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(1) William Havell
(b Reading, 9 Feb 1782; d London, 16 Dec 1857). Painter. The son of a Reading drawing-master, he participated in several sketching societies in the early 19th century. In 1805 he contributed to the first exhibition held by the Society of Painters in Water-colours, of which he was a founder-member. At the same time he began to establish himself as an oil painter, in the manner of Richard Wilson and J. M. W. Turner, exhibiting at the Royal Academy and the British Institution. Initial success was followed by mounting criticism of his idealized treatment of brightly sunlit subjects. The disillusioned Havell accepted the post of official artist to the embassy of China led by William Pitt, Earl Amherst of Arracan (1773–1857), which set out in 1816; Havell was able to sketch the Chinese countryside as the embassy took the return route overland from Beijing to Guangzhou. From there he moved to India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where he spent six years painting portraits and landscapes before returning to England in 1826. In 1828–9 he travelled in Italy. Subsequently he remained in England, exhibiting vivid landscapes that did not bring him the renown that he had once seemed likely to achieve.
Part of the Havell family
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