William Westall (1781–1850) grew up in London and was taught draw by his elder half-brother Richard, who was drawing master to Princess (later, Queen) Victoria. In 1799 he was admitted to the Royal Academy Schools, but the following year was appointed landscape artist to the Investigator expedition, led by the naval navigator and cartographer Matthew Flinders, to circumnavigate Australia. During the voyage, he made many pencil-and-wash landscapes, some representations of Indigenous people and the first known European copies of Aboriginal cave paintings. Many of Westall’s drawings were ‘wetted and partly destroyed’ when the Porpoise (aboard which Flinders and other expeditioners were returning to England) ran aground on Wreck Reef in 1803. Those drawings that were salvaged were restored by his brother Richard. After spending some time in China and India, Westall returned to London in 1805 before travelling to Madeira and Jamaica. On commission from the Admiralty, Westall painted nine oils from his Investigator sketches that were later engraved to illustrate Flinders’s A Voyage to Terra Australis (1814). Westall's marriage in 1820 produced four sons. This required him to earn a steady income through illustration work rather than the grand, picturesque landscape painting he preferred. Even in the topographical landcape in Australia, he sought to impose a picturesque aesthetic. During the last decade of his life, his health declined. Westall's later work has not been subjected to much critical analysis, but his contemporary and friend John Landseer considered that he was underrated, and a better artist than those on Captain Cook's expeditions. Landseer thought that Westall would have received more recognition, were he not "a mild and unobtrusive man, whilst the others were pushing and solicitous."