Master Art

William Shayer was born in Southampton in 1788. He painted landscapes, with rustic figures and animals and spent most of his life in Hampshire and the New Forest.

He exhibited at the Society of British Artists in Suffolk Street, at the Royal Academy from 1820 – 1843 and at the British Institute.

He is represented in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and museums in Glasgow, Leicester, Sunderland and Montreal.

He attained a great prominence in his own lifetime and he was favoured by contemporary critics. He worked within the tradition of Morland and Wheatley, depicting idealized rural scenes of England unscarred by the Industrial Revolution. Shayer sometimes collaborated with Edward Charles Williams, another fine painter of the English countryside.