William Wood Deane

John W. Deane while in the merchant service made a drawing from the Henry Addington of the surrender the Cape of Good Hope to the Dutch in February 1803.

[1] During the mastership of John Jackson, W. W. Deane went to the Islington proprietary school and gained prizes for mathematics, perspective, and French.

He showed early a taste for drawing, but as his elder brother Dennis Wood Deane had become an artist, his father decided to make him an architect, and articled him on 7 September 1842 for four years to Herbert Williams, a surveyor.

During his architectural career he gained a premium in competition, and built Langham Chambers, which elicited the praise of Owen Jones.

He also built some houses in London and the country, but virtually relinquished practical architecture in 1856 for drawing on wood, and making designs and perspectives for architects.

On his mother's death in September 1859 he inherited a small sum of money, and determined to devote himself to painting, the original desire of his youth.

He removed to 17 Maitland Park Terrace, Haverstock Hill, in 1860, and spent a good part of the year sketching in Cumberland.

The Fair at Seville, with its lines of tents, clouds of dust, and picturesque horsemen; his Bull Ring at Seville, with its brutal crowd in the shade, and the blazing sunshine in the arena, suddenly raised his art from the tranquil portraiture of stately buildings and a pearly atmosphere to a higher and more imaginative level, and gained him his membership in the autumn of 1867.

Maria della Salute, Jedburgh Abbey, and the N. Porch of Chartres to his gallery in 1871; in 1872 he went to Florence, Verona, and Perugia, and made a fine drawing of the Basilica of San Miniato, exhibited after his death.