31 Facts About William Westall

William Westall was a British landscape artist best known as one of the first artists to work in Australia.

William Westall was interested in painting from a young age; Rienitz and Rienitz suggest that he looked up to his half-brother, and was ambitious to follow in his footsteps.

William Westall's nomination was approved by Banks; thus William Westall, at just 19 years of age, was appointed to what has come to be regarded as one of the notable scientific expeditions ever undertaken, as a member of a team of scientists that included botanist Robert Brown and botanical artist Ferdinand Bauer, both now revered as amongst the very best in their respective fields.

The gardener Good records that he was not permitted to go with them, so instead he and William Westall rowed around Investigator in search of turtles and birds, obtaining one of each.

Early the next morning William Westall returned alone to Funchal, the others continuing on for a few hours before turning back.

William Westall was charmed by the island and seems to have been enthusiastic in his work.

However, on returning to the ship, their boat was swamped, William Westall was almost drowned, and all of his sketches were lost.

William Westall made two further coastal profiles the following day, one of Chatham Island, the other of the Eclipse Islands.

The next morning, the 9th, William Westall sketched Seal Island from the anchorage.

That day William Westall sketched an Aboriginal man named Warena, and showed it to him.

On 1 January 1802, William Westall landed with Bauer, apparently in company with Brown, and apparently at Limeburner Point.

Findlay assumed that nearly all of William Westall's drawings have survived, and sees the William Westall's low output as indicative of his growing disillusionment with the Australian landscape, which he perceived as lacking in the picturesque qualities he sought.

At Cape Catastrophe, where eight men were drowned, William Westall sketched Thistle Island, and painted a snake.

William Westall sketched some local Aborigines, and was commissioned by the Governor, Phillip Gidley King, to paint Government House.

The resulting watercolour is one of a very few paintings that William Westall completed during the voyage.

From this time onward, William Westall largely eschewed landscapes in favour of portraying events and people.

Whilst marooned on the sandbank, William Westall produced a watercolour entitled View of Wreck Reef Bank Taken at Low Water: Terra Australia; this was William Westall's final drawing of the voyage.

William Westall returned to England at the end of 1804, only to learn that Flinders was imprisoned on Mauritius.

William Westall himself took responsibility for squaring down the paintings to drawings of the actual size to be published, and these were then handed over to engravers, who produced intaglio plates using a combination of etching and direct engraving.

In 1811 William Westall published Foreign Scenery, a collection of landscapes depicting Madeira, the Cape of Good Hope, China and India.

William Westall ended up doing a good deal of work for Ackermann, including views of several universities and public schools for Ackermann's series of school histories; and over a hundred drawing for Great Britain Illustrated.

William Westall worked for John Murray, such as several contributions to A Picturesque Tour of the River Thames.

In 1820, Westall married Ann Sedgwick; they had four sons, William, Thomas, Richard and Robert, who was an artist.

William Westall's health began to decline in the 1840s, and in 1847 he broke his arm.

William Westall never recovered from this setback, finding it difficult to continue working.

William Westall gave his final exhibition in 1848, and died in January 1850, aged 68.

William Westall's grave is in the graveyard of St John-at-Hampstead in north London, south of the church.

In 1899, William Westall's sons sold 140 of the original drawings from the voyage of HMS Investigator to the Royal Colonial Institute for 100 guineas.

William Westall has been criticised for his choice of subjects: his primary task was to record landscapes, but in the latter half of the voyage he mostly neglected them in favour of portraying people and events.

Examples include his Entrance to Port Lincoln from behind Memory Cove, February 1802, which superimposes the foreground from one sketch of Port Lincoln upon the background of another; and his Part of King George Sound, on the South Coast of New Holland, which is based upon his drawing of King George's Sound, but has a completely revised foreground, including the insertion of a Eucalyptus that William Westall sketched at Spencer Gulf, 1800 kilometres to the east.

Landseer thought that William Westall would have received more recognition, were he not "a mild and unobtrusive man, whilst the others were pushing and solicitous".