He was an accomplished portraitist, & throughout his life he had a considerable output of portraits of ’the great & the good.’ Like many other serious minded Victorian artists, he was not comfortable with being ‘merely’ a portrait painter. He travelled to Italy, therefore, to study great works of the Old Masters. Richmond painted large scale classical pictures following this visit. These works show the influence of Lord Leighton, in their high degree of finish, & father static nature. He was elected a Royal Academician in 1895. He lived well into the 20^th century, when his art was deeply unfashionable.

Obituary - The Times Monday, February 14, 1921

A Famous Portrait Painter - Death of Sir W.B. Richmond.

We regret to announce that Sir William Blake Richmond, KCB RA, died on Friday at Beavor Lodge, Hammersmith aged 78. If heredity counts for anything in art, Sir William Richmond had every claim to be an artist, for not only was he the son of the distinguished portrait painter George Richmond RA, he was the grandson of Thomas Richmond, a prolific and successful miniature painter, whilst his grandmother was the daughter of George Engleheart, the contemporary and rival of Conway.

He was born in London in 1843, and partly for reasons of health was educated privately; which as his parents were highly cultivated people and their house a centre of artistic society, rather of the imaginative and even mystical type, meant that the boy was bred upon art and music. The household friends were men like Samuel Palmer and Edward Calvert, while over them all brooded the memory of William Blake, to walk with whom George Richmond used to say ‘was like walking with the Prophet Isiah.

After the friend of his father William Blake Richmond was named. In early boyhood he had a passion for music, but before he was 14 he had turned to drawing and entered the RA Schools. At this date he was much influenced by the group of Pre-Raphaelites, men several years older than himself and already coming to the front-Holman Hunt, Millais, and Burne-Jones-and perhaps still more by their great literary advocate John Ruskin. Partly stimulated by them, and partly by a first visit to Italy, he painted several pictures, chiefly illustrating poetical or classical legend, or Bible stories a class of work he preferred above all others, even when he had become, in the sixties and seventies, a favourite portrait painter. We may so far anticipate matters as to say that the pictures at which he worked hardest, and into which he put most of himself shown to the end of the century were such as ‘ The Death of Ulysses, The Song of Miriam,’ and best of all ‘An Audience at Athens during the performance of Agamenmon,’ Several of theses are in public galleries, the last mentioned is in Birmingham, where in spite of the modern reaction in favour of more realistic work, it still compels admiration.

The same may still be said of several of the portraits, especially the ‘Lady Hood,’ and the ‘Andrew Long,’ and the beautiful ‘Three Daughters of Dean Liddell,’ a work of about 1870. The picture of Long in particular is admirable, not only for its design and execution, but for its grasp of character. Richmond had many sitters amongst eminent men; Mr Gladstone sat to him twice; he painted Darwin and Browning;  and in 1887, when we still thought Germany friendly to us, he went to Berlin and painted Prince Bismarck.

At a later stage he was given the formidable commission to decorate St Paul’s Cathedral, and to this work for many years he gave his utmost energies. There were many who thought it a mistake to attempt such a colossal undertaking, seeing that it is quite uncertain that Wren ever contemplated anything of the kind for his great church, and seeing that mosaic decoration has never taken root in England, but Richmond was courageous enough to make the effort, filled as he was with Italian memories and Italian ideas. As everybody knows, the work so far as it has gone, has been as much attacked as praised. We shall not venture to decide between the critics and admirers. It may be enough to say that Richmond’s solid reputation will rest rather on his portraits, often beautiful and always full of the truth of character, and upon some at least of his large ‘historical,’ or rather ideal pictures, of which ‘The Audience at Athens has the most enduring merit.

Sir William Richmond, who had known and loved Assisi well since 1868, when he spent a summer in that city, published in 1919 ‘ Assisi Impressions of  Half A Century.’ In this book recollections of blissful days with his paint-box among the kindly friars and genial farm folk, mingle with his discourse on the upper and lower churches, and the hills and valleys of the neighbourhood. A number of his own sketches reproduced in colour, illustrate many of his reminiscences.

The ‘Anti Waste,’ movement found in Sir William Richmond a strong supporter. In 1920, the following letter by him was read at a meeting organised by the Hammersmith Middle Classes and Ratepayers Union, to protest against increases in the rates assessments:

I am confident that the ratepayers will win, but to do so they must not hear the worthy little magnates who think that they can throw about our money as they please in extravagance and wages of all kinds. We can only be their masters if we do not provide them with the money to play with. Keep them short of cash, and they will be obliged to exercise reasonable economy. If we ratepayers give in now we shall say goodbye to our freedom. Let us not be so feeble as to do that.

Sir William Richmond succeded Ruskin as Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford (1878-1883), and received the honorary DCL Degree. He became RA in 1900, and was created KCB two years later. In 1887 he married a daughter of Mr William Richards of Cardiff, and, with his wife and family was for many years the centre of an interesting group of friends. His home, Beavor Lodge in Hammersmith, is a charming house in the midst of a large old world garden.