With the help of a previously unknown second cousin, one of three sisters around her age who live in Rotherham, Avis now has some facts about her extraordinary great-great uncle, the distinguished Liverpool artist William Daniels (1817-1880) whose work is in the Walker Art Gallery and the V & A. Avis' grandmother on her father's side was Caroline Daniels, his niece who married the son of the immigrant Joseph Saltzmann, both designers. Here are some extracts from an issue of Liverpool Lantern magazine soon after William's death. The full extract will be on our Web page. '...a truthful, honest, tender-hearted, compassionate man, and "nobody's enemy but his own". . . Daniels' accuracy of touch was remarkable, and his sense of form so acute and true that he never made a sketch on his canvas, but painted the picture at once, with a full brush. He was so extremely fastidious-never being fully satisfied with his own work...He was very intelligent, of quick, natural parts, and well read in philosophy, natural history, geography, astronomy, travels, biography, ancient and modern history, poetry and fiction. He was a good mathematician and acquainted with the classics...Of British writers, he was fond of...Dickens, Goldsmith, Byron, Butler, Pope, Milton, Scott and Shakespeare. He was so familiar with the text of Shakespeare that no quotation could be given but he could tell at once, without a moments hesitation, where the passage was to be found - the play, the act, the scene and the character in whose mouth the poet had placed the language.He was passionately fond of music...His father,'Sam Daniels, a tall, powerful, handsome man, had been a soldier. Obtaining his discharge, he came to Liverpool and commenced business as a brickmaker...he had five children of whom William was the second. All worked in the brickfields and William, as soon as he could run had to carry off the moulds of clay caste by his father at the trough and arrange them along the ground to dry.... On wet days when out-door work was impossible, the lad occupied himself by carving in wood and modelling in clay which he did with such skill that the homely folk of the small world in which he moved said "Little Bill is a genus". The extract contains delightful descriptions of the things he carved and tells that 'a local painter, Alexander Moses by name, passed and repassed the brickfields to walk by the shore almost daily, in company with a friend of his who was peak-nosed and lank...while Moses was short and podgy, and Bill had modelled this oddly matched pair in clay.... Moses perceiving his intuitive knowledge of form prevailed upon Daniels pere to let the lad attend the evening drawing class at the Royal Institution, Colquitt Street where Moses was drawing master.

Sam Daniels prospered and the home was full of interesting objects and furniture minutely described which must have been a stimulus to William. He 'was provided with a pair of wooden -soled clogs, in which unwonted finery - for he had previously run bare-footed - he went to the drawing school... but only after the long days work was done, after which he was at liberty to follow his artistic bent....he outstripped older students, with whom, however he was a general favourite. At the end of a season, the Royal Institution crowded with friends and relatives his name was read out as the winner of the first prize in drawing.' He thought the ladies and gentlemen would laugh at him because he had no shoes until a friend called Byland lent him his shoes.

William was apprenticed to Moses as a wood engraver, taught himself painting by candlelight and became a celebrated artist.

Some time in the New Year, Avis will add the whole 'Liverpool Lantern' article to her genealogy web pages.