William Daniell

For those of a similar name, see William Daniel (disambiguation).

Portrait of Daniell by Richard Westall

William Daniell RA (1769–1837) was an English landscape and marine painter, and engraver. He travelled extensively in the Far East, helping to produce one of the finest illustrated volumes of the period - "Oriental Scenery". He also travelled around the coastline of Britain to paint watercolours for the equally ambitious book "A Voyage Round Great Britain". His work was exhibited at the Royal Academy and the British Institution and he became a Royal Academician in 1822.

Life and work

Castle Broichin on the Isle of Raasay (1819)

Long Walk, Windsor Park (1827)

Windsor Castle from Brocas Meadow (1827)

Windsor from Eton (1827)

William Daniell was born in Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey. His father was a bricklayer and owner of a public house called The Swan in near-by Chertsey. Daniell’s future was dramatically changed when he was sent to live with his uncle, the landscape artist Thomas Daniell (1749–1840), after his father's premature death in 1779. In 1784 William accompanied his uncle to India, who worked there as an engraver, acting as his assistant in preparing drawings and sketches. William’s brother Samuel Daniell (born 1775; died Ceylon [now Sri Lanka], Dec. 1811) remained independent of his uncle and also became a topographical artist; he went to South Africa in 1801 and after his return to England published African Scenery and Animals (1804–5), a collection of aquatints. From 1806 he lived in Ceylon.

Daniell was fourteen when he accompanied his uncle to India. On arriving in Calcutta in 1786, Thomas Daniell published a proposal for engraving twelve views of the city. This seemed a promising idea, since Calcutta was rapidly expanding and its European inhabitants might be willing to buy engravings showing its latest buildings. Both he and William were inexperienced engravers and had to enlist the help of Indian craftsmen, but the set was completed in November 1788 and sold well. Thomas next began planning an ambitious tour of northern India, possibly inspired by the wealth of picturesque scenery indicated in William Hodges’s collection of aquatints, Select Views in India (1785–8). In August 1789, Thomas and William set off up-river past Murshidabad to Bhagalpur, where they stayed with Samuel Davis (?1756–1819), an employee of the East India Company and a skilled amateur artist. They continued on to Kanpur and then travelled overland to Delhi, visiting Agra, Fatehpur Sikri and Mathura on the way; the following April they made a pioneering tour to Srinagar and Garhwal in the Himalayas. Thomas and William Daniell were back in Calcutta at the end of 1791. They held a lottery of their completed work, using the proceeds to fund a tour to the South. Since the Third Mysore War was in progress, the Daniells suspected that a market existed among the British for oil paintings and drawings of the areas in which the conflict was taking place. They duly visited various hill-forts on their way south, as well as the huge and richly carved temples at Madurai, Mamallapuram and Rameswaram. Once back in Madras they held another lottery of their work and set off on a tour to western India. On their arrival in Bombay in March 1793 they met James Wales (1747–95), then busy drawing the area’s cave temples. He took them to Elephanta, Karli and Kanheri among other places.

In September 1794 the Daniells returned to England and began working up their drawings into coloured aquatints, 144 of which were issued in the six-volume Oriental Scenery (1795–1808). They also painted oils based on their drawings for exhibitions at the British Institution and the Royal Academy, to which Thomas was elected in 1799 and William in 1822. Having made long tours through Britain with Thomas, William produced hand-coloured aquatints for Richard Ayton’s A Picturesque Voyage round Great Britain (1814–25), as well as views of London. He also made aquatints from watercolours by George Dance, Samuel Davis and Robert Smith. Nevertheless, it was for Oriental Scenery that the Daniells became famous, for it took its place among such revered works as J. Stuart and N. Revett’s Antiquities of Athens (1762), Baron Denon’s Voyage dans la basse et la haute Egypte (1802) and Robert Wood’s Ruins of Palmyra (1753) and Ruins of Balbek (1757). It provided an entirely new vision of the Indian subcontinent that was to influence both decorative arts and British architectural design. Above all, it formed a popular vision in Britain of a romantic and picturesque India that to some extent persists.

William produced a number of marine paintings. One, The Burning of the "Kent" is in the Museum of the Queen's Royal Surrey's, having been rediscovered after having disappeared for over a hundred years. It is an illustration of the dramatic loss of the Kent, an East Indiaman, and the rescue of some 550 survivors of her 650 crew and passengers.

The Burning of the Kent( c.1825)

His shipping scenes, such A Bird’s-Eye View of the East India Dock at Blackwell (National Maritime Museum, London), were supplemented by greatly admired battle pieces. In 1825, he won a prize of £100 for a pair of paintings depicting the Battle of Trafalgar, exhibited at the British Institution. Daniell turned to panorama painting before his death, beginning in 1832 with a painting of Madras, including a depiction of the Hindu mode of taming wild elephants.He continued to work until his death in 1837.

Among his publications, engraved in aquatint, were:

• Voyage to India
• Zoography
• Animated Nature
• Views of London
• Views of Bootan, a work prepared from his uncle's sketches
• A Voyage Round Great Britain, which occupied him for several years.

Collections

William Daniell is represented in the following collections, among others: National Portrait Gallery, London; Royal Academy of Arts, London; National Maritime Museum, London; Courtauld Institute of Art, London; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; National Museums and Galleries of Wales, Cardiff; Indianapolis Museum of Art, U.S.A.; Falmouth Art Gallery, Falmouth, UK; Dallas Museum of Art, Texas; Watford Museum, Watford, UK.

Further reading

• Garvey, John. William Daniell's Isle of Skye & Raasay (Matador, UK, 2009). ISBN 978 1848761 070

External links

• William Daniell online (ArtCyclopedia)
• Biography
• Biography (Lachlan & Elizabeth Macquarie Archive)