Richard Westall was born in Reepham, Norfolk in 1765. His father Benjamin Westall was a Churchwarden in Norwich, where he was baptised. His mother died when he was young, and following this alongside the bankruptcy of his father, Richard Westall moved to London in 1772 where he would remain for the rest of his life. His father had another son in 1781, William Westall, who also went on to become a notable artist.
In 1779 Richard Westall was apprenticed to a silver engraver and began to produce oil paintings, historical watercolours and book illustrations in London, for which he became renowned. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1784, and was enrolled as student there the following year. He was elected RA ten years later in 1794, and exhibited there regularly until the end of his life. He was especially proficient in the use of gouache and in 1795 was declared by the St. James’s Chronicle as ‘the Founder of a particular School of Drawing in Water-Colours’.
In 1826 he was employed as the drawing master to Princess (later Queen) Victoria. Richard Westall never married and died in 1836, aged 71.
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