Moses Webster, White Current & Strawberry Berries – c.1820s watercolour painting

Moses Webster White Current & Strawberry Berries

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View the full Collection: Sharp Family Regency Collection

An original c.1820s watercolour painting – Moses Webster, White Current & Strawberry Berries.

A very fine botanical painting by the celebrated Derby Porcelain factory artist Moses Webster (1792–1870).

Webster is thought to have trained at the Worcester drawing school run by Thomas Baxter (1782–1821). Baxter had studied at the Royal Academy School under Henri Fuseli and had perfected the art of porcelain painting at his father’s decorating studio in London. Webster is believed to have worked at London decorators Robins and Randall in 1817, and at the Nantgarw pottery, which was established by the influential porcelain artist William Billingsley (1758–1828) in 1813.

Webster then replaced William Billingsley at the Derby Porcelain factory, specialising in flower painting in an English Romantic style, and becoming one of the leading painters of the Bloor period. He painted the original Dyrham Park Trotter Service, which has since given its name to all pieces painted in this distinctive pattern of exquisite central flower sprays, with alternate chrome green panels. His flower painting technique is quite distinctive and embodies a soft, fluffy, cotton wool feel.

Webster later left the Derby Works to give drawing lessons in Derby town and to work as a watercolourist.

Works by Moses Webster are in the British Museum and V&A collections.

This is one of two botanical watercolours by Webster that we have for sale (see KE-222).

Sharp Family Regency Collection

This picture forms part of a collection of Regency friendship pictures that were bequeathed to Sir Tom Hickinbotham (1903–1983), a colonial administrator who served as governor of Aden, by his maternal aunts, Alice Rose Mary and Gertrude Sharp. The album was watermarked 1817, with pictures dating mainly to the 1820s, which corresponds with two generations prior, that of Hickinbotham's great-grandfather, Cato Sharp (c.1772–1832) and his great-grandmother, Elizabeth Ensor.

Cato Sharp, a native of Birmingham, was a successful and influential foreman for the goldsmiths Rundell and Bridge in Dean Street, Soho, London. Rundell and Bridge were the official Royal Goldsmiths to four successive British monarchs. Leading artists such as Thomas Stothard (1755–1834), John Flaxman (1755–1826) and the enamel painter William Essex (c.1784–1869) worked as designers for Rundell and Bridge. It is possible that this collection includes works by artists associated with the goldsmith company.

Theophilus Sharp (1817–1895) (son of Cato Sharp and father to Alice Rose Mary and Gertrude), was a rector of various parishes, including in Worcester and at Ansley, Warwickshire (1866–7) of which there is a drawing in the collection. He married at Burton-on-Trent.

There is also a connection to Derbyshire in the collection, through two beautiful botanical works by the Derby Porcelain factory artist Moses Webster (1792–1870), and through a drawing of Dovedale by Caroline Anne Hurt (1810–1897) of Alderwasley Hall, Wirksworth, Derbyshire. Caroline Hurt subsequently married Edward Davies Davenport, living at Capesthorne Hall. She was a close friend of the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, who frequently visited Capesthorne Hall. Hurt later married Edward Littleton, 1st Baron Hatherton.

There is a fine portrait of Lord Byron in the collection. There are also some interesting miniature drawings of scenes from Shakespeare.