Life

He was born at Newcastle

Newcastle upon Tyne

Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...

 on 15 May 1784. His father, George Richardson (died 1806) was the master of St. Andrew's grammar school, Newcastle; Moses Aaron Richardson

Moses Aaron Richardson

-Life:He was the younger son of George Richardson , master of Blackett's charity school, Newcastle; his elder brother was Thomas Miles Richardson, the artist...

 was a younger brother.

Richardson was at first apprenticed to an engraver and afterwards to a cabinet-maker, whom he left to set up in business for himself. After five years of cabinet-making, he became a teacher, and from 1806 to 1813 filled the post which his father had held at the grammar school. Then he decided to adopt an artistic career, and soon acquired a reputation as a painter of landscape. He worked chiefly in watercolour, and found most of his subjects in the scenery of the Borders and the Scottish Highlands

Scottish Highlands

The Highlands is an historic region of Scotland. The area is sometimes referred to as the "Scottish Highlands". It was culturally distinguishable from the Lowlands from the later Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands...

, though in later life he went as far afield as Italy and Switzerland.

He died at Newcastle on 7 March 1848, leaving a widow and a large family, one of whom, Thomas Miles Richardson Jr., followed the father's profession.

Works

His first notable picture was a ‘View of Newcastle from Gateshead Fell,’ which was purchased by the Newcastle corporation. In 1816 he began to illustrate with aquatint

Aquatint

Aquatint is an intaglio printmaking technique, a variant of etching.Intaglio printmaking makes marks on the matrix that are capable of holding ink. The inked plate is passed through a printing press together with a sheet of paper, resulting in a transfer of the ink to the paper...

s his brother's ‘Collection of Armorial Bearings … in the Chapel of St. Andrew, Newcastle-upon-Tyne,’ which was published in 1818, and followed in 1820 by a larger work dealing with the church of St. Nicholas, and also illustrated by Richardson. In 1833 and 1834 he was engaged on a work on the ‘Castles of the English and Scottish Borders,’ which he illustrated with mezzotint

Mezzotint

Mezzotint is a printmaking process of the intaglio family, technically a drypoint method. It was the first tonal method to be used, enabling half-tones to be produced without using line- or dot-based techniques like hatching, cross-hatching or stipple...

s. These publications remained unfinished.

Richardson became well known as a contributor to London exhibitions from 1818, when he sent his first picture to the Royal Academy

Royal Academy

The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...

, and was elected a member of the New Watercolour Society. His work was represented in public galleries at South Kensington, at Dublin, and at Liverpool.