George Richmond (painter)

One of his earliest recollections was the sight of the Life Guards marching to the cavalry barracks at Brompton on their return from the Waterloo campaign, and he remembered when a lad walking for a mile beside the Duke of York, in order to sketch him for his father, from whom he received his first instruction in art.

Here he was much impressed by the personality of Henry Fuseli, then professor of painting, formed a friendship, which lasted a lifetime, with Samuel Palmer, and had as fellow-students and companions Edward Calvert, Thomas Sidney Cooper, and Frederick Tatham, whose sister he married.

When Richmond was sixteen he met William Blake, of whom Palmer and Calvert were devoted admirers, at the house of John Linnell at Highgate.

[4] In 1828 Richmond went to Paris to study art and anatomy, the expenses of the journey being met from money earned by painting miniatures in England before leaving and in France during his stay.

He spent a winter in the schools and hospitals, and saw something of the social life of the Paris of Charles X; at Calais he exchanged pinches of snuff with the exiled Beau Brummell.

There followed immediately many successful watercolour portraits, among which may be mentioned those of Lord Teignmouth, the Frys, the Gurneys, the Buxtons, the Upchers, and the Thorntons, all traceable to Inglis's friendly introduction.

In Rome Richmond made many valuable friends, including Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, Henry Acland, the Severns, Thomas Baring, Lord Farrer, and John Sterling, and his house on the Tarpeian rock was a meeting-place for these young English travellers.

[5] George Richmond died at his house, 20 York Street, Portman Square, where he had lived and worked for fifty-four years, on 19 March 1896, retaining almost to the end a clear and vigorous memory.

The Victorian Exhibition held at the New Gallery in the winter of 1891–2 contained eight of his portraits in oil, forty in crayon, and two (Mrs. Fry and Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, both dated 1845) in watercolour.

The oil pictures included Earl Granville, Archbishop Longley (1863), Bishops Selwyn and Wilberforce, Canon Liddon, and Sir George Gilbert Scott, R.A. (1877).

He also drew or painted Queen Adelaide, Prince George (at that time Duke) of Cambridge, and the Prince of Wales, (later Edward VII) when a boy; Lord Palmerston, Lord Aberdeen, the Duke of Newcastle, and Gladstone; Cardinal Manning, Archbishop Tait, and Dean Stanley; Sir Thomas Watson, Syme, Alison, and Sir James Paget; Prescott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Darwin, Owen, Harriet Martineau and Tyndall, and a host of others.

Being a very skilful and rapid draughtsman, he was able, while putting himself into sympathy with his sitter, to report the happiest moment and fleeting changes of expression, and to get out of his subject more than at first sight appeared to be there.

He was also a most industrious and clever sketcher from nature, and he produced (for his own pleasure and instruction) hundreds of drawings in pencil and watercolour, many of great beauty, of figure and landscape.

To his skill as a portrait-painter were added great knowledge of Italian painting and sound judgment in matters of art, and the government were often glad to avail themselves of his services and advice.