1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Redgrave, Richard

REDGRAVE, RICHARD (1804–1888), English artist, was born at Pimlico on the 30th of April 1804, and worked at first as a designer. He became a student in the Royal Academy Schools in 1826, and was elected an Associate in 1840 and an Academician in 1851 (retired, 1882). His "Gulliver on the Farmer's Table" (1837) made his reputation as a painter. He began in 1847 in connexion with Government Art Schools which lasted for a long term of years, and among other posts he held those of inspector-general of art in the Science and Art Department, and art director of South Kensington Museum. He was greatly instrumental in the establishment of this institution, and he claimed the credit of having secured the Sheepshanks and Ellison gifts for the nation. He was also surveyor of the royal pictures. He was also offered, but declined, a knighthood in 1869. Redgrave was an assiduous painter of landscape and genre; his best pictures being "Country Cousins" (1848) and "The Return of Olivia" (1848), both in the national collection, "The Sempstress" (1844), "Well Spring in the Forest" (1865). He died on the 14th of December 1888.

See the Memoir by F. M. Redgrave, 1891.