Mrs. Fitzherbert. In the catalogue of 1792 he is styled ‘Painter to the King and Prince of Wales, also to the Duke of York,’ and in this year exhibited a second portrait of the prince of Wales, this time in his uniform as president of the Kentish bowmen. In 1796 he painted the princess of Wales with the infant Princess Charlotte on her knees, which was sent as a present to the Duchess of Brunswick, and he exhibited a portrait of ‘Martha Gunn, a celebrated bathing woman of Brighton,’ a commission from the prince of Wales, and a companion to the ‘Smoaker.’ Of the royal portraits executed by Russell there remain four of the Duke of York and one of the Duchess of Brunswick, which are the property of the crown; the rest, though they were engraved, have disappeared, but the portraits of ‘Smoaker’ and Martha Gunn are still at Buckingham Palace.
At this period Russell was in easy circumstances. A small freehold estate in Dorking was left him in 1781 by a cousin named Sharp. In 1786 he had 600l. a year, and in 1789 he records his income as 1,000l., ‘and probably on the increase.’ He appears to have been well employed as long as he lived, and to have commanded about the same prices as Sir Joshua Reynolds. Despite, however, royal patronage, he never became a fashionable painter, and among his sitters will be found few of the notabilities of the day who were unconnected with the throne or the pulpit. In the latter part of his life he spent much of his time in Yorkshire, especially at Leeds, where he had many friends and executed some of his best works. In his own opinion his finest picture (1796) was a group of Mrs. Jeans and her two sons, now at Shorwell Vicarage, Isle of Wight, which has been engraved under the title of ‘Mother's Holiday.’ Among his portraits, interesting for their subjects, are: Philip Stanhope, the son of Lord Chesterfield; John Bacon, the sculptor; Bartolozzi, the engraver; Cowper, the poet; William Wilberforce, the philanthropist (1801); Admiral Bligh of the Bounty; Mrs. Jordan, Mrs. Siddons; the Rev. John Newton of Olney (in the possession of the Church Missionary Society); the Earl of Exeter and a group of his three children by the ‘dairymaid’ countess; Jack Bannister and John Palmer, the actors (both at the Garrick Club); Sir James Smith, founder of the Linnean Society (in the possession of the society); Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Robert Merry (Della Crusca). He painted also a few fancy pieces, mostly of children. One of them, ‘Girl with Cherries,’ is in the Louvre. Several portraits and pictures were painted for Dr. Robert James Thornton, and were engraved for Thornton's ‘Illustrations of the Sexual System of Linnæus’ (1799). The portraits include those of Dr. J. E. Smith and A. B. Bourke, which now belong to the Linnean Society.
Of the few pictures painted by Russell in oil, the best are: ‘Mrs. Plowden and Children,’ Charles Wesley, Samuel Wesley when a boy, and the Rev. J. Chandler when a boy, in cricketing costume.
In 1772 Russell published ‘The Elements of Painting with Crayons,’ a second and enlarged edition of which appeared in 1777. He also wrote two essays for Sir Joshua Reynolds (now in the British Museum in the Ward collection of manuscripts). One is on ‘Prosaic Numbers, or Rhythm in Prose,’ and the other on ‘Taste.’ They are stilted in style and full of platitudes. He is said to have written three short articles in the ‘Evangelical Magazine,’ of which he was one of the original committee.
Russell was also an astronomer, and was introduced, about 1784, to Sir William Herschel, whose portrait, painted by Russell, is at Littlemore, Oxford. He made, with the assistance of his daughter, a lunar map, which he engraved on two plates which formed a globe showing the visible surface of the moon. It took twenty years to finish, and is now in the Radcliffe observatory of Oxford. He also invented an apparatus for exhibiting the phenomena of the moon, which he called ‘Selenographia.’ One of these is at the Radcliffe observatory, and another in the possession of Mr. F. H. Webb. An explanatory pamphlet, with a folding plate and another illustration, was printed by W. Faden in 1797; and a further pamphlet was issued after his death by his son William.
Russell kept his diary in the Byrom system of shorthand; it ends on 4 Jan. 1801. In 1803 he became deaf after an attack of cholera, in 1804 his father died, and in 1806 he went to Hull, where he was visited by Kirke White. He died of typhus fever on 20 April 1806, and was buried under the choir of Holy Trinity, Hull.
Russell was a constant exhibitor at the Royal Academy from 1769 to 1805, and three of his pictures were sent to the exhibition of 1806. Altogether 332 works of his appeared on the academy walls, and he executed from seven to eight hundred portraits. Many of these are missing, probably on account of the material (crayon), which, though permanent when well treated, is easily destroyed beyond repair.
Of his twelve sons, William Russell (1780–1870), exhibited portraits at the Royal Academy from 1805 to 1809. The National
