page_title: Richard Westall
section_title: Works
hierarchical_section_title: Richard Westall / Works
context_page_description: Richard Westall RA was an English painter and illustrator of portraits, historical and literary events, best known for his portraits of Byron. He was also Queen Victoria's drawing master.
context_section_description: His works – many in watercolour – caused great interest in the late years of the 18th century when he was considered by his chief patron Richard Payne Knight to be an outstanding artist of the picturesque. He painted works in a neoclassical style for John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery and for Henry Fuseli's Milton Gallery. His painting of John Milton and his daughters hangs in Sir John Soane's Museum in London. A number of scenes in which Westall depicts events in the life of Horatio Nelson are at the National Maritime Museum.
  Westall was a prolific book illustrator of both fiction and poetry, including the works of Sir Walter Scott, Oliver Goldsmith, William Cowper and Thomas Gray. Byron, who greatly admired his work, stated that "the brush has beat the poetry". Westall was commissioned to provide illustrations to John Boydell's editions of Shakespeare and John Milton. He also illustrated editions of the Bible, including one with John Martin. His oil painting Christ Crowned with Thorns is the altarpiece at All Souls Church, Langham Place, London.
  His portraiture, in a style similar to Lawrence's, included Princess Victoria (later Queen Victoria, for whom he was art teacher for eight years before his death on 4 December 1836), and Richard Ayton, a writer who collaborated with landscape artist William Daniell (Westall's brother-in-law).
  Richard Westall is perhaps best known for several portraits of Lord Byron. One of these hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London, another at Hughenden Manor, and a third in the House of Lords.).
caption: Solitude, landscape by Westall, 1811
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