William Frederick Wells


William Frederick Wells was a British watercolour landscape painter and etcher.
Wells was born in London in 1762. Wells studied art in London under John James Barralet. On 20 November 1804, Wells initiated the founding of the Society of Painters in Watercolours, at a meeting held at the Stratford Coffee House, Oxford St, London. He served as President of the fledgling association from 1806 to 1807.
He travelled and painted extensively in England and Europe, particularly in Norway and Sweden. Wells' art was annually exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1795 to 1813. He held the post of Professor of Drawing at Addiscombe Military Seminary for officers of the East India Company Army over twenty years from 1813 until his retirement, immediately before his death, in November 1836. Wells was an intimate friend of Joseph Mallord William Turner.
Between 1801 and 1805 Wells and his collaborator John Laporte made seventy-two soft-ground etchings after drawings by Thomas Gainsborough. They initially issued these etchings as individual plates, upon completion of each, and then as hand-coloured and bound sets under the title A Collection of Prints, illustrative of English Scenery, from the Drawings and Sketches of Gainsborough.
Amongst Wells's other works as an etcher is his soft-ground set, Select Views in Cumberland.
In 1819, Wells moved to a house on Mitcham Common, Surrey. He died there on 10 November 1836, and was buried in Mitcham churchyard.

Personal life

Wells married his wife, Mary, in about 1786. The couple had nine children, of whom two died in infancy. Mary died in 1807. In his will, Wells left the eldest of his sons only 5s., in the hope "that he would see the error of his ways".