GILPIN, William Sawrey - b. 1762 , d. 1843 North Yorkshire

English landscape watercolourist and garden designer, part of a family of artists, son of Sawrey Gilpin. He attended the school of his uncle, William Gilpin, at Cheam in Surrey. Gilpin married Elizabeth Paddock; they had two (or possibly three) sons, one of whom seems to have remained dependent on his father.

Gilpin specialised in watercolours; and in 1804 was elected first President of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours. In 1806 he took a post as drawing master at the Royal Military College (at Sandhurst from 1812), teaching cadets to make accurate records of the landscape. In order to support his family, in 1820 Gilpin turned to a career as a landscape gardener in which he was remarkably successful building up a large practice in England. In his work he enjoyed the strong backing of Uvedale Price (1747-1829) whose theories he put into practice.

As a garden designer, he is an intermediate figure, stylistically lying between the picturesque landscapes of his uncle and the full-blown Victorian rediscovery of formality.