WILLIAM SIMPSON, RI (1823-1899)


NATIVITY SCENE, IN A CHURCH AT BRINDISI, CHRISTMAS. 1869	THE TOMB OF OMAR KHAYAM, NISHAPUR

William Simpson was born in Glasgow on 28 October 1823, and educated in that city and in Perth. Intending to become an engineer, he spent some time in an architect’s office, but was then apprenticed to a local firm of lithographers. Moving to London in 1851, he began to undertake a number of exciting assignments as an employee of Day & Son, and was able to claim to be the first Special Artist to be involved in action. He was sent to the Baltic by Colnaghi to record the naval battles which instigated the Crimean War, and arrived in the Crimea itself in 1854, only two weeks after the Battle of Inkerman. The resulting lithographic folio, Illustrations of the War in the East, was the first of his many books. In the same period, he toured Circassia with the Duke of Newcastle. He spent three years in India between 1859 and 1862, in the aftermath of the Mutiny, making architectural and archeological sketches, and visiting Kashmir and Tibet.

In 1866, Day & Son went bankrupt, and Simpson began to work for the Illustrated London News. He was sent to St Petersburg to record the marriage of the future Tsar Alexander III, and also toured Russia with the Prince of Wales, taking in Jerusalem on his return journey. Through the late eighteen-sixties and the eighteen-seventies he increased the rate of his travels. In 1868 he accompanied Napier on his expedition to Abyssinia expedition, and in 1869 was present at the opening of the Suez Canal. He covered the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, and then the resulting Paris Commune. In 1872 he went to China for the wedding of the Emperor, subsequently visiting Japan and returning across America. He was in India with the Prince of Wales in 1875, Asia Minor in 1877 and Afghanistan in 1878-79 and again in 1884-85.

Though Simpson worked chiefly in monochrome for his assignments, he exhibited a number of watercolours and oils, from 1874, at the Royal Society of British Artists and the New Society of Painters in Water-Colours. Elected an associate of the NWS in 1874 and a full member five years later, he was instrumental in transforming the society into the Royal Institute of Painters in Water-Colours in 1884. He then settled at Willesden and devoted himself to writing. He died in London on 17 April 1899. His autobiography was published posthumously in 1903.

Further reading:
Mr William Simpson of ‘The Illustrated London News’: Pioneer War Artist, 1823-1899, London: Fine Art Society, 1987