River Landscape
EDWARD WILLIAMS
EDWARD WILLIAMS
(London 1781-1855)
River Landscape
1834
Oil on canvas, 35.8 x 28.3 inch
Signed and dated at the bottom left side: E. W.ms 1834
Edward Williams, born in London in the 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 artist: his mother, Mary Ward, was the sister of the animal painter James Ward and of the engraver William Ward, but alsothe 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 informally apprenticed to a carver and gilder named Thomas Hillier, and he became quite successful.
Edward Williams between 1814 and 1855 exhibited at the Royal Academy (36 works), the British Institution (21 works), the Suffolk Street Gallery of the Society of British Artists (38 works), and elsewhere.
At first he was inspired by Ducth paintings, and then he developed his own style, in which the figures, if present at all, were generally subordinate to the scenery, and he moved on to contemporary landscapes of the English countryside.
