Joshua Cristall

His father was Scottish and bitterly opposed to his son's artistic tastes, but his mother secretly aided him in his struggles to study art.

Finding that job too monotonous, he went to London, and commenced a life of great privations and hard efforts to study the fine arts.

Aided in secret by his mother, he persevered in his endeavours, and finally gained admission to the school of the Royal Academy, where he made rapid progress.

In 1822, with his health in decline, Cristall went to Goodrich on the Wye, where he had bought a house and spent happy years, until the loss of his wife in 1840 drove him again to London, where he died in 1847.

As a watercolour painter, Cristall gained an honourable position from the freedom and simplicity of his style and manner of execution.