Biographies

William Davis (1812-1873) The National Museums of Liverpool website has this to say about this painter (): http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/pre-raphaelites/bidston.asp William Davis (1812-1873), born in Dublin, trained in the Liverpool Academy Schools from 1846 until about 1849 and was Professor of Drawing there from 1856-59. He was one of the Liverpool artists who adopted Pre-Raphaelite practice. Davis was friendly with the Pre-Raphaelite London circle, and was a member of the Hogarth Club. Most of his work was done for local Liverpool patrons. In 1870, he moved to London. Ruskin disapproved of Davis’s works, considering them like some of Ford Madox Brown’s landscapes, not grand enough in conception or choice of subject. The suggested parallel with Madox Brown is just, although Davis never equalled his skills as a painter, for it is precisely the ‘matter of fact’ unheroic quality of these little works that is their peculiar strength, and merits their consideration alongside Madox Brown’s Finchley and Hendon landscapes of the 1850s.