Richard Redgrave

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Redgrave, Richard (1804–88). English painter, writer, and art administrator. He began as a painter of anecdotal literary subjects, often in 18th-century costume, but in the 1840s he became a pioneer of scenes of contemporary social concern (The Poor Teacher, 1845, Shipley AG, Gateshead). ‘It is one of my most gratifying feelings’, he wrote, ‘that many of my best efforts in art have aimed at calling attention to the trials and struggles of the poor and the oppressed.’ Much of his later career was taken up with administration—the posts he held included Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures and keeper of pictures at the South Kensington (later Victoria and Albert) Museum—and as a painter he turned mainly to landscapes done in his spare time. His brother, Samuel Redgrave (1802–76), was a writer on art, the author of a still-useful Dictionary of Artists of the English School (1874). The brothers collaborated on A Century of Painters of the English School (1866), a valuable source of information on 18th- and 19th-century British artists, many of whom they knew personally.