1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Callcott, Sir Augustus Wall

CALLCOTT, SIR AUGUSTUS WALL (1779–1844), English landscape painter, was born at Kensington in 1779 and died there in 1844. His first study was music; and he sang for several years in the choir of Westminster Abbey. But at the age of twenty he had determined to give up music, and had exhibited his first painting at the Royal Academy. He gradually rose to distinction, and was elected an associate in 1807 and an academician in 1810. In 1827 he received the honour of knighthood; and, seven years later, was appointed surveyor of the royal pictures. His two principal subject pictures—“Raphael and the Fornarina,” and “Milton dictating to his Daughters,” are much inferior to his landscapes, which are placed in the highest class by their refined taste and quiet beauty.

His wife, Maria, Lady Callcott (1786–1844), whom he married in 1827, was a daughter of Admiral Dundas and widow of Captain Thomas Graham, R.N. (d. 1822). With her first husband she travelled in India, South Africa and South America, where she acted for some time as teacher of Donna Maria, who became queen of Portugal in 1826; and in the company of her second husband she spent much time in the south of Europe. She published accounts of her visits to India (1812), and to the environs of Rome (1820); Memoirs of Poussin (1820); a History of France; a History of Spain (1828); Essays toward a History of Painting (1836); Little Arthur’s History of England (1836); and the Scripture Herbal (1842).