Edward Williams

English Figurative Landscape Painting oil on canvas 19th century

1834

Edward Williams, born in London in 1781, was an English landscape painter during the Victorian era. He had six sons, who became well-known landscape painters as well. He came from a family of artists — his mother, Mary Ward, was the sister of the animal painter James Ward and the engraver William Ward, but also the sister-in-law of the figure-painter George Morland, and of the animal painter Henry Chalon; his father was an engraver who worked with John Raphael Smith. Edward Williams was sent around 1792 or 1793 to live with his maternal uncle James Ward, R.A. (1769–1859), but it seems unlikely that he received any painting instruction from him. Instead, he was informally apprenticed to a carver and gilder named Thomas Hillier, who had a shop on Carnaby Street and he became quite successful to enjoy a comfortable living. Williams between 1814–55 exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts (36 works), British Institution (21 works), Suffolk Street Gallery of the Society of British Artists (38 works), and elsewhere. He started by painting miniatures and copying Baroque landscapes from the 1600s in the style of the Dutch painters Ruisdael (1628–82) and Hobbema (1638–1709), the former known for woodland scenes with detailed renderings of trees, particularly the leaves, and water scenes with small boats moored beneath windmills; the latter known for his densely foliated trees with stippled leaves. As Williams developed his style, in which the figures, if present at all, were generally subordinate to the scenery, he moved on to contemporary landscapes of the English countryside that, not surprisingly, a hint of some of the work of his uncle George Morland.