George Richmond was the best-known member of a family of English painters, and also portraitist. In his youth he was a member of The Ancients, a group of followers of William Blake. Later in life he established a career as a portrait painter, which included painting the portraits of the British gentry, nobility and royalty. He was the son of Thomas Richmond, miniature-painter, and was the father of the painter William Blake Richmond as well as the grandfather of the naval historian, Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond. A keen follower of cricket, Richmond was noted in one obituary as having been “an habitué of Lord’s since 1816” A pupil of his father, the miniaturist Thomas Richmond, Sen. (1771–1837), he also studied at the Royal Academy, where he became a friend of Samuel Palmer. With Palmer and others he was one of the group of William Blake’s followers known as the Ancients. However, his imitation of Blake’s mannerisms was heavy-handed (The Eve of Separation, 1830, Ashmolean Mus. , Oxford). From about 1830 he turned from poetic and religious themes to portraiture and became a great fashionable success. He was highly prolific, his account books listing about 2,500 portrait paintings and drawings. His brother, Thomas Richmond, Jun. (1802–74), and his son, Sir William Blake Richmond (b London, 29 Nov. 1842; d London, 11 Feb. 1921), were also painters. Thomas specialized in portraits, but William had a varied output and was also a sculptor and a designer (notably of numerous mosaics in St Paul’s Cathedral, London).