Robert William Buss

Robert William Buss (4 August 1804 – 26 February 1875) was a Victorian artist, etcher and illustrator perhaps best known for his painting Dickens' Dream. He was the father of Frances Buss, a pioneer of girls' education. Early career Born in Bull and Mouth Street, Aldersgate in London in 1804, Buss served an apprenticeship with his father, a master engraver and enameller, and then studied painting under George Clint, a miniaturist, watercolour and portrait painter, and mezzotint engraver. At the start of his career Buss specialised in painting theatrical portraits, with many of the leading actors of the day sitting to him, including William Charles Macready, John Pritt Harley, and John Baldwin Buckstone. Later Buss painted historical and humorous subjects. He exhibited a total of 112 pictures between 1826 and 1859, 25 at the Royal Academy, 20 at the British Institution, 45 at the Suffolk Street gallery of the Society of British Artists, seven at the New Watercolour Society, and 15 in other places. The Pickwick Papers