early works, and especially in ‘Abel the Shepherd,’ and in ‘Christ and the Woman of Samaria,’ exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1825. In 1827 he was present at Blake's death, and had the sad privilege of closing the poet's eyes; he and a little band of young enthusiasts, of whom he was the last survivor, followed Blake to his grave in Bunhill Fields. In 1828 Richmond went to Paris to study art and anatomy, the expenses of the journey being met from money earned by painting miniatures in England before leaving and in France during his stay. He spent a winter in the schools and hospitals, and saw something of the social life of the Paris of Charles X; at Calais he exchanged pinches of snuff with the exiled Beau Brummell.
On his return to England he spent some time at the White Lodge, Richmond Park, with Lord Sidmouth, who gave him much valuable counsel, and whose portrait by him in watercolour is now in the National Portrait Gallery. In 1830 his contributions to the academy comprised two poetical subjects, ‘The Eve of Separation’ and ‘The Witch,’ from Ben Jonson's ‘Sad Shepherdess,’ and three portraits. In 1831 he exhibited but one picture, ‘The Pilgrim.’ He had now formed a deep attachment to Julia, a beautiful daughter of Charles Heathcote Tatham, the architect, and when her father revoked the consent he had at first given to their union, the young couple ran away, journeyed to Scotland by coach in the deep snow of a severe winter, and were married according to Scottish law at Gretna Green in January 1831. This act proved the turning-point of Richmond's career, and determined him to adopt portraiture as the readiest means of earning a living. Soon after the young couple had set up house in Northumberland Street, they were found and befriended by Sir Robert Harry Inglis, and it was at his instance that the portrait in watercolour of William Wilberforce, afterwards engraved by Samuel Cousins, was painted by Richmond; this picture, by its happy treatment of a difficult subject, and by the excellence of the engraving after it, achieved a world-wide success. There followed immediately many successful watercolour portraits, among which may be mentioned those of Lord Teignmouth, the Frys, the Gurneys, the Buxtons, the Upchers, and the Thorntons, all traceable to Inglis's friendly introduction. In 1837 Richmond was forced to take a rest for the sake of his health, which had broken down through overwork and the loss of three children within a very short time. He went to Rome with his wife and their surviving child Thomas, accompanied by Samuel Palmer and his bride, a daughter of John Linnell. During his stay in Italy, which lasted about two years, he made studies and copies of many of the subjects on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, having a scaffolding erected so as to reach the vault; here he made the acquaintance of Cardinal Mezzofanti, of whose colloquial English he always spoke with wonder. Subsequently he visited Naples, Pompeii, and the cities of Tuscany with Mr. Baring, for whom he painted a picture of ‘The Journey to Emmaus.’ While still in Rome he painted a picture of ‘Comus,’ afterwards exhibited. In Rome Richmond made many valuable friends, including Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone (then Miss Glynn), Dr. (now Sir Henry) Acland, the Severns, Thomas Baring, Mr. (now Lord) Farrer, and John Sterling, and his house on the Tarpeian rock was a meeting-place for these young English travellers. John Sterling, in letters to Richard Chenevix Trench [q. v.], writes of Richmond as the most interesting young artist he had met. In after years he was one of the original members of the Sterling Club. He returned to England in 1839, and resumed his practice as a portrait-painter, revisiting Rome, however, with his brother Thomas in 1840. Then, as related in ‘Præterita,’ Richmond made the friendship of Mr. Ruskin, whom he was afterwards the means of introducing to Thomas Carlyle. About the same period Richmond travelled in Germany with John Hullah, and at Munich he studied for a while under Peter von Cornelius.
Subsequently, for more than forty years, Richmond prosecuted portraiture in England uninterruptedly and with great success. Till about 1846 he worked almost entirely in crayon and watercolour, but he then began to paint in oil, in which medium he produced a large number of excellent portraits. There were few men of eminence in the middle of the century who did not sit to him, and many of his portraits were engraved. The Victorian Exhibition held at the New Gallery in the winter of 1891–2 contained eight of his portraits in oil, forty in crayon, and two (Mrs. Fry and Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, both dated 1845) in watercolour. The oil pictures included Earl Granville, Archbishop Longley (1863), Bishops Selwyn and Wilberforce, Canon Liddon, and Sir George Gilbert Scott, R.A. (1877). Among the crayon portraits were Cardinal Newman (1844), John Keble, Henry Hallam (1843), Charlotte Brontë (1850), Mrs. Gaskell (1851), Lord Macaulay (1844 and 1850), Sir Charles Lyell (1853), Faraday (1852), and Lord Lyndhurst (1847). He also drew or painted
