Directory of Warwickshire, inclusive of some portions of the ancient histories of Rous, Camden, Speed, and Dugdale,’ Birmingham, 1830, 8vo (with etchings and map and Birmingham directory). 4. ‘Picturesque Views and Descriptions of Cities, Towns, Castles, and Mansions, and other Objects of interesting Features in Staffordshire and Shropshire, from Original Drawings taken expressly for this Work by Frederick Calvert,’ Birmingham, 1830–31, 2 vols. 4to. 5. ‘Three Hundred and Fifty Years' Retrospection of an old Bookseller, containing an Account of the Origin and Progress of Printing, &c.,’ Cork, 1835, 8vo (plates, supplementary to No. 2). 6. ‘Description of some of the principal Paintings, Machinery, Models, Apparatus, and other Curiosities at the Leeds Public Exhibition, by W. West and E. Baines, junr.,’ Leeds, 1839, 8vo. 7. ‘The Aldine Magazine of Biography, Bibliography, Criticism, and the Arts,’ vol. i. 1839, London (edited by West, who contributed ‘Letters to my Son at Rome,’ which are full of interesting information relating to contemporary booksellers; the magazine ran from 1 Dec. 1838 to June 1839).
[West's Fifty Years' Recollections, 1830; Gent. Mag. 1855, ii. 214; Nichols's Lit. Illustr. 1858, viii. 523; Allibone's Dict. of Engl. Lit.]
WESTALL, RICHARD (1765–1836), historical painter, came of a Norwich family, but was born at Hertford in 1765. In 1779 he was apprenticed to an heraldic engraver on silver named John Thompson in Gutter Lane, Cheapside. While he was thus employed, the miniature-painter John Alefounder [q. v.] remarked his ability, and advised him to become a painter. He studied after his day's work at an evening school of art with such success that he was able to exhibit a portrait-drawing in 1784 at the Royal Academy, where he was admitted a student in 1785. On completing the term of his apprenticeship in 1786, he commenced his career as an artist, and soon attracted attention by his large and highly finished drawings in watercolour at the Royal Academy. These were chiefly of historical subjects, ‘Jubal,’ ‘Esau seeking Isaac's Blessing,’ ‘Mary Queen of Scots on her Way to Execution,’ ‘Sappho chanting the Hymn of Love,’ ‘Hesiod instructing the Greeks,’ and the like. They were varied by portraits and by pictures in oils of rustic subjects. Westall became an associate in 1792 and an academician in 1794. From 1790 to 1794 he lived at 57 Greek Street, the corner house of Soho Square, which he shared with Thomas Lawrence, each of the artists placing his name on one of the two entrances to the house. In 1794 Westall removed to 54 Upper Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square.
About this time he took to the illustration of books, which continued throughout his life to be his principal occupation. He was employed at first by Alderman John Boydell [q. v.] , for whose ‘Shakespeare’ he designed a number of illustrations between 1795 and 1802, in addition to painting five pictures for the ‘Shakespeare Gallery,’ which were engraved on a larger scale. For Boydell, too, he designed his illustrations to ‘Milton.’ He was also employed by Macklin, and was a contributor to Bowyer's ‘History of England.’ Early in the nineteenth century he was working chiefly for John Sharpe of Piccadilly, who published a very large number of Westall's designs in Park's ‘British Classics’ (1805–9), and in his small editions of the English poets, Milton, Young, Thomson, Goldsmith, Cowper, Beattie, and others (1816–17). For Sharpe, too, he illustrated Scott's ‘Marmion’ in 1809, and Johnson's ‘Rasselas’ in 1817. For the firm of Longmans he illustrated Scott's ‘Lord of the Isles’ (1813), Campbell's ‘Pleasures of Hope’ (1818) and ‘Gertrude of Wyoming’ (1822). Murray published his illustrations to Byron (1819) and Crabbe (1822). Among other books illustrated by Westall may be mentioned his own volume of poems, ‘A Day in Spring,’ 1808, with plates engraved by James and Charles Heath; ‘Illustrations to the Bible,’ thirty-one plates by Charles Heath, 1813; ‘Victories of the Duke of Wellington,’ twelve aquatint plates by Thales Fielding, 1819; ‘The Pilgrim's Progress’ and ‘Don Quixote,’ 1820; Southey's ‘Roderick,’ 1824; and John Hobart Caunter's ‘Illustrations of the Bible,’ 1835–6, 2 vols., with woodcuts after Westall and John Martin. This is by no means an exhaustive list of Westall's work in book illustration. He was second only to Stothard in the abundance with which he supplied designs to the engravers on steel trained in the school of the two Heaths, and in the popularity which his illustrations enjoyed. For their artistic merit there is not very much to be said. They soon degenerated into mannerism, and in the feminine types especially there is great monotony.
Westall was at his best in watercolour, and was the leader of a reform in figure-painting in this medium, contemporaneous with that of Thomas Girtin [q. v.] in landscape. The brilliancy of his colouring was considered novel and astonishing in his own day, though he made large use of opaque pigments. A watercolour drawing by him,
