Thomas Webster (painter)

Thomas Webster RA (March 10, 1800 September 23, 1886), was a British painter of genre scenes of school and village life, many of which became popular through prints. He lived for many years at the artists' colony at Cranbrook in Kent.

Life

In Sickness and Health (1843; Victoria and Albert Museum, London)

Webster was born in Ranelagh Street, Pimlico, London. His father was a member of the household of George III, and the son, having shown an aptitude for music, became a chorister, first at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle, and then the Chapel Royal at St. James's Palace in London. He abandoned music for painting, however, and in 1821 was admitted as a student at the Royal Academy, exhibiting, in 1824, a portrait of "Mr Robinson and Family". In the following year he won first prize in the school of painting.

In 1825, also, Webster exhibited Rebels shooting a Prisoner, at the Suffolk Street Gallery - the first of a series of pictures of schoolboy life for which he subsequently became known. In 1828 he exhibited The Gunpowder Plot' at the Royal Academy, and in 1829 The Prisoner and A Foraging Party Aroused at the British Institution. These were followed by numerous other pictures of school and village life at both galleries. In 1840 Webster was elected an associate of the Royal Academy (ARA), and in 1846 a Royal Academician (RA). He continued to be a frequent exhibitor there until 1876, when he retired from the academy. He exhibited a self-portrait in 1878, and Released from School, his last picture, in 1879.

In 1856 Webster was photographed at the Photographic Institute in London by Robert Howlett, as part of a series of portraits of artists. The picture was among a group exhibited at the Art Treasures Exhibition in Manchester in 1857.[1]

From 1835 to 1856 Webster lived at The Mall, Kensington, but the last thirty years of his life were spent at the artists' colony in Cranbrook, Kent, where he died on 23 Sept. 1886.

Work

The Village Choir (c. 1847; Victoria and Albert Museum, London)

Webster became known for his genre paintings, often with children as subjects, depicting incidents from everyday life in a genial and humorous way. Many of these were exceedingly popular, particularly his Punch (1840) with which he procured associate membership of the Royal Academy.

In the limited range of subjects which he made his own, Webster was unrivalled. Some of his pictures - such as Please remember the Grotto, Snowballing and maybe The Swing - were issued as prints by Abraham Le Blond.[1] The Smile (1841), The Frown and The Boy with Many Friends, are among the numerous pictures which became well known by engravings. He also contributed work to volumes issued by the London-based Etching Club: The Deserted Village (1841), Songs of Shakespeare (1843), and Etch'd Thoughts (1844).

Webster was influential on the work of fellow Cranbrook artists George Bernard O'Neill and Frederick Daniel Hardy.

Notes

  1. Thomas Webster biography Archived 2012-03-07 at the Wayback Machine ("Leighton Fine Art).
gollark: https://pastebin.com/RM13UGFaAt the top of this code file.
gollark: From the official docs.
gollark: "Features:- Fortunes/Dwarf Fortress output/Chuck Norris jokes on boot (wait, IS this a feature?)- (other) viruses (how do you get them in the first place? running random files like this?) cannot do anything particularly awful to your computer - uninterceptable (except by crashing the keyboard shortcut daemon, I guess) keyboard shortcuts allow easy wiping of the non-potatOS data so you can get back to whatever nonsense you do fast- Skynet (rednet-ish stuff over websocket to my server) and Lolcrypt (encoding data as lols and punctuation) built in for easy access!- Convenient OS-y APIs - add keyboard shortcuts, spawn background processes & do "multithreading"-ish stuff.- Great features for other idio- OS designers, like passwords and fake loading (est potatOS.stupidity.loading [time], est potatOS.stupidity.password [password]).- Digits of Tau available via a convenient command ("tau")- Potatoplex and Loading built in ("potatoplex"/"loading") (potatoplex has many undocumented options)!- Stack traces (yes, I did steal them from MBS)- Backdoors- er, remote debugging access (it's secured, via ECC signing on disks and websocket-only access requiring a key for the other one)- All this useless random junk can autoupdate (this is probably a backdoor)!- EZCopy allows you to easily install potatOS on another device, just by sticking it in the disk drive of any potatOS device!- fs.load and fs.dump - probably helpful somehow.- Blocks bad programs (like the "Webicity" browser).- Fully-featured process manager.- Can run in "hidden mode" where it's at least not obvious at a glance that potatOS is installed.- Convenient, simple uninstall with the "uninstall" command.- Turns on any networked potatOS computers!- Edits connected signs to use as ad displays.- A recycle bin.- An exorcise command, which is like delete but better.- Support for a wide variety of Lorem Ipsum."
gollark: You would need to get rid of the autoupdate capabilities of potatOS itself, or swap them to your own pastebins/github stuff, and then keep everything in line with the current versions.
gollark: Anyway, <@151391317740486657>, what you can do is fork potatOS and get rid of the bits you don't like, but that's also hard (less, though) and would be very difficult to keep updated.

References

Attribution
  •  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Webster, Thomas (1800-1886)". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
  •  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Webster, Thomas (painter)". Encyclopædia Britannica. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 464.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.