Arthur William Devis (1762–1822) 

• Was an English painter of history paintings and portraits.
• Devis was born in London, the nineteenth child of the artist Arthur Devis and his wife Elizabeth Faulkner.
• He followed his brother Thomas Anthony in becoming a pupil at the Royal Academy Schools in 1774.

• He was appointed draughtsman on the British East India Company's packet Antelope in a voyage in 1783. 

• During his voyages, the artist received arrow wounds, one of which inflicted permanent injury on his lower jaw.

• In 1794 Devis made a marriage to an actress Anna Maria Coombes.

• Leaving his wife in India he returned to England in January 1795.

• His wife Mrs Coombes travelled from India to Lisbon, then Paris and finally to Verdun where she died in a debtors prison in 1805.

• Devis married again to Margaret Lanchester at St Martin-in-the Fields on 26 August 1806.

• He is noted for his involvement in the creation of the posthumous cult of Horatio Nelson.

• Devis seems often to have had financial difficulties, including imprisonment for debt. 

• Devis died in London, at Caroline Street, Bedford Square, of apoplexy in 1822.

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