The Dream

Westall achieved a brilliance of coloring in watercolor by using opaque pigments, which was considered very progressive by his contemporaries. His major activity was book illustration, and he worked on editions of Shakespeare, Milton, Scott and Byron, but continued to display larger works each year at the Royal Academy. His classicizing style, with a mixture of melodrama and sentiment, was very popular during his lifetime. The drawing was preparatory for a pair of mezzotints, along with another drawing, entitled The Romance, showing the same young woman sitting in bed, reading the book which now lies open in her hand.