The National Portrait Gallery site, which describes the Liverpool-born artist as an animal painter, explains that he “specialised in sporting and animal subjects and, in the 1840s, followed the vogue for Highland paintings in the manner of Landseer. He travelled to Spain in 1856 and 1857, after which many Spanish genre and landscape subjects appeared in his work.” The National Portrait Gallery also has in its collection portraits described as “after Richard Andsell,” including those of Thomas Gibbs, Henry Handley, and Charles Anderson-Pelham, 1st Earl of Yarborough. Hilary Beck’s Victorian Engravings includes mezzotint and engraved reproductions of his paintings that show Andsell used his talents as an animal painter in genres as different as military and anti-slavery paintings. — George P. Landow
Works
Bibliography
Beck, Hilary. Victorian Engravings. London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 1973.
Wood, Christopher. Victorian Panorama — Paintings of Victorian Life, 1976, plate 130.
The Blessed Damozel: Women and Children in Victorian Art. London: Christopher Wood Gallery, 1980. No. 4.
Last modified 21 February 2020