Sir William Blake Richmond KCB RA PPRBSA (29 November 1842 – 11 February 1921) was a British painter, sculptor and a designer of stained glass and mosaic.

Richmond was the Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford from 1878 to 1883, succeeding his friend and mentor John Ruskin.

[4] His time spent viewing the Old Master paintings in Italy had a major impact on Richmond's development as an artist and later career.

He would spend a few months each year exploring new areas, absorbing the history and mythology of the region, and making numerous drawings and coloured sketches.

He viewed the churches as "caves of white-washed sepulchres, uncoloured, or if coloured at all, only in parts, patchily, and with little general idea of design."

Nine years later, in 1891, Richmond put his theory into practice when he started work on the quire and apse of St Paul's Cathedral.

Richmond's work was a complete renewal of the quire, the decorations painted directly onto the existing architectural ornaments and stained-glass windows.

[2] "Richmond chose to abandon the flat surface of mosaicists like Salviati, in favour of a more vibrant treatment, based on the use of jagged, irregular glass, set at angles to the plaster, so that it would catch the light.

The new, heavier glass, often with light streaks of colour was used by artists in newly commissioned stained-glass windows and decorative work.

The raw materials he selected for the windows included thick slabs of glass, streaked with light veins of colour.

[5] Richmond created a number of highly acclaimed sculptures, including a piece titled An Athlete exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1879, a bronze sculpture of a Greek runner donated to his village of Hammersmith, and an Arts-and-Crafts style monument of William Gladstone in St Deiniol's Church in Hawarden, Flintshire.

[4] He decided to form the organisation after becoming increasingly frustrated with the low light levels in winter caused by coal smoke.

Richmond penned a letter to The Times in 1898 with a request for action, stating that "the darkness was comparable to a total eclipse of the sun".

The family returned to England in 1870 and moved to Beavor Lodge, Hammersmith, where their sons Herbert, Julius, Ernest, John, and Arthur were born between 1871 and 1879.