Myles Birket Foster, R.W.S. (1825-1899)

Birket Foster, who moved from North Shields to London aged five, was apprenticed at the age of about sixteen to Ebenezer Landells (1808-1860), a leading wood engraver. He executed a number of watercolours of both the Tower of London and Richmond Park during his life, slightly varying the view or the details each time. A similar watercolour of the Tower of London was sold in these Rooms on 8 July 1997, which showed the same stretch of river and view of the Tower, but with a different arrangement of boats in the water below.

A set of engravings published to accompany Richmond and other Poems by C. Ellis, brother of Sir J. Whittaker Ellis, Bt. (1829-1912), bears Landells' signature as engraver, but were in fact cut from Birket Foster's drawings, although his name is not recorded.