William Westall ARA 1781 - 1850
Richard J. Westall
richardjwestall@yahoo.co.uk
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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 was 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.’
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 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 Brothers’ 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.
