Athenaeum on William Westall

The Athenaeum Jan 26 1850 p106
Mr William Westall, the landscape painter, died on the 22nd inst in the 69th year of his age. Though little celebrated for his oil pictures, he had a pleasant feeling for landscape nature (lake scenery more especially). He represented, however, what he saw before him with the fidelity of an artist not much alive to the poetry of his art. He worked largely for booksellers; and many volumes for which he supplied matter-of-fact illustrations, from his own drawings as well as from slight sketches of artists and amateurs, evince his skill and the taste and readiness with which he worked. Mr Westall was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1813 and was senior Associate at the time of his death.

Feb 2, 1850 p136
For the following addenda to a paragraph in last weeks 'Athenaeum', we are indebted to Mr Landseer - "In your biographical sketch of Mr W.Westall you have omitted the most noticeable circumstance of his life. He was a circumnavigator, - went round the world with Capt. Flinders; and they were shipwrecked, if I rightly remember, somewhere in Australia. Of the three painters who went round the world with Cook, Vancouver and Flinders - viz Hodges, Webber and Westall - the last was the most accomplished: and his delineations of what he saw had most of the truth of portraiture, - as the engravings in Capt Flinders's book will show. Being, however, a mild and unobtrusive man, whilst the others were pushing and solicitous, he remained an ARA whilst they became Academicians. After his return he had an Exhibition in Brook St; but it was insufficiently advertised, and had but few visitors. The day I was there, there were but three other persons in the room, and one of them was the artist's brother. But the exhibited drawings, consisting chiefly of joss-houses, Indian forest-scenes, with banyan trees, cavern temples etc, were more effective and more richly coloured than the average of their draughtsman's subsequent productions."