Walter Hepworth

“ After four years, he resigned his post at the observatory, and established himself successfully in Cape Town as an artist and teacher of drawing. He painted a panorama of the district, and published, in 1844, 'Four Views of Cape Town;' in 1854, 'South African Sketches,' a series of ten lithographs of scenes at the Cape of Good Hope; and in 1865, 'The Kafir Wars,' a series of twenty views, with descriptive letterpress by W. R. Thomson. In 1857 he exhibited at the rooms of the Society of British Artists a drawing of the Royal Observatory, Cape Town ”

“ Later he was for a short time engaged in the office of the town clerk of Carlisle; but, while still young, abandoned the prospects of a law career, and wandered about the country, making sketches in water colour, and associating with gipsies. In the course of his wanderings he visited London several times; first in 1838, when he made some copies in the National Gallery. He was never at any school of art. In 1845 he obtained employment as a scene-painter at Manchester, and was thence taken by the manager, Glover, to Glasgow, where he married Isabella Taylor, a singer at the theatre. ”

“ Savage jugglers, medicine-men, and even priests, have certainly much in common with the jester by profession. There existed in ancient Greece a distinct class of professed fools whose habits were not essentially different from those of the jesters of the middle ages. ”

“ After a few years of great poverty and struggle he became a very prosperous artist. He lived first at Pentonville, removed thence to Fulham, thence to Hammersmith, and finally in 1854 to Barnes. His earliest pictures were studied from the scenery of Surrey and the banks of the Thames. Work of his was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1837, and from 1839 onwards one or two pictures by him were exhibited there every year until his death and four years after it. ”

“ After suffering for several years from a progressive disease of the brain, he died at his house at Barnes 11 April 1865. His only child, Edwin Boddington, and several of his nephews are painters, and carry on the family tradition to another generation.
[Information from Mr. H. S. Percy; Our Living Painters (London, 1859) ; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists of the English School.] ”

“ Caillette and Triboulet are well-known characters of the times of Francis I. Triboulet appears in Rabelais’s romance, and is the hero of Victor Hugo’s Le Roi s’amuse, and, with some changes, of Verdi’s opera Rigoletto ”

“ BOWYER, ROBERT (1758–1834) , miniature painter, seems to have been at an early date known to Smart, the miniature painter, and is supposed by Redgrave to have been Smart's pupil. He exhibited miniatures and paintings at the Royal Academy occasionally between 1783 and 1828; was appointed painter in water-colours to the king, and miniature painter to the queen ”

“ The beau's father, also William Brummell, an intelligent boy, acted for some time as Mr. Jenkinson's amanuensis; was in 1763 appointed to a clerkship in the treasury, and during the whole administration from 1770 to 1782 was private secretary to Lord North, by whose favour he received several lucrative appointments (Gent. Mag. lxiv. 285) . He further increased his means by his marriage with Miss Richardson, daughter of the keeper of the lottery office. The younger William Brummell died in 1794, leaving 65,000l. to be divided equally among his three children, two sons and a daughter (ib.) ”

“ T. Clarke, William Bowness, &c., Kendal, 1872, contains one poem from the above-named collection.
[Cat. Royal Academy; Cat. Brit. Institution; Cat. Soc. Brit. Artists; Art Journal, February 1868; Kendal Mercury, 4 Jan. 1868; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists (1878) .] ”

“ He began in 1849 a more earnest study of nature, working at Hamilton, in the neighbouring Cadzow Forest, and at Port Glasgow, where he painted his 'Shipbuilding at Dumbarton.' Among his principal works may be mentioned: 'Canty Bay,' 'The Rocket Cart,' 'St. ”

“ He produced little during the fifteen years immediately preceding his death, which took place at Eton, 12 Feb. 1876.
[Cat. Roy. Acad.; Cat. Brit. Inst.; Cat. Soc. Brit. Artists; Windsor Gazette, 19 Feb. 1876; Windsor Express, 19 Feb. 1876; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists (1878) .] ”