Thomas Webster

Thomas Webster

Webster, Thomas, Hon. Retired, R.A. (1800-1886), English painter

Omeka record contributed by Hilleary Gramling.

November 16, 2016

November 16, 2016

March 10, 1800

Ranelagh Street, Pimlico, London, England

September 23, 1886

Painter

Thomas Webster was born on March 20, 1800, in London. He was educated as a chorister at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, and at the Chapel Royal, St. James’s, London. He began his studies at the Royal Academy Schools in 1821 and won a gold medal in 1825. He exhibited eighty-three works at the Royal Academy between 1823 and 1879, thirty-nine at the British Institution (1824-44), and eight at the Society of British Artists (1825-34). He was elected an A.R.A. in 1840 and an R.A. in 1846. In 1857 he moved to the village of Cranbrook, Kent, just outside of London, where he became the informal leader of the Cranbrook Colony, a group of younger artists who shared his interest in painting scenes of rural life. He became an Honorary Retired R.A. in 1876. His first wife, Betsy, died on January 27, 1859, at the age of fifty-nine and  was succeeded by his second wife, Ellen. Webster died in Cranbrook on September 23, 1886.

Heleniak, Kathryn Moore. “Webster, Thomas (1800–1886).” Kathryn Moore Heleniak In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed., edited by David Cannadine, May 2011. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28947 (accessed November 8, 2016).

“The Royal Academy, The Seventy-First Exhibition, 1839,” The Art Union 1 (December1839): 69-70.

The Cranbrook Colony, Wed, Oct 20, 2010 (10:11 PM), Archant Community Media Ltd. http://community.archant.net/life/kent/blogs/gbl/ken/b/rachael_hales_blog_on_kents_historical_people_and_places/archive/2010/10/20/the-cranbrook-colony.aspx (accessed November 10, 2016).

“Cranbrook Colony.” 2013. Accessed November 10, 2016. http://www.cranbrookmuseum.org/cranbrook-colony.html.

Stephens, F. G. “Mr. Thomas Webster. Hon. Retired R.A.” Artists at Home (London: S. Low, 1884), 9.