William Shayer Snr Paintings

Biography of William Shayer Snr

William Shayer first earned his living in Southampton painting decorations on rush bottom chairs, then set off for Guildford where William Shayer Snr settled himself as a carriage painter. His representations of heraldry soon came to be known through all of South England, and Shayer was chosen to create the prestigious funerary badge of the fourth Duke of Richmond.

In 1814, Shayer was commissioned to chalk a design on the floor for a ball held by the officers of the Queen’s Royal Regiment to celebrate the overthrow of Napoleon Bonaparte and the restoration of the Bourbons. While continuing his English painting of heraldic painting, Shayer devoted his free time to landscape painting. Shayer was an extremely versatile artist, and employed his skills as a scene painter for theatrical productions, as a reproduction artist, and as a painter of signs for inns and other establishments.

Shayer experienced a period of financial difficulty, when after the death of his wife Sarah, William Shayer Snr was left to support and care for five children. Shortly after her death, Shayer married a woman named Elizabeth, with whom William Shayer Snr produced five more children, increasing his family to a most overwhelming number. In 1827, the artist’s financial situation began to improve, with the opening of the Hampshire Painting Gallery. During the first season, when three separate exhibitions were held, thirty paintings were sold, and the most popular paintings with the buyers proved to be those by William Shayer.