William Goodall (1757-1844)
Yellowhammer
Watercolor and ink on paper
Signed ‘W. Goodall’ center
ca. 1820
Paper size: 12 5/8 x 7 7/8 in.
Frame size: 16 ¾ x 12

William Goodall (1757-1844) was educated at Eton and at an early age studied both natural history and fine arts with his brother, who collected natural history prints. William became an ordained priest of the Church of England and served as absentee rector at All Saints Church, Marsham, near Aylsham in Norfolk from 1787-1844. In 1788 he married the sole heiress of Dinton Hall, Buckinghamshire, making him Lord of the Manor and a Justice of the Peace for Bucks. Dinton Hall is a large, part Jacobean, house with a long and famous history going back to the Saxons. William lived in a more leisurely age when the only way to create a visual archive was to paint, which became his life-long hobby. He did many works of animals, birds and plants often hand-scripting the bird types in Latin as well as English.

See Locke, M. and Collins, J.V. (2001) “Who was W. Goodall?” In: The Linnean; Newsletter and Proceedings of The Linnean Society of London, 17: 28-47.