William Westall ARA 1781 - 1850
Richard J. Westall
richardjwestall@yahoo.co.uk
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William Westall’s reputation has grown in
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
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
The suggestion that the Admirality desired certain conceptions of
A possible oil painting not known previously by William, of a mountainous view in
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
Another publication from
They also maintain that William ‘seems to have been little interested in the specifics of the flora and fauna’ of
The 19 sketches by William at the
Following a shipwreck near the
Some of William’s Australian pictures have featured in three recent exhibitions in
The third exhibition included William’s famed oil painting View of Sir Edward Pellew’s Group,
We now know that prior to William’s marriage to Ann Sedgwick Richard Westall wrote from
The Wordsworth Trust has amassed a worthy collection of William’s work in the
The
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
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
Among the shares William Westall bequeathed to his sons William, Robert & Thomas were some in the Union Bank of
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
National Archives Will PROB 11/2114; Richard J. Westall ‘The Westall Pictures’ National Library of