Keeley Halswelle
1832 – 1891
Keeley Halswelle was born on April 23, 1832 in Richmond, Surrey. He was from a Scottish family established near London. He was a painter of genre scenes, landscapes, a watercolourist and illustrator. He studied at the British Museum and began his professional life as an illustrator for the Illustrated London News. In 1854 he went to Scotland in order to draw landscapes, while there he found other employers and established himself as an artist.
Having settled in Edinburgh he studied at the Royal Scottish Academy where he became an associate member in 1866. He next went to work in Paris, and later to Italy where he painted street scenes and the Roman outskirts. Finding limited success with these paintings he began painting landscapes, which were much better received.
He painted in Venice, produced illustrations for books and also executed a series of eighty paintings of scenery along the Thames; Six Years in a House Boat.
His works have been displayed in museums in Dublin, Glasgow, Leeds, London, Manchester, Melbourne, Salford and Sydney. He died on April 11, 1891 in Paris.