William Westall (1781 - 1850) - <i>View of Norwich from Mousehold heath</i> -

William Westall was born into an artistic family. With the support of his older half brother Richard, he became a probationer at the Royal Academy Schools in 1801. During his studies at the Royal Academy Westall's work came to the attention of Joseph Banks, who was at the time keen to find a landscape artist for Matthew Flinders' expedition aboard HMS Investigator. In 1801, at the age of 19, Westall found himself aboard HMS Investigator. The subsequent voyage of discovery to ‘Terra Australis’, has in time come to be regarded as one of the notable scientific and botanical studies ever undertaken. Westall joined Flinders for two years, after which he visited China and India. His records of these voyages include a sketch of Port Jackson (1804; London, V&A) and his later painting, a View in a Mandarin’s Garden (exh. London, Royal Academy 1814; untraced); they were also used to illustrate Flinders’s A Voyage to Terra Australis (London, 1814). After a brief stay in England in 1805 he went to Madeira and Jamaica. He returned to London in 1808 and held an exhibition of works based on these travels. In 1812 he was elected an associate of the Royal Academy with whom he regularly exhibited his work until his death in 1850. His son gave 160 the original drawings from the HMS Investigator voyage to the Royal Commonwealth Society, London and they are now held in the National Library of Australia.

Collections
William Westall is represented in the following collections: National Library of Australia, Canberra; Royal Academy of Arts Collection, London; The Royal Collection, London; Courtauld Institute of Art, London; Tate Gallery, London; Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana, amongst others.