William Knight Keeling

William Knight Keeling (1807–1886) was a British (Victorian) artist, an illustrator of Walter Scott's novels and Shakespeare's plays, and a founder member and the third President of the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts.

Delicate details and a clear and bright palette, inspired by the hot colours of the South, are distinctive features of his paintings and watercolours.

Keeling did not strive for fame and glory, and remained in the background of the artistic life of his time, although many connoisseurs appreciated his works.

In the 1870s, Wolverhampton industrialist and collector Sidney Cartwright purchased from a Manchester exhibition a large number of Keeling’s works.

In 1887 they were given to Wolverhampton Art Gallery, which possesses today possibly the largest collection of Keeling’s paintings and watercolours in the United Kingdom.