Henry Brittan Willis

[3] In 1842, after little financial success in his native city, and on the advice of his father, he traveled to New York, USA, to take up a job in a merchant's office.

Owing to ill-health, he eventually had to relinquish the post and return to England, where he initially practiced as a portrait painter in Bristol.

Willis painted rural landscapes all over England, Wales and Scotland, in both oils and watercolour, and often featuring groups of farm animals such as cattle or sheep.

On 13 January 1873, 30 years of Willis's art work (including "studies from nature and some paintings" was destroyed in a fire at the "London Pantechnicon" in Motcombe street, Belgravia.

It shows either the date painted, or, if accompanied by a named gallery, the date at which the painting was exhibited: Landscape with cattle (RA, 1846 - collaboration with Frederick William Hulme) • River Avon, near Bristol, with the Tower of Cook's Folly • A Quiet Homestead in Surrey (British Institution, 1855) • Early Morning - going a-field (1855 Paris Exposition) • A sunny scene on the Severn (1855 Paris Exposition) • Lights and shadows on the Conway (Society of British Artists, 1855) • Scene in the valley of the Lleddr (Liverpool Academy, 1855) • Harvest Horses (1856) • A Family Group (British Institution, 1857) • Oxen, Mid-Day Rest • Blessings of a shepherd's life (1862) • Harvesting in Sussex • Harvesting:Sunset (1863, watercolour) • Highland Cattle (1866) • Ben Cruachan cattle coming south (1867) • Farm Horses (RWS, 1867) • View near Coal Pit Heath (Bristol Society of Artists, 1840)[8] • Hastings Castle by Moonlight • View of the Castle of Kautz (watercolour) • Drover with cattle watering • Landscape with sheepherder and dog • Landscape with figure on a Log in the Foreground (watercolour) • A Group of Cows (1871).