 |
| An engraved portrait of W. L. Wyllie from The Illustrated London News of 4th May 1889 |
William was born on 5th July 1951 in London. He was the elder son of William Morrison Wyllie (1820 – 1895), a prosperous minor-genre artist who lived in London and in Wimereux, France, by his wife Katherine Benham (1813 – 1872), a singer. Before marrying W. M. Wyllie, she had had three children by Percy Clinton Sydney Smythe, 6th Viscount Strangford. One of them, Wyllie's half-brother Lionel Percy Smythe (1839 – 1918), also made a name for himself as an artist. And William’s younger brother, Charles Wyllie (1853 – 1923) was apparently also an artist.
William spent most of his early summers in France with his parents and developed a love of sailing. He began to draw from an early age and his natural talent was encouraged by his father and by Lionel Smythe, his step brother. He was given a thorough artistic education; first at the Heatherley School of Fine Art, and then in 1866, aged 15, at the Royal Academy Schools. At the Royal Academy he studied under Edwin Henry Landseer, John Everett Millais and Frederic Leighton, among others. He further demonstrated his precocious talent when he won the Turner Gold Medal in 1869 at the age of eighteen.
Already a celebrated marine artist, at the outbreak of war in 1914, Wyllie became an accredited war artist and was commissioned by the Admiralty to visually record naval vessels and actions. He was given permission to travel on many Royal Navy ships and visited naval bases such as Harwich, Rosyth, Cromarty, and Scapa Flow, where he produced hundreds of studies and sketches. His wartime experiences were extensive: he not only cruised in His Majesty's ships but also flew in the air, submerged in a submarine, and took a trip in a Q-ship (a disguised armed merchant ship).
Two of William's sons by his wife Marion Amy Carew, who he married in 1879, were killed in the First World War.
William died on 6th April 1931.
 |
| "Battle of the Falklands" (1918) |
Source: Wilipedia
