Richard Redgrave

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"The Outcast" by Richard Redgrave

Richard Redgrave (30 April 1804 - 14 December 1888) was an English artist born in Pimlico. He worked at first as a designer. He became a student in the Royal Academy Schools in 1826, and was elected an Associate in 1840 and an Academician in 1851 (retired, 1882). His Gulliver on the Farmers Table (1837) made his reputation as a painter. He began in 1847 a connection with the Government Art Schools which lasted for a long term of years, and among other posts he held those of inspector-general of art in the Science and Art Department, and art director of the South Kensington Museum. He was greatly instrumental in the establishment of this institution, and he claimed the credit of having secured the Sheepshanks and Ellison gifts for the nation. He was also surveyor of the royal pictures. He was offered, but declined, a knighthood in 1869. Redgrave was an assiduous painter of landscape and genre; his best pictures being Country Cousins (1848) and The Return of Olivia (1848), The Sempstress (1844), Well Spring in the Forest (1865).