William Daniell
Encyclopedia
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.
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. Over the period 1784 to 1794 William kept a detailed diary of their travels. This is now in the British Library. After 1794 he no longer kept a diary and so, unfortunately, we have no information in his own hand about the rest of his life. The Royal Academician, Joseph Farington, himself a landscape painter and topographical draughtsman, kept a diary from 1793 until he died in 1821.
The Daniells were close friends of Farington. John Garvey has gone through the diary and extracted glimpses of William’s private life and of his artistic work. The diaries are almost the only written record we have of the life of William Daniell.
In 1794, William and his uncle set up house at 37 Howland Street, Fitzroy Square. Their first priority was to publish a selection of their paintings of India. The views that were selected were made into aquatint prints, calling upon William’s skills in this delicate medium. These skills were hard earned. Farington records in his diary that William had informed him that on his return to England he spent the next seven years working from six in the morning until midnight perfecting his aquatinting techniques.
The Daniells’ great work on India, Oriental Scenery, was published in six parts over the period 1795–1808). It comprised a total of 144 coloured aquatints and six uncoloured title-pages. The cost of a complete set was £210. The publication was a success, both artistically and financially. Thirty sets were sold to the East India Company, and a further order for eighteen copies was received. Thomas Sutton quotes a glowing tribute to the artistic work of the Daniells in an extract from The Calcutta Monthly Magazine. “The execution of these drawings is indeed masterly; there is every reason to confide in the fidelity of the representations; and the effect produced by this rich and splendid display of oriental scenery is truly striking. In looking at it, one may almost feel the warmth of an Indian sky, the water seems to be in actual motion and the animals, trees and plants are studies for the naturalist.” Further different versions of Indian scenes were published, and details can be found in Sutton’s book, together with a detailed inventory of all the artistic output of Thomas, Samuel and William Daniell.
Oriental Scenery 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.
In 1813 Daniell decided to undertake what was to be his greatest artistic work, A Voyage Round Great Britain. His plan was to journey around the whole coast and record views of places of interest. An integral part of the venture was to provide a running commentary, which described the scenery and the conditions of the people. Daniell had already had excursions in England, Wales and Scotland and so he had a good idea where to go and what he might find by way of subjects for paintings.
The original intention was to make a coastal trip by sea, but it became clear early on in the venture that this was not practical, and most of the journey around the coast had to be made by road. The journey was completed in six separate trips, over the period 1813 to 1823. In the summer of 1813, Daniell and his companion, Richard Ayton
, who was to write the accompanying text, covered the coast from Land’s End to Holyhead. The following year in August they went from Holyhead to Kirkcudbright. Richard Ayton did not accompany Daniell on the rest of the journey, leaving Daniell to sketch the scenery and also write the text. Daniell’s approach was to make pencil sketches of views that looked interesting, annotating them with details of colour and texture. The sketches included people and scenery. The transfer of the picture from paper to copper in the form of an aquatint plate required great artistic skill and dexterity. The process is very delicate. This was done on his return to London, as was the printing and colouring of the prints. Daniell must have had a very good visual memory of the places he had visited, as up to five years elapsed between the production of the sketches and the prints being completed.
In 1815, Daniell set out in May and travelled north to Wigtown. It is likely that he took the Mail Coach, a journey of 4 to 5 days. On his way north he travelled via Edinburgh, and took advice from many people there on the places to visit on the coast up and around the north of Scotland. One of these people was the romantic novelist Walter Scott. He advised Daniell not only on the places to visit in Scotland, but also provided him with material for inclusion in the accompanying text. Friends in Edinburgh were able to give Daniell letters of introduction to people who were willing to provide hospitality to him on his journey. This was important, as the availability of hostelries was very limited and the quality very dubious.
During July and August 1815 Daniell journeyed around the islands of Eigg, Rum, Skye and Raasay, together with the Hebridean Islands of Harris and Lewis. His trip continued up the west coast of Scotland, around the north coast, out to the Orkney Islands and down the east coast as far south as Dundee. He arrived in Dundee in October 1815. When setting out from London in May, he had not planned to cover so much of the coastline on one visit, but the weather in 1815 was exceptionally favourable, with good visibility and clear skies providing perfect conditions for an artist. This mammoth journey resulted in 139 aquatint prints being finally published, the last completed in 1821.
In August 1821 Daniell once again journeyed north to Saint Andrews. During the months of August and September he went around the coast as far as Southend, finding 28 subjects from which he produced prints. In the period July to September 1822, the journey as far as Torquay, along the popular south coast of England, resulted in a total of 52 published prints, and August and September 1823 brought Daniell back to Land’s End, with a further 31 prints. The final prints of A Voyage Round Great Britain were published on May 20 1825.
A Voyage Round Great Britain was published by Longman in eight volumes over the period 1814 to 1825. The complete set of eight volumes was priced at £60. The final number of prints included was 308. Garvey’s book follows Daniell around part of the voyage, the Hebridean islands of Eigg, Rum, Skye and Raasay, locating the viewpoints included in his aquatint prints.
Over the period 1813 to 1825, in parallel with preparing the prints for the Voyage, Daniell was busy on other projects, which included paintings for the Academy Exhibitions. Many of the works exhibited were oil paintings of Scottish scenes. The artistic quality of the paintings and aquatints produced and published by Daniell for A Voyage Round Great Britain was considered to be very high. The atmospheric effects which he was able to convey in the aquatint medium were quite overwhelming. This was particularly true of his portrayal of ships and maritime scenery, as he had demonstrated in many earlier paintings and prints. In February 1822 after many years of endeavour, Daniell was finally elected an R.A.. In the final ballot the voting was between John Constable and Daniell, the result being 11 to 17.
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.
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 elephant
s.
Daniell’s last great artistic work was produced between 1827 and 1830. Over this time he became interested in the scenery around Windsor. In 1827, 1828 and 1830, he exhibited a total of five oil paintings of Windsor Castle and its surroundings and two oil paintings of Virginia Water, at the Royal Academy Exhibitions. These were considered to be among his finest oil paintings, and according to Sutton, his view of the Long Walk at Windsor was generally acknowledged to be his masterpiece in oils. Daniell produced a set of 12 aquatints of the Windsor and Virginia water views. Sutton paints a beautiful verbal picture of Daniell, the successful artist, enjoying to the full the creation of these aquatint prints. “These twelve prints are the finest aquatints ever made, standing alone at the highest possible peak: aquatint could go no further, and although attempts have been made by others to excel them, none succeeded. The prints were made in Daniell’s usual way, engraved by himself from his own drawings, and published by himself at 14, Russell Place, Fitzroy Square. By this time he was a comparatively wealthy man, and one can imagine him lovingly and carefully tinting the plates, leisurely savouring their subtle beauties, unhampered by time or financial worry. We feel, in looking at these aquatints, that perhaps Daniell, with the philosophy of a much-travelled man, realised that in the cool greys and greens with which he “stained” his prints was the charm of his own land, more enduring than the exotic mystery of the Orient or the strange architecture of Hindistan.”
Daniell worked right up to his death, on August 16 1837 at Brecknock Terrace, Camden Town (now 135 St Pancras Way). The house is marked by a commemorative plaque. He submitted five pictures to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in that year.
The final twist in the story of A Voyage Round Great Britain, was the discovery, in 1962, of 306 of the original 308 Daniell copper plates, the location of which had not been known for more than 100 years. They are now the property of the Tate. It seems appropriate that of all the topographical books of the 19th century it should be copper plates for Daniell’s Voyage Round Great Britain that have survived – they are a monument to his industry and his unsurpassed skill in handling the remarkable delicacy of the aquatint process.
Among his publications, engraved in aquatint, were:
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
(1769–1837) was an English landscape
Landscape art
Landscape art is a term that covers the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, and especially art where the main subject is a wide view, with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works landscape backgrounds for figures can still...
and marine
Marine art
Marine art or maritime art is any form of figurative art that portrays or draws its main inspiration from the sea. Maritime painting is a genre that depicts ships and the sea—a genre particularly strong from the 17th to 19th centuries...
painter, and engraver. He travelled extensively in the Far East
Far East
The Far East is an English term mostly describing East Asia and Southeast Asia, with South Asia sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons.The term came into use in European geopolitical discourse in the 19th century,...
, 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
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
and the British Institution
British Institution
The British Institution was a private 19th-century society in London formed to exhibit the works of living and dead artists; it was also known as the Pall Mall Picture Galleries or the British Gallery...
and he became a Royal Academician in 1822.
Life and work
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
Chertsey
Chertsey is a town in Surrey, England, on the River Thames and its tributary rivers such as the River Bourne. It can be accessed by road from junction 11 of the M25 London orbital motorway. It shares borders with Staines, Laleham, Shepperton, Addlestone, Woking, Thorpe and Egham...
. Daniell’s future was dramatically changed when he was sent to live with his uncle, the landscape artist Thomas Daniell
Thomas Daniell
Thomas Daniell was an English landscape painter.-Life:Thomas Daniell was born in 1749 at the Chertsey inn, kept by his father, and was apprenticed to an heraldic painter. Daniell, however, was animated with a love of the romantic and beautiful in architecture and nature. Up to 1784, he painted...
(1749–1840), after his father's premature death in 1779. In 1784 William accompanied his uncle to India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, who worked there as an engraver, acting as his assistant in preparing drawings and sketches. William’s brother Samuel Daniell
Samuel Daniell
Samuel Daniell was an English painter of natural history and other scenes in Africa and Ceylon.- Life :...
(born 1775; died Ceylon [now Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
], Dec. 1811) remained independent of his uncle and also became a topographical artist; he went to South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
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
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. 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
William Hodges
William Hodges RA was an English painter. He was a member of James Cook's second voyage to the Pacific Ocean, and is best known for the sketches and paintings of locations he visited on that voyage, including Table Bay, Tahiti, Easter Island, and the Antarctic.Hodges was born in London. He was a...
’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
Samuel Davis
Samuel Davis was a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts. He is also the illustrator behind the newer anniversary covers of American Chillers.-Biography:...
(?1756–1819), an employee of the East India Company
East India Company
The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...
and a skilled amateur artist. They continued on to Kanpur and then travelled overland to Delhi
Delhi
Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...
, visiting Agra, Fatehpur Sikri and Mathura on the way; the following April they made a pioneering tour to Srinagar
Srinagar
Srinagar is the summer seasonal capital of Jammu and Kashmir. It is situated in Kashmir Valley and lies on the banks of the Jhelum River, a tributary of the Indus. It is one of the largest cities in India not to have a Hindu majority. The city is famous for its gardens, lakes and houseboats...
and Garhwal
Garhwal Kingdom
Garhwal Kingdom was a princely state in north-western Uttarakhand, India, ruled by the Panwar dynasty. It was founded in 888 AD and existed until it was annexed by the Gorkhas in 1803...
in the Himalayas
Himalayas
The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...
.
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
James Wales (artist)
James Wales was a Scottish artist.Born in Peterhead, Wales sold portraits in Aberdeen before moving to London, where his work was displayed by the Royal Academy and the Society of Artists. In 1791, Wales arrived in India, and painted portraits of Sawai Madhavrao, Nana Fadnavis, and other figures...
(1747–95), then busy drawing the area’s cave temples. He took them to Elephanta
Elephanta
The Elephanta is a strong southerly or southeasterly wind which blows on the Malabar coast of India during the months of September and October and marks the end of the southwest monsoon....
, Karli
Karla Caves
The Karla Caves or Karle Caves are a complex of ancient Indian Buddhist rock-cut cave shrines developed over two periods – from the 2nd century BC to the 2nd century AD, and from the 5th century to the 10th century. The oldest of the cave shrines is believed to date back to 160 BC...
and Kanheri among other places.
In September 1794 the Daniells returned to England. Over the period 1784 to 1794 William kept a detailed diary of their travels. This is now in the British Library. After 1794 he no longer kept a diary and so, unfortunately, we have no information in his own hand about the rest of his life. The Royal Academician, Joseph Farington, himself a landscape painter and topographical draughtsman, kept a diary from 1793 until he died in 1821.
The Daniells were close friends of Farington. John Garvey has gone through the diary and extracted glimpses of William’s private life and of his artistic work. The diaries are almost the only written record we have of the life of William Daniell.
In 1794, William and his uncle set up house at 37 Howland Street, Fitzroy Square. Their first priority was to publish a selection of their paintings of India. The views that were selected were made into aquatint prints, calling upon William’s skills in this delicate medium. These skills were hard earned. Farington records in his diary that William had informed him that on his return to England he spent the next seven years working from six in the morning until midnight perfecting his aquatinting techniques.
The Daniells’ great work on India, Oriental Scenery, was published in six parts over the period 1795–1808). It comprised a total of 144 coloured aquatints and six uncoloured title-pages. The cost of a complete set was £210. The publication was a success, both artistically and financially. Thirty sets were sold to the East India Company, and a further order for eighteen copies was received. Thomas Sutton quotes a glowing tribute to the artistic work of the Daniells in an extract from The Calcutta Monthly Magazine. “The execution of these drawings is indeed masterly; there is every reason to confide in the fidelity of the representations; and the effect produced by this rich and splendid display of oriental scenery is truly striking. In looking at it, one may almost feel the warmth of an Indian sky, the water seems to be in actual motion and the animals, trees and plants are studies for the naturalist.” Further different versions of Indian scenes were published, and details can be found in Sutton’s book, together with a detailed inventory of all the artistic output of Thomas, Samuel and William Daniell.
Oriental Scenery 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
Robert Wood
Robert Wood may refer to:*Robert B. Wood , American Civil War sailor and Medal of Honor recipient*Robert Coldwell Wood , American political scientist and academic*Robert E. Wood , Canadian landscape artist...
’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.
In 1813 Daniell decided to undertake what was to be his greatest artistic work, A Voyage Round Great Britain. His plan was to journey around the whole coast and record views of places of interest. An integral part of the venture was to provide a running commentary, which described the scenery and the conditions of the people. Daniell had already had excursions in England, Wales and Scotland and so he had a good idea where to go and what he might find by way of subjects for paintings.
The original intention was to make a coastal trip by sea, but it became clear early on in the venture that this was not practical, and most of the journey around the coast had to be made by road. The journey was completed in six separate trips, over the period 1813 to 1823. In the summer of 1813, Daniell and his companion, Richard Ayton
Richard Ayton
-Life:Ayton was born in London in 1786. His father, a son of William Ayton, banker in Lombard Street, later moved sto Macclesfield, Cheshire, and at its grammar school Ayton obtained a knowledge of Latin and Greek...
, who was to write the accompanying text, covered the coast from Land’s End to Holyhead. The following year in August they went from Holyhead to Kirkcudbright. Richard Ayton did not accompany Daniell on the rest of the journey, leaving Daniell to sketch the scenery and also write the text. Daniell’s approach was to make pencil sketches of views that looked interesting, annotating them with details of colour and texture. The sketches included people and scenery. The transfer of the picture from paper to copper in the form of an aquatint plate required great artistic skill and dexterity. The process is very delicate. This was done on his return to London, as was the printing and colouring of the prints. Daniell must have had a very good visual memory of the places he had visited, as up to five years elapsed between the production of the sketches and the prints being completed.
In 1815, Daniell set out in May and travelled north to Wigtown. It is likely that he took the Mail Coach, a journey of 4 to 5 days. On his way north he travelled via Edinburgh, and took advice from many people there on the places to visit on the coast up and around the north of Scotland. One of these people was the romantic novelist Walter Scott. He advised Daniell not only on the places to visit in Scotland, but also provided him with material for inclusion in the accompanying text. Friends in Edinburgh were able to give Daniell letters of introduction to people who were willing to provide hospitality to him on his journey. This was important, as the availability of hostelries was very limited and the quality very dubious.
During July and August 1815 Daniell journeyed around the islands of Eigg, Rum, Skye and Raasay, together with the Hebridean Islands of Harris and Lewis. His trip continued up the west coast of Scotland, around the north coast, out to the Orkney Islands and down the east coast as far south as Dundee. He arrived in Dundee in October 1815. When setting out from London in May, he had not planned to cover so much of the coastline on one visit, but the weather in 1815 was exceptionally favourable, with good visibility and clear skies providing perfect conditions for an artist. This mammoth journey resulted in 139 aquatint prints being finally published, the last completed in 1821.
In August 1821 Daniell once again journeyed north to Saint Andrews. During the months of August and September he went around the coast as far as Southend, finding 28 subjects from which he produced prints. In the period July to September 1822, the journey as far as Torquay, along the popular south coast of England, resulted in a total of 52 published prints, and August and September 1823 brought Daniell back to Land’s End, with a further 31 prints. The final prints of A Voyage Round Great Britain were published on May 20 1825.
A Voyage Round Great Britain was published by Longman in eight volumes over the period 1814 to 1825. The complete set of eight volumes was priced at £60. The final number of prints included was 308. Garvey’s book follows Daniell around part of the voyage, the Hebridean islands of Eigg, Rum, Skye and Raasay, locating the viewpoints included in his aquatint prints.
Over the period 1813 to 1825, in parallel with preparing the prints for the Voyage, Daniell was busy on other projects, which included paintings for the Academy Exhibitions. Many of the works exhibited were oil paintings of Scottish scenes. The artistic quality of the paintings and aquatints produced and published by Daniell for A Voyage Round Great Britain was considered to be very high. The atmospheric effects which he was able to convey in the aquatint medium were quite overwhelming. This was particularly true of his portrayal of ships and maritime scenery, as he had demonstrated in many earlier paintings and prints. In February 1822 after many years of endeavour, Daniell was finally elected an R.A.. In the final ballot the voting was between John Constable and Daniell, the result being 11 to 17.
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.
His shipping scenes, such A Bird’s-Eye View of the East India Dock at Blackwell (National Maritime Museum
National Maritime Museum
The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England is the leading maritime museum of the United Kingdom and may be the largest museum of its kind in the world. The historic buildings forming part of the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site, it also incorporates the Royal Observatory, Greenwich,...
, 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
British Institution
The British Institution was a private 19th-century society in London formed to exhibit the works of living and dead artists; it was also known as the Pall Mall Picture Galleries or the British Gallery...
. Daniell turned to panorama painting before his death, beginning in 1832 with a painting of Madras, including a depiction of the Hindu
Hindu
Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...
mode of taming wild elephant
Elephant
Elephants are large land mammals in two extant genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta, with the third genus Mammuthus extinct...
s.
Daniell’s last great artistic work was produced between 1827 and 1830. Over this time he became interested in the scenery around Windsor. In 1827, 1828 and 1830, he exhibited a total of five oil paintings of Windsor Castle and its surroundings and two oil paintings of Virginia Water, at the Royal Academy Exhibitions. These were considered to be among his finest oil paintings, and according to Sutton, his view of the Long Walk at Windsor was generally acknowledged to be his masterpiece in oils. Daniell produced a set of 12 aquatints of the Windsor and Virginia water views. Sutton paints a beautiful verbal picture of Daniell, the successful artist, enjoying to the full the creation of these aquatint prints. “These twelve prints are the finest aquatints ever made, standing alone at the highest possible peak: aquatint could go no further, and although attempts have been made by others to excel them, none succeeded. The prints were made in Daniell’s usual way, engraved by himself from his own drawings, and published by himself at 14, Russell Place, Fitzroy Square. By this time he was a comparatively wealthy man, and one can imagine him lovingly and carefully tinting the plates, leisurely savouring their subtle beauties, unhampered by time or financial worry. We feel, in looking at these aquatints, that perhaps Daniell, with the philosophy of a much-travelled man, realised that in the cool greys and greens with which he “stained” his prints was the charm of his own land, more enduring than the exotic mystery of the Orient or the strange architecture of Hindistan.”
Daniell worked right up to his death, on August 16 1837 at Brecknock Terrace, Camden Town (now 135 St Pancras Way). The house is marked by a commemorative plaque. He submitted five pictures to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in that year.
The final twist in the story of A Voyage Round Great Britain, was the discovery, in 1962, of 306 of the original 308 Daniell copper plates, the location of which had not been known for more than 100 years. They are now the property of the Tate. It seems appropriate that of all the topographical books of the 19th century it should be copper plates for Daniell’s Voyage Round Great Britain that have survived – they are a monument to his industry and his unsurpassed skill in handling the remarkable delicacy of the aquatint process.
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)
- Europeana: Images by William Daniell