Beached Fishing Boats (1876), watercolour on paper, 30 x 50.5 cm., purchased with funds from the Somerville Bequest, 1978 Sheep Resting in a Landscape (1876), oil on canvas, 46.4 x 76.8 cm., General Purchase Fund, 1992 William Nicoll Cresswell (1818-1888) was born in London, England and died in Tuckersmith, Ontario. He reputedly studied with Clarkson Stanfield, a prominent British artist, and with his family, emigrated to Tuckersmith Township in Huron County, Ontario in 1848. Cresswell chose to live in relative artistic isolation but traveled widely and influenced the early careers of both Robert Gagen and George Reid who lived nearby. As an artist, he was a member of the Society of Canadian Artists, the Ontario Society of Artists and a founding member of the Royal Canadian Academy. His work, inspired by the British concepts of the beautiful and the sublime, was executed mainly in oil and watercolour using animal, landscape and marine subjects.