Design and Art Australia Online

William Westall, landscape artist, was born in Hertford on 12 October 1781, youngest of seven children of Benjamin Westall, a Norwich brewer, and only surviving child of Benjamin’s second wife, Martha Harbord. William’s early drawing lessons were given to him by his half-brother Richard (1765 – 1836), a Royal Academician popular with contemporary taste and instructor in drawing and painting. In 1799 William was admitted to the Royal Academy Schools. Early in 1801, on the recommendation of Benjamin West, President of the Royal Academy, he was appointed landscape artist on Matthew Flinders’ “Investigator” expedition to Australia (then called New Holland). This appointment had originally gone to William Daniell (1769 – 1837), who withdrew from the voyage to marry Westall’s half-sister Mary. The voyage via Madeira and South Africa arrived in Western Australia on 6 December 1801 and completed a circumnavigation of the island between that date and mid 1803. Westall produced pencil and watercolour sketches of coastal profiles, landscapes, Aboriginal cave art, Aboriginee portraits and a few natural history subjects. When the “Porpoise”, which replaced the “Investigator” deemed unseaworthy, ran aground on Wreck Reef on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef, Westall’s drawings were “wetted and partly destroyed” but were nevertheless forwarded to the Admiralty as part of the official record of the voyage. On their receipt in London, Sir Joseph Banks had them sent to Richard Westall to be “restored to a proper state” and made a list of 145 sketches and a further 12 finished drawings. Fifteen pictures were returned by Richard Westall restored two of them finished drawings..

William Westall, meanwhile, had gone from Wreck Reef to Canton in China arriving in December 1803. Whilst there he wrote at the suggestion of Banks’ representative David Lance, to Sir Joseph saying that he was intending to go to Ceylon and India to obtain picturesque views which he found absent during the journey around Australia’s “barren coast”. It is possible that the artist exaggerated his lack of enthusiasm for Australian scenery in order to more justify his decision. He also stressed that he had expected to travel to the South Seas after leaving Australia. This was an unwise letter. On strictly artistic grounds we are to be thanked for Westall’s illustrations of China and India (one of wich was compared to the work of Turner by a contemporary critic). His assertion that he had anticipated travelling to the South Seas is not in line with his signed contract, altough it is possible that those who encouraged him to go on the voyage may have suggested such an eventuality. In any case the Admiralty ceased Westall’s remuneration from this time, treating the further travel a private matter.

Westall travelled to Bombay in India under the auspices of the East India Company, arriving on April 30 1804. He never visited Ceylon. He then returned to London, calling at St Helana and arriving in London early in 1805. He subsequently visited Madeira again and Jamaica and showed watercolour views of these places in a Brook Street gallery and at the Associated Arts’ Exhibition in 1808. Ten engravings after his drawings appeared in “The Naval Chronicle” between 1799 and 1816 where he was described in 1808 as a “rising young artist”. In 1810 he exhibited an oil painting of Australia and a further two in 1812 at the Royal Academy after which he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy. Early in 1811 Flinders, who returned to England after imprisonment on Mauritius, collected Westall’s sketches from the Admiralty and, in conference with Westall and Sir Josph Banks, chose nine subjects for oil paintings, commissioned by the Admiralty to be engraved as illustrations, together with 28 coastal views. for Flinders’s “Voyage to Terra Australia” (1814). The oil paintings are now the property of Britain’s Ministry of Defence.

Westall married Ann Sedgwick (1789-1862), daughter of the Rev. Richard Sedgwick, vicar of Dent and sister of Professor of Geology Adam Sedgwick, teacher and disputant of Charles Darwin. The Westalls had four sons: William entered the church, Thomas the navy, Richard appears to have had severe learning difficulties and Robert who became an artist and engraver like his father and exhibited a few paintings at the Royal Academy. Westall retained his Australian sketches and after his death on 20 January, 1850 they passed to William and Robert. In 1899 Robert sold most of them to the Royal Colonial Institute (which became the Royal Commonwealth Society). He and his brother William presented further paintings and the collection was sold subsequently to the National Library of Australia. This collection now constitutes the major part of Westall’s Australian work. A small number of drawings remain in private hands, a few with Westall’s descendants.

After completing the oil paintings for the Admiralty, Westall worked largely in watercolour, producing views to be reproduced in aquatint in topographical and travel books. Some of his best views are those in “A Picturesque Tour of the River Thames (1828), while some of his best known appeared in Rudolf Ackermann’s histories of Oxford, Cambridge and some of the better-known public schools. Westall’s watercolour and drawing style lent itself well to aquatint and engraving, some of which he executed himself. He was in constant demand by publishers, but he himself found the work unsatisfying and considered that he had given “hope of fame for a trade”, although family responsibilities may well have determined the course of his career. He showed 70 pictures in Royal Academy exhibtions and 28 at the British Institution (several the same as the Royal Academy pictures but usefully including their measurements. Some 700 engraviings after his drawings are known.

Westall’s friend and critic, fellow engraver John Landseer maintained his work was always “justly valued by the judicious few”. Bernard Smith’s assessment of his oil paintings based on his Australian experience is that “they reveal greater fluency and keener desire to render the truths of light and atmosphere than in the sketches made upon the “Investigator”“. Rex Reinits maintained that “Westall was a thoroughly competent, thoroughly professional artist who drew what he saw straighforwardly and honestly to the best of his considerable ability”. Others have commented on his artistic licence having been stretched to breaking point at times. There is no doubt that Westall did experience a tension between topographical accuracy and notions of landscape and the picturesque, especially in the oil paintings completed for the Royal Academy as well as the Admiralty. Here we have more finished but less fresh pictures of Australia. Most of these oils have been hidden away far too long in Admiralty House, the residence of Britain’s Minister of Defence who over the years have not perhaps been outstanding connisseurs of art. However these paintings, truly a British vision of Australia, are now gaining wider circulation and greater appreciation.

Writers:

Westall, Richard J. Note:

Date written:

2008

Last updated:

2011

Status:

peer-reviewed