[4] In 1834, 1835, and 1836 Corbould won gold medals of the Society of Arts, in 1834 with a watercolour of the Fall of Phaethon, and in the last two years with models of St. George and the Dragon and a Chariot Race, from Homer.

His first exhibits in the Royal Academy in 1835 included a model (Cyllarus and Hylonome); and he submitted designs for four pieces of sculpture for Blackfriars Bridge.

[3] Corbould was known for his water-colours, in which he produced subjects illustrating literature (mainly from Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare), history, and daily life.

Many of his works were acquired by Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and his royal pupils, including an illustration of Alfred Tennyson's Morte d'Arthur presented by Queen Victoria to Princess Louise, and Henry VI welcomed to London after his Coronation in Paris, and The Iconoclasts of Basle, acquired by the Empress Frederick for the imperial collection in Berlin.

He also produced designs for book illustration: in the Abbotsford edition of the Waverley Novels (Cadell, 1841–6), and in A & C Black's edition of the same works (1852–3); Spenser's Faerie Queene and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (Routledge, 1853); Martin Farquhar Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy (1854); and Robert Aris Willmott's Poets of the Nineteenth Century (1857), and Merrie Days of England (1858–9).