Landscape painter to William IV and the teacher of John Leech and Thackeray, Henry William Burgess (c.1792–1839) was part of a well-known dynasty of painters who flourished in the 18th and 19th centuries. He was known particularly for his drawings of trees and landscapes.
Burgess was a drawing master at Charterhouse School and became landscape painter to William IV in 1826; it was landscape drawing and painting at which he excelled and he was known particularly for his drawings of trees. In 1827, with the lithographer Charles Joseph Hullmandel (1789–1850), he published a book of prints after his drawings, with the subtitle: Views of the general Character and Appearance of Trees Foreign & Indigenous as connected with picturesque Scenery. Many of Burgess's works are romanticised topographical scenes, where emphasis is as much on the art of drawing itself as about the subjects depicted. Trees, with their exuberant foliage and gnarled, twisted branches provide a fine subject for the tonal variety achievable in graphite and subsequent lithography. Sepia ink sketches and watercolour wash drawings in the collection also show the artist's mastery of tonal gradation and freedom of line. Burgess and Hullmandel were among the earliest practitioners of lithography in England. Burgess's attention to the qualities of light exhibited inks him to his contemporaries John Constable and J.M.W. Turner.
H.W. Burgess was based in Chelsea like the rest of his family. He gave drawing lessons to the Marquesses of Lothian in the late 1820s and early 1830s.
Between 1809 and 1839 he exhibited many works at the Royal Academy, the Suffolk Street Gallery and the New Water-Colour Society in London. His works can be found in the Royal Collection, British Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven.
