Portrait of Williamson by James Paterson (click on the image for more information).
Daniel Alexander Williamson was born at Islington in Liverpool on 24 September 1823, the son of Daniel Williamson, who was also a painter and a member of the Liverpool Academy. Art obviously ran in his family because he was grandson of the artist John Williamson and the nephew of Samuel Williamson, the Liverpool landscape and marine painter. D. A. Williamson began his artistic career as draughtsman apprenticed to a local Liverpool cabinet maker. He then turned to painting portraits, examples of which he exhibited at the Liverpool Academy from 1848-51, before becoming primarily a landscape painter.
Williamson left Liverpool for London in 1847, living there for the next fourteen years, initially in Islington and later in Peckham. In 1857 he moved to No 2 Albert Cottages, Denmark Road in Camberwell where he stayed until 1861. While in London he attended the life classes run by James Matthew Leigh in Newman Street, Bloomsbury. During his time in London Williamson made paintings and drawings of cattle and sheep on Peckham Common and he continued to send pictures to exhibitions in Liverpool. From the years 1850–67 Williamson exhibited 28 of his paintings at the Liverpool Academy and in 1863 he exhibited two paintings at the Liverpool Institution of Fine Arts. He was never elected a member of the Liverpool Academy, however.
Williamson's work from the 1850s shows little awareness of Pre-Raphaelitism and it is only in the early 1860s that he turned to landscape painting under the influence of the first phase of this movement. He apparently did not know any of the members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood personally.
In 1861 Williamson left London to return to north Lancashire. He initially resided at the village of Warton-in-Carnforth and then from 1864 at Broughton-in-Furness in the Duddon Valley in Cumbria where he remained for the remainder of his life. He had married Emma Ellen Parkinson on 22 March 1861, when both were resident in London, but the couple were to have no children.
Early on following his return to Lancashire he continued to paint works in a Pre-Raphaelite manner. He went on regular painting trips with his fellow Liverpool artist William Lindsay Windus. Windus had been closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelites in the 1850s and he likely influenced Williamson towards painting in meticulous detail with jewel-like colours. Williamson exhibited in London at the Royal Academy from 1853-58, as well as at the Society of British Artists, the Dudley Gallery, the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, and later at the International Society of Sculptors, Painters, and Gravers After the mid-1860s he broadened his style and painted mainly in watercolours, initially due to an accident which limited his painting outdoors. He died at Broughton-in-Furness on 12 February 1903 and was buried in a local churchyard, likely that of St Mary Magdalene.
Although perhaps not well known today, Marillier recounted that Williamson was well respected by his contemporaries: "It is recorded that Mr. G. F. Watts, Mr. Joseph Israels, and other competent judges have thought very highly of Williamson's work, and place him in the ranks of true genius" (240). The greatest collector of Williamson's works was James Smith of Blundellsands who left a large collection of his work, particularly in watercolour, to the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, and the Williamson Art Gallery and Museum, Birkenhead.
Bibliography
Marillier, Harry C. The Liverpool School of Painters. London: John Murray, 1904, 237-240.
Smith, James. Two Liverpool Artists: In Memoriam. Privately printed, not dated.
Created 16 August 2024