William James Webbe

His landscape style in particular links him to the Pre-Raphaelites, and after travelling to the Middle East in 1862 he painted many Biblical subjects in the spirit of Orientalism.

[2][3][1] Webbe's journey was probably inspired by English painter and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood William Holman Hunt, who visited the Holy Land in 1854–1856, 1869–1872, 1875–1878, and 1892.

More of his illustrations can be found in Biblical Stories for Children and in books by authors such as William Makepeace Thackeray and those of his son Wilfred Mark Webb.

William James Webbe was living in the Isle of Wight in 1856, later, in 1861, he resided at Langham Chambers, "in an area where many of the Pre-Raphaelites congregated and had their studios".

His contemporary art critic Tom Taylor of the Times wrote: "[the painting] is treated in the most realistic spirit ...but the composition seems to us too crowded for the canvas, and there is an abuse of bright colour...it may be that the critic in this cold, grey north is not competent to pass judgement on eastern colour ...for Mr Webbe's clever and careful Street in Jerusalem".

The Collared Thief , 1860
The White Owl . "Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits" signed with monogram and dated '1856' (lower left) oil on board
A White Terrier by a Mossy Bank with Flowers . Opaque glue-based paint, followed by resinous glazing, and brush, perhaps pen, on heavy off-white paper, 1871 [ a ]
Sending Out the Scapegoat