Robert William Buss
| Robert William Buss | |
|---|---|
Buss, c. 1874
|
|
| Born |
August 4, 1804 Aldersgate, City of London, United Kingdom |
| Died | February 26, 1875 (aged 70) London, United Kingdom |
| Nationality | English |
| Occupation | Artist, etcher, illustrator |
| Years active | 1826-1870 |
| Notable work | Dicken's Dream |
| Spouse(s) | Frances Fleetwood (m. 1826) |
| Children | 6; including Frances Buss |
Robert William Buss (4 August 1804 – 26 February 1875) was a Victorian artist, etcher and illustrator perhaps best known for his painting Dickens' Dream.
Born in Bull and Mouth Street, Aldersgate in London in 1804, Buss served an apprenticeship with his father, a master engraver and enameller, and then studied painting under George Clint, a miniaturist, watercolour and portrait painter, and mezzotint engraver.
At the start of his career Buss specialised in painting theatrical portraits, with many of the leading actors of the day sitting to him, including William Charles Macready, John Pritt Harley, and John Baldwin Buckstone. Later Buss painted historical and humorous subjects. He exhibited a total of 112 pictures between 1826 and 1859, twenty-five at the Royal Academy, twenty at the British Institution, forty-five at the Suffolk Street gallery of the Society of British Artists, seven at the New Watercolour Society, and fifteen in other places.
Buss was commissioned by Dickens' publishers, Chapman and Hall, to provide two illustrations for The Pickwick Papers after the original illustrator, Robert Seymour, committed suicide. Buss immediately set aside his other work and prepared a dozen or so preliminary sketches for the novel, then in its second of twenty instalments. Five of these sketches are in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. His drawings were regarded as adequate, but the process of etching on a steel plate was unfamiliar to him so he hired an expert etcher.
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