One of the artists who has a walk-on part on Mr. Turner is Henry William Pickersgill, a dutiful and diligent portrait painter, who was adopted by a Spitalfields weaver, trained at the RA Schools, was respected by Constable, and had ‘a clever wife, who manages all matters for him’.   Admired for his sober likenesses, much employed by Oxbridge colleges, he painted the Victorian meritocracy, was an RA for fifty years, ended up as its librarian, and is now pretty wholly forgotten.