William Frederick Yeames

William Frederick Yeames RA (1835-1918) was a British painter best known for his oil-on-canvas "And When Did You Last See Your Father?", which depicts the son of a Royalist being questioned by Parliamentarians during the English Civil War.

Yeames was born in Taganrog, Russian Empire, the son of a British consul based in the Russian Empire. After the death of his father in 1842, Yeames was sent to school in Dresden where he began studying painting.

After a change in the fortunes of his family, Yeames moved to London in 1848, where he learnt anatomy and composition from George Scharf and took art lessons from F.A. Westmacott. In 1852 he journeyed to Florence where he studied with Enrico Pollastrini and Raphael Buonajuti. During his time there he painted at the Life School at the Grand Ducal Academy, drawing from frescoes by Andrea del Sarto, Ghirlandaio and Gozzoli. Continuing on to Rome, he painted landscape studies and copied Old Masters, including the frescoes of Raphael in the Vatican.

Returning to London in 1859, Yeames set up a studio in Park Place and, with Philip Hermogenes Calderon, Frederick Goodall, and George Adolphus Storey, formed the loose association of artists known as the St John's Wood Clique. The group concentrated on subjects of a historical nature and narrative paintings in which the story was revealed by close study of the actions and expressions of the subjects. In Yeames's work, this technique evolved into the genre known as the problem picture, in which the narrative of the image creates an unresolved dilemma or paradox for the viewer.

In 1905, he painted a mural for the Royal Exchange, London The Foundation of St Paul's School, 1509.

Yeames married Anne Winfield on 18 August 1865, daughter of Major James Stainbank Winfield of the East India Company, and sister of the photographer David Wilkie Wynfield.

While their work was popular with the public, the St John's Wood Clique found it difficult to get their work displayed at prestigious galleries and the Royal Academy of Arts, because it never received critical acclaim. Yeames managed to overcome this problem and from 1859 exhibited at the Royal Academy and was made an Associate (ARA) in 1866.

Unlike other artist circles of the time, the St John's Wood Clique did not lead a bohemian lifestyle; Yeames took holidays at Hever Castle and lived comfortably in London. He and Goodall specialized in Tudor and Stuart subjects, but did not always portray the events they depicted with historical accuracy, instead using them as inspiration.

He died in Teignmouth, Devon on 3 May 1918.