Thomas was an English painter of genre scenes of school and village life, many of which became popular through prints. He lived for many years at the artists’ colony at Cranbrook in Kent. The Cranbrook Colony was a group of artists who settled in Cranbrook from 1854 onwards and were inspired by seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish painters. They have been referred to as ‘genre’ painters as they tended to paint scenes of the everyday life that they saw around them.
Webster was born in Ranelagh Street, Pimlico, London. His father was a member of the household of George III, and the son, having shown an aptitude for music, became a chorister, first at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle, and then the Chapel Royal at St. James’s Palace in London. He abandoned music for painting, however, and in 1821 was admitted as a student at the Royal Academy, exhibiting, in 1824, a portrait of “Mr Robinson and Family”. In the following year he won first prize in the school of painting.
In 1825, also, Webster exhibited Rebels shooting a Prisoner, at the Suffolk Street Gallery – the first of a series of pictures of schoolboy life for which he subsequently became known. In 1828 he exhibited The Gunpowder Plot’ at the Royal Academy, and in 1829 The Prisoner and A Foraging Party Aroused at the British Institution. These were followed by numerous other pictures of school and village life at both galleries. In 1840 Webster was elected an associate of the Royal Academy (ARA), and in 1846 a Royal Academician (RA). He continued to be a frequent exhibitor there until 1876, when he retired from the academy. He exhibited a self-portrait in 1878, and Released from School, his last picture, in 1879.