William Callow RWS

1812 - 1908

William Callow was born in Greenwich and apprenticed to the artist Copley Fielding, who taught him the technique of plein-air sketching. He went on to study under Theodore and Thales Fielding, who found him work as an engraver in Paris. There he was encouraged by Thomas Shotter Boys to work in watercolour, and after exhibiting a watercolour of Richmond Hill in the Paris Salon of 1831, he was offered a job teaching the family of King Louis Philippe I of France. His work was also achieving acclaim in England, and after being elected to the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, he returned to London in 1841. He continued to travel widely on the Continent and had a large number of pupils. In 1855, he moved to Great Missenden, in Buckinghamshire, where he died. Callow was one of the outstanding figures of high Victorian watercolour, continuing the landscape, maritime and architectural tradition practised by masters such as Varley, Prout and Cox into the twentieth century. He was a brilliant draughtsman and sketcher in front of the subject, using a deceptively loose and energetic technique with brush and pencil to convey anything from crowd scenes to architectural form and detail, which he could capture with an energy not seen again in British art until the emergence of John Piper.