum and a drawing Waterfront Temple at Canton, dated January 1804, squared for transfer which was sold by Martyn Gregory in the 1980’s. There is also a small sketch of a scene probably in China signed WW. The Chinese visit with its beautiful scenery was exactly what William yearned for. From there he organised a further journey into Asia, seeking more variety, through contacts in the East India Company.

I have covered William’s sojourn in India during 1804 (35) where his illustrations represent some of his best lifetime work. (Plate 2 View from the Top of the Boa Ghaut 1804 William Westall engraved by T. Fielding for Scenery chiefly on the Western side of India 1826-30) 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 comment 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’ (36)

Returning to Britain in 1805 brought him face to face with a number of problems. The Captain of the Investigator, Matthew Flinders, was a prisoner of the French on Mauritius so little official work could be achieved with respect to the Australian voyage. The Admiralty were displeased with William’s decision to visit China and India and it was due to the diplomatic intervention of Richard Westall and Joseph Banks that he was able eventually to execute memorable oil paintings of Australia. (37)

In the interim William travelled overseas again. He wanted to replace his drawings of Madeira, which had been lost in an accident near the island in which he nearly drowned early in the Investigator voyage. This second visit enabled him to obtain sufficient views for a proposed publication about Madeira. Although it was never published because William’s accuracy in his depiction of the island was questioned, nine of his views of Madeira were published between 1811 and 1813. (38) A recently discovered dark and sombre painting of the with little public appeal The Monks of St Croce is an example of his work there. (Plate 3 The Monks of St Croce, Madeira watercolour c 1806 William Westall). Secondly, William travelled to Jamaica and three of his panoramic views there are known. The journey to Jamaica is unexplained and more research in this area would be beneficial. (39) On returning to England William held an exhibition of his Foreign Views which was not a success but resulted in some sales. The publication of his several foreign views was augmented by ten plates which appeared in the Naval Chronicle between 1799 and 1819. (40)


Flinders finally returned to England in 1810 after his imprisonment on Mauritius and an account of the Australian voyage was written, being published in 1814. This contained nine landscape engravings and 28 coastal views after William’s drawings. (41) These views were issued separately in the same year. (42) The Admiralty ordered nine oil paintings and the exhibition of two these at the Royal Academy in 1812 resulted in William becoming an Associate of the Royal Academy. There were allegations reported sternly by Farington of votes being traded between the supporters of two aspirants in order to ensure they both got elected. (43) It is likely that this experience of the machinations of power left William with little wish in later years to go through the procedure required to become a full Royal Academician.

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. (44) 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.’ (45)


The third exhibition included William’s famed oil painting View of Sir Edward Pellew’s Group, Gulph (sic) 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.’ (46)

The experiences William had in Australia and Asia helped him to present a fresh vision. Despite an underlying tension, the requirements of topography and picturesque landscape are usually met. He managed to satisfy and impress an irate Admiralty with its considerable expectations and his artistic peers.

The year 1814 marks a turning point for both Richard and William Westall. Richard’s own exhibition in Pall Mall, with a listing of all the owners of the 312 pictures displayed, gained a favourable reception from the critics. Perhaps this was his finest hour. (47) However the financial burden of putting on this exhibition may well have triggered Richard’s near bankruptcy. William had health problems. Farington reports Richard Westall’s distress about his brother’s ‘last attack of insanity’ blamed on a brain fever experienced during the Flinders voyage when William nearly drowned near Madeira. However the only manifestation of insanity reported was William ‘giving money away’ although ‘many irregular things’ that he did are also mentioned. (48)

Richard Westall continued to produce many exhibits for the Royal Academy and the British Institution and developed his career as an illustrator. The engravings based on his drawings were highly favoured by publishers who gave his name equal prominence to writers such as Walter Scott on their title pages. Byron was particularly appreciative of Richard’s brush and a number of the original watercolours executed to illustrate Byron’s poems owned by John Murray, publishers from the time they were delivered, are due for full publication in the near future.(49) A drawing from Don Juan illustrates Richard’s languid style which seems to have chimed happily with the romantic poets.
(Plate 4 Don Juan 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”)


During Richard’s later years he is said to have experienced a reduction in the artistic esteem in which he had been held. (50) However it is clear this was not the total picture as the popularity of the Bible illustrations he completed with John Martin shows. (51) With respect to opinion overseas Richard’s influence seems to have grown.

The possible influence on Delacroix and his definite influence on Camille Roqueplan have been established. (52) A number of engravings from Richard’s drawings are known to have been published for the French and German art markets and the familiarity of Richard’s illustrations in France mentioned by William Etty (53) is confirmed by Balzac’s reference to ‘the fanciful portraits of women drawn by Westall’.(54) In 1943 in the Burlington Magazine a reviewer wrote: ‘Another picture, St James’s Park by R. Westall, introduces to us the master – of whom it will be recalled Theophile Gautier spoke with such affection – in an unaccustomed, fascinating romantic vein’.(55) Gautier (1811 – 1872) was a central figure in the world of literature and art in Paris for almost half a century.

Lorenz Eitner writes that Gericault was familiar with Copley, Morland & Westall but ‘made no direct use of them’. However the first illustrated French edition of Byron’s poems published in 1823 had ‘plates copied from the steel engravings after designs by Richard Westall and Thomas Stothard’. These designs had been published by Murray in 1818-19 and were re-engraved by Godefroy for the French market. ‘Gericault was familiar with these English models’ writes Eitner ‘and allowed himself to be influenced by them’. One illustration by Gericault is based one of Richard’s illustrations for The Corsair. (56)

Antoine-Jean Gros and Richard had the subject of Sappho in mind at the end of the 18th century. It is not clear which artist influenced the other but an engraving by Richard of Sappho jumping from a cliff may have been echoed by Gros. (57) Richard’s influence in Germany is known through the work of Theodore Matthias von Holst and probably stems from Richard’s contributions to Fuseli’s Milton Gallery since von Holst was Fuseli’s pupil. (58) Finally, Richard’s transatlantic influence in America on Edward Hicks has been established. (59) It is also clear from images sent to me from the United States that Richard’s engravings of religious subjects were widely copied in that country by Joseph Adams.

Interest in Richard has been engendered in a number of ways over recent years. An exhibition at the Manchester art gallery devoted to Richard Payne Knight resulted in a valuable study of Richard’s chief patron with six Westall paintings covered including the famous Storm in Harvest. (60)

A painting by Richard recently displayed was Les Bourgeois de Calais which is at the Musee des Beaux Arts in Calais. (61) This fine and dramatic watercolour was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1791 no509 as The burgers of Calais taking leave of their friends at the gate. An auction listing gives the sale of The Surrender of Calais as being a pen and ink drawing establishes that Richard conveyed this scene in another form. (62)

A striking oil portrait of David Garrick as King Lear was displayed at the Heim Gallery in London in 1981, described as vividly conveying ‘the brilliant madness of Garrick’s Lear’. It is thought that the image, painted after the actor’s death, made use of a death mask drawn by Robert Edge Pine published as a mezzotint in 1779. The composition is based on the Roman Emperors by Rubens following Titian and Giulio Romano. (63)

A further elegant watercolour by Richard, entitled Reading was exhibited by Abbot & Holder in 2005. It was published with a description by Philip Athill who remarks on the influence of Thomas Lawrence as did Marina Warner concerning Richard’s portrait of Princess Victoria. (64)

The Year Book of the 1805 Club over two years considered Richard’s Nelson paintings at the National Maritime Museum in some detail. In 2005 Huw Lewis Jones in a fascinating paper established that Richard’s painting Nelson and the Bear was a portrayal of a mythical event. (65) In the following year my contribution, together with a montage of the four Nelson paintings that Richard exhibited in 1807 at the Royal Academy, drew attention to contemporary reviews of these pictures where the paintings at the Royal Academy were ‘ranked among the most interesting in the whole Exhibition.’ Another critic found the pictures and drawings Richard exhibited ‘will class with the best productions of the age in which he lives.’ (66) There is something very modern about the Nelson pictures in their theatrical promotion of an icon as a celebrity. A brilliant vibrant drawing of Emma Hamilton by Richard can be seen at the Witt Library. (67) A portrait said to be of Emma now at the National Maritime Museum could I believe be a painting of Miss Hamilton, a relation of Sir William Hamilton, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1806. (68) The extent of Emma’s portrayal by Richard is uncertain, but several of the lightly clad ladies in his paintings bear a strong resemblance to Nelson’s lover. (69)

A further hero of the time was the Duke of Wellington and Richard’s illustrations of the Duke in Battle portrayed another patriotic symbol of his time. (70) On the same theme of historical icons Simon Keynes has explored two paintings by Richard of King Alfred (71) The Poet Laureate H.J. Pye described The Boyhood of Alfred, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1800 as ‘an excellent picture’. (72) It was owned by Knight in 1814 and bequeathed by him to the British Museum, being exhibited recently. (73) An oil painting of the picture was shown at the inaugural exhibition of the British Institution. (74) Keynes considers Richard possibly produced this painting and another of Henry III and the bishops in identical size specifically for the Institution’s first exhibition. Keynes now owns this painting which can be viewed on the Internet. (75) The Sword of Damocles is another historical picture of Westall’s that has received attention and several websites feature this painting, some giving it a contemporary application with its implications for any dictator in power. (77)

The National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition Mad Bad And Dangerous – The Cult of Lord Byron prominently featured Richard’s sensitive and romantic portrait of the poet. (78) In April 2008 Richard was the artist of the month at the Royal Academy and four of his pictures are on the RA website where his portrait of his brother-in-law William Daniell is highly praised.

Richard’s poetry, found to be ‘amiable like his character’ by fellow artist George Smirke,(79) can be extended by his poem The Pleasures of Vicissitude praised as ‘very tasteful’. The reviewer finds that it ‘evinces more cheerfulness and content than poets of the sentimental order usually care to acknowledge’. (80)

The career of William Westall after 1815 followed a different trajectory to Richard’s. The central difference being that William married and became a family man. This meant that his art had to earn him enough to bring up a family of four boys. He had to turn to more commercial topographical ventures at which he was very successful. After his marriage to Ann Sedgwick, daughter of the vicar of Dent and sister of the geologist Adam Sedgwick, on September 22, 1820 William developed his relationships in the North of England with Southey and Wordsworth. These stemmed from support given to him by fellow artist Sir George Beaumont and his wife when William had health problems. On William’s engagement Richard had written 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.’ (81)

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’ (82) A Lake District panorama Keswick Lake, From Barrow Common can seen in Derwentwater The Vale of Elysium. (83)

The publication of Dorothy Wordsworth’s Illustrated Lakeland Journals gave us three coloured illustrations by William: Keswick Lake from the East Side, Keswick and Grisedale Pike and Portinscale Bridge. (84) There is also an intimate watercolour completed for Dorothy Wordsworth in her notebook by Westall of Rydal Mount and another of Dentdale adorns the front and back cover of the reissue of a 19th century classic romance. (85)

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’. (86) Some of these drawings were engraved for Views of the Caves Near Ingleton in Yorkshire. (87) 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.”’ (88) The Romantic images moving from wildness to a more controlled picture chime with the poets of the time. A website in which Yordas Cave is portrayed expounds the theory that Emily Bronte’s Fairy Cave in Wuthering Heights is, in fact, Yordas Cave.(89) She may well have obtained her impression of the cave from William’s illustrations.

The atmospheric gloom of Gatekirk Cave is an example of an engraving of Westall’s Cave work. The Cave illustrations certainly impressed Wordsworth who composed three poems ‘suggested by his views of the caves’. (92) Juliet Barker in her wonderful biography of Wordsworth outlines ‘William’s (Wordsworth) impotent fury’ 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’. (93)

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. (90) 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.’ (91)

Wordsworth bore no long term anger at William’s cheek. After his death Wordsworth wrote to his son Robert Westall: ‘He was always a welcome visitant: and I have often had the pleasure of meeting him at the house of Mr Southey, who, like myself, esteemed him highly. His Delineations of this Country must always be valued by those who visit it and wish to carry away faithful Portraitures of its beautiful scenery’. (94)

Richard Westall’s final years from 1827 were partly spent tutoring Princess Victoria in drawing at Kensington Palace. As Charles Dalton writes:‘In his later years he (Westall) lost most of his earnings by imprudent dealings in old pictures and other speculations, and was reduced to such poverty as to need relief from the Royal Academy. He and a blind sister who lived with him were also assisted by the Duchess of Kent.’ (95)

One of the most valuable reflections on Richard’s life comes in Alaric Watts’ Litererary Souvenir in 1835 which begins: ‘There is no living painter who has enjoyed a larger share of public favour than Mr Westall, certainly no one who has so successfully depicted rural life in England, as it existed in the palmist state of our agricultural prosperity’. It has to be said that the farm workers are unlikely to have been dressed in the attire Richard sometimes gave them. However, some of his rural paintings do have genuine and moving sympathy conveyed with a humility seldom present in Richard’s more flashy work. A Child At The Cottage Door and A Child Going to Fetch Water can be seen at Attingham Park and are reminiscent of Gainsborough’s paintings in similar mode. They were originally purchased by Lord Berwick, son of the first occupier of Attingham and are illustrated on the Attingham internet site. The Literary Souvenir with some exaggeration claimed that ‘there is scarcely an English classic, whether poet, novelist, historian or philosopher, whose works he has not assisted in rendering more acceptable to the public by his elegant and appropriate designs.’ (96)

On Richard’s death the Times carried a notice claiming that the artist ‘occupied a large portion of public interest…for half a century.’ (97) The same newspaper reported in 1959 on a Romantic Exhibition at the Tate Gallery in an article ‘Westall’s Labour of Love for the Romantics’ and suggested that ‘No man ever laboured harder in the Romantic cause than Westall, who spent much of his life designing illustrations for editions of the poets’ The dramatic illustration of Byron’s Mazeppa is mentioned in particular. The writer however considered that ‘there is often more than a touch of the ridiculous about his work’ whilst ‘sometimes he could be mawkish in the extreme’. (98)

These final comments have some justification but there is a wider scope to Richard’s contribution. He could produce elegant and charming paintings, there are some memorable sensitive portraits and many accomplished book illustrations. His grand neo-classical historical scenes have a hint of a Hollywood yet to come and the more sentimental images representing all classes of society can convey a sense of authenticity. The Ashmolean and the Department Prints & Drawings at the British Museum have interesting collections of some of Richard’s original work, demonstrating that he could go well beyond the predictable with his illustrations. The Temptation of St Anthony from the Book of Revelations which might well be seen alongside C.J. Sansom’s Tudor detective adventure Revelation.(99) Richard could achieve real dramatic power with his watercolour Boreas and Orytheia (100) But it is perhaps his Fuseli influenced work for the Milton Gallery which sees him as his most distinguished. Marcia Pointon considered Richard ‘is to be admired for the degree to which he succeeded in preserving his independence from the very forceful influence of Fuseli’s work’ and notes that Richard is at times ‘more pleasing and less severe’ than Fuseli. (101)

The extent of Richard’s penury at his death is perhaps put in some doubt by the contents of his Will where Richard mentions ‘monies in trust’ and ‘Government Securities’ and ‘money owing to me’. His sister Mary Daniell is left stocks & securities and the children of his late brother Benjamin are left shares. Richard also asks that his body be buried next to John Ayton and that a locket ‘in memory of him be placed round my neck and buried with me’. (102) This confirms the letter written by Westall to Lawrence in 1829 about the death of John Ayton: ‘I have
purchased a vault under the new Church of St Pancras in which he was buried…by his side is a vacant space which my body will occupy’. (103) A record exists at St Pancras Parish Church, opposite Euston Station, of Richard Westall’s burial there but there is no record of John Ayton’s. The crypt of the Church, where bodies were buried, was used as a shelter in World War II and the tombs have been dislodged and broken in many cases. The location of Richard’s vault cannot be established.

William lived another 14 years after Richard’s death and although his health was very poor near the end of his life he visited France, although none of the reported work done there has emerged to date. As death neared he turned towards religious work with Commencement of the Deluge RA1848 no456 which includes a shipwreck reminding one of his own experiences. There is an unfinished watercolour of The Destruction of Sodom in which the sky has a feel of Blake and John Martin. William, who died on 22 January, 1850 in Hampstead, was reportedly working on an Australian image at his death.(104) His 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. (105) 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 after a magnificent large format volume Westall’s Drawings was published. (106)

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. The Deluge painting also contains references to his Australian venture, indicating William held a deep feeling for the land which started him on his artistic career. (107) A fitting obituary by his friend, engraver and art critic John Landseer, gave a picture of the artist probably closer to the man than those who studied his self portrait years later. ‘The integrity and moral character of William Westall are unblemished’ he wrote ‘his manners were mild and unassuming…and his style as an artist partook of these elements, being chiefly remarkable for a combination of fidelity with amenity, and an entire absence of everything ostentatious, or too ambitious for the occasion.’ (108)

A fact, not previously known, that emerges from William’s Will is that he had a fourth son named Richard, provision being made for his maintenance. 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”.’ (109) 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 with certainty from his Will. (110)

From groundbreaking images of Australia, to an entranced fashionable London town, from romantic portraits of Byron to poems inspiring Wordsworth; William and Richard Westall made their mark on British artistic life which has yet to be fully recognised.


1 Athenaeum No 447 Dec 17 1836.
2 Letters at RA Library. LAW/369 et al on website www.bradonpace.com/westall. For the portrait of Richard Westall see Michael Levey Sir Thomas Lawrence National Portrait Gallery1979 plate 61
3 William Hazlitt The Round Table (1826/7) Conversations with James Northcote 1908 pp 302,382
4 Richard Payne Knight Analytical Enquiry into the Principles of Taste (1805 ed) p304
5 Edinburgh Review September 1814 No XLVI p.287
6 Annals of the Fine Arts 1817 London Vol I p251.See RA 1791 (546)
7 Richard J. Westall, ‘The Westall Brothers’ Turner Studies Tate, London Vol4 no1 pp23-38
8 Ibid Westall p38
9 For a catalogue of his prints see Richard J. Westall ‘William Westall (1781-18500 A Catalogue of His Book Illustrations’ Antiquarian Book Monthly Review Dec 1986 Vol XIII, No 12, Issue 152 pp448-455.
10 Rex & Thea Reinits Early Artists in Australia 1963 Angus & Robertson pp 80-123 are specific on this point, suggesting that after Hodges’ return from James Cook’s Resolution voyage to the South Pacific he became friendly with Richard Westall ‘and through this friendship he (Hodges) met as a schoolboy Westall’s half-brother William’. Further relevant details can be found in Richard J. Westall ‘The Hodges/Westall Connection’ Cook’s Log Vol 28 No 4 Oct-Dec 2005 pp23/4 and Cook’s Log Vol 29 no 2 April-June 2006 p 10.
11 For a full text of William Westall’s letter to Banks in 1803 see G.B. Barton History of New South Wales 1783-1889 Sydney 1889 Vol I pLXXII
12 Jeffrey Auerbach ‘The picturesque and the homogenisation of Empire’ British Art Journal Vol V No 1 Spring/Summer 2004 pp47-54.
13 Bernard Smith European Vision and the South Pacific Yale 1985 pp 190-197 2nd ed. See colour illustration plate 21.
14 Elisabeth Findlay Turner to Monet: the triumph of Landscape exhibition Canberra 2008 Catalogue entry. See ww.nga.gov.au/Exhibition/Turnertomonet
15 Elisabeth Findlay Arcadian Quest – William Westall’s Australian Sketches 1998 National Library of Australia pp54/5 & 36/7. 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.
16 Smith op cit p197
17 Richard J. Westall ‘Recent William Westall picture discoveries’ Australiana May 2008 pp 18-23 The Australiana Society NSW 1355. Please note the reproduction p 18 depicts two Europeans where I only perceived one and 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.
18 Ibid plate p19 p
19 Findlay op cit p22
20 Smith op cit p197
21 Robert Westall ‘Memoir of William Westall’ Art Journal April 1850 pp104-5
22 Farington op cit 28 April 1811
Ed Garlick et al The Diaries of Joseph Farington 16 vols New Haven & London 1978-1984 June 12, 1797
23 Juliet Wedge et al Matthew Flinders And His Scientific Gentlemen 2005 Western Australia Museum.
24 John Rourke ‘Getting There HMS Investigator at the Cape of Good Hope, Oct & Nov 1801’ pp25-37.
25 Kay Stehn and Alex George ‘Artist in a New Land: William Westall in New Holland’ pp76-95.
26 Ibid p78
27 Ibid p88
28 Findlay op cit p16
29 Richard J.Westall ‘Westall’s New Botanical Drawings’ National Library of Australia News Dec 2007 pp14-17.
30 Michael Rosenthal lecture to the National Maritime Museum Greenwich 20 Oct 2006 ‘Going to the Pictures in Australia’ www.nmm.ac.uk/.../Michael_Rosenthal_paper_-_Going_to_the_Pictures_in_Australia.doc
31 Reinits op cit p93
32 Bernard Smith ‘William Westall’s Drawings and Paintings on Flinders’ Voyage’ p26 Note 3 in Westall’s Drawings ed Thomas Perry & Donald Simpson Royal Commonwealth Society 1962. Reinits first mentions this p93 op cit
33 Thomas Perry’s introduction Westall’s Drawings op cit p18
34 Barton op cit
35 Westall op cit ‘The Westall Brothers.’ See also Richard J. Westall ‘William Westall in India’ Marg Publications, Mumbai Vol XLVII No 4 June 1996 pp 94-96 and Richard J. Westall ‘William Westall in India’ Journal of the Families in British India Society No 13 Spring 2005 pp2-5 & cover.
36 Felix Driver & Luciana Martins Tropical visions in an age of empire University of Chicago 2005 p38
37 Farington op cit June 7 1809
38 Farington op cit April 14 1809 but Foreign Scenery Cadell & Davies 1811-1813 lists nine Westall views of Madeira. See http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1927145?&#details
39 Three panoramic views can be seen of Jamaica can be seen at the Witt Library and some of Westall’s tree illustrations at the Natural History Museum are probably Jamaican.
40 Naval Chronicle Joyce Gold London 1806-1816 ten plates.
41 Matthew Flinders A Voyage to Terra Australis London G & W Nicol 1814 2 vols, atlas and charts.
42 Views of Australian Scenery G & W Nicol London 1814. Nine engravings after Westall and 28 coastal views.
43 Farington op cit 2-5 Nov 1812
44 The Sound of the Sky 2006 Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Australia.
45 Ken Taylor ‘Country Landscape’ Australian National University 2006
46 Elisabeth Findlay catalogue entry op cit
47 Catalogue of an Exhibition of a selection of the Works of Richard Westall RA 1814. See also Westall ‘The Westall Brothers’ op cit p29/30
48 Farington op cit Jan 5 1816. See also Farington Dec 15 1815
49 See ‘Antiquarian Book Monthly’ High Wycombe Dec 2000 which has a watercolour illustration by Richard Westall for ‘Don Juan’ Canto I, stanza 181 on its cover.
50 William Hazlitt op cit pp 302 & 382
51 Athenaeum1839 p954. The PreRaphaelite Gabriel Dante Rossetti was influenced by Martin & Westall’s Bible illustrations. See Rossetti Family Letters 1895 p 77. Text on internet.
52 Westall ‘The Westall Brothers’ op cit pp 34/5
53 Dennis Farr William Etty Routledge & Kegan Paul 1958 p44 and appendix 1 p120.
54 Honore de Balzac Eugenie Grandet English Classics Penguin 1982 p 73.
55 Burlington Magazine July 1943 Vol 82 p179
56 Lorenz A. Eitner Gericault His Life & Work London Orbis 1983 pp89,192,p260 & fn 106.
57 Thanks to Scott Thomas Buckle for this reference. For him Sappho at Leucadia exhibits a welcome element of the ludicrous.
58 Westall ‘The Westall Brothers’ op cit p35
59 Ibid p35
60 Eds Michael Clarke & Nicholas Perry The Arrogant Connoisseur: Richard Payne Knight 1751-1824 Manchester University Press 1982 especially pp 186/7. See also Andrew Ballantyne ‘The Most Interesting And Affecting Pictures: Richard Westall And Richard Payne Knight’ Sheffield Art Review 1995 pp5-17. Ballantyne muses on whether Knight and Westall had a homosexual relationship but prefers the expression ‘homosocial’ to describe their relationship. Ballantyne’s article available at the Witt Library.
61 Ed David Solkin Art On the Line Yale University Press 2001. Contributions of particular interest: Marcia Pointon ’Portrait! Portrait!! Portrait!!! esp p99 where she mentions Westall’s series ‘Opinions on Portraits’ published in the Somerset House Gazette (Vol II p163), Greg Smith ‘Watercolourists & Watercolours at the Royal Academy 1780 – 1836’ p200 and Anne Prietz ‘Foreign Exhibitors and the British School at the Royal Academy 1768-1823’ .
62 ‘World Auction Record’ 1980 sold at Sothebys.
63 The Painted Image British History Painting 1750-1830 Heim Gallery 1981. See Witt Library
64 Philip Athill ‘A guide to neglected artists’ Oldie June 2005 p61 with image.
65 See Huw Lewis-Jones ‘Nelson & the Bear: The Making of an Arctic Myth’ The Trafalgar Chronicle – Yearbook of the 1805 Club No 15, 2005 pp82-119
66 Richard J. Westall ‘“The Story is Admirably Told”: The Nelson Pictures by Richard Westall RA’ pp171-179 with plate 5 The Trafalgar Chronicle No16,2006.
67 Witt Library
68 National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
69 eg Venus,Venus with Doves, Juno borrowing the girdle of Venus (first attributed to Benjamin West), Flora, Una. The New York Times March 10, 1900 reported on Richard’s ‘Lady Hamilton as Miranda’ that ‘the grace of Westall is that of the ballet-master’.
70 Victories of the Duke of Wellington 1819 Rodwell & Martin
71 Simon Keynes ‘The cult of King Alfred the Great’ Anglo-Saxon England 28 pp225-357 Cambridge University Press
72 RA1800 (423)
73 H.J.Pye Alfred; an Epic Poem, in Six Books London 1801 p 132. I am grateful to Simon Keynes for this quotation.
74 Art on the Line op cit no 206
75 British Institution 1806 Middle room (29)
76 www.trin.cam.acuksdk/histpaint/ashistpix/westall .
77 Sword of Damocles websites: www.ackland.org/tours/westall.html www.learnne.org/lp/pages/3059
78 Burlington Magazine1903 Vol 11 p305
78 2003
79 Richard Westall A Day in Spring John Murray 1808. See Farington op.cit.11 Dec 1808
80 The Literary Gazette 1835 Vol 1 No 5 (new series)
81 Letter Aug 3 1820. Part copied to Iain Bain from Winifred Myers 31/01/1961.
82 pp 52/7, 74/7. There is an unfortunate error in where it is stated that ‘Westall’s last years, like those of Reinangle, were much concerned with eking out a living by restoring and selling old paintings.’ This is to confuse William with Richard Westall
83 Notes & Commentary Peter Bicknell & Robert Woof Derwentwater The Vale of Elysium Trustees of Dove Cottage 1986.
84 Introduction Richard Trickett Dorothy Wordsworth’s Illustrated Lakeland Journals Diamond Books 1991
85 Mary Howitt, introduction David Boulton Hope On, Hope Ever! 1988 Dales Historical Monographs.
86 W.R. Mitchell ‘The Hollow Mountains’ Settle, Yorks May 1961
87 William Westall Views of the Caves Near Ingleton in Yorkshire John Murray 1818.
88 Country Life Nov 26 1959 120
89 www.showcases.com/english/gb/caves/Yordas
90 Trevor Shaw facsimile reproduction and introduction to Westall’s Cave Drawings Anne Oldham May 1983. Copy with author.
91 Letter to William Westall Jan 1822. Copy with author.
92 The sonnets are Pure element of waters!, Malham Cove and Gordale.
93 Juliet Barker Wordsworth A Life Viking 2000 p523
94 William Wordsworth to Robert Westall March 6 1850. Ed Alan G. Hill Letters of William Wordsworth and Dorothy Wordsworth Part IV p916 Clarendon Press Oxford 1988.
95 Charles Dalton ‘Dictionary of National Biography’.
96 Ed Alaric Watts ‘The Literary Souvenir & Cabinet of Modern Art’ Whittaker 1835 Vol 1 no 5 (new series).
97 ‘Times’ Dec 12 1836.
98 ‘Times’ July 25 1959
99 C.J. Sansom ‘Revelation’ Macmillan 2008
100 Andrew Wilton British Watercolours 1750-1850 Phaidon Oxford 1977 Plate 36
101 Marcia Pointon Milton & English Art Manchester University Press 1970 p120 see plates 108 & 109
102 PROB 11/1877
103 LAW/369 op cit
104 RA 1848 (456)
105 PROB 11/2114
106 Ed Simpson & Perry op cit
107 Robert Westall op cit
108 John Landseer ‘Art Journal’ Feb 1850.
109 Rossetti op cit p77
110 Alfred Story James Holmes and John Varley’ Richard Bentley 1894