William Purser (ca. 1790–1852)

Painter, architect. He exhibited landscapes and architectural subjects at the Royal Academy, 1805–34. He traveled in Italy and Greece with the architect, George Ledwell Taylor (1788–1873), in 1817–20, and in Turkey in the 1820s–30s (catalogue note on William Purser, Sotheby & Co., Catalogue of Old Master and British Drawings . . . Walter Brandt). The Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum hold numerous orientalist watercolor drawings and prints by or after Purser of subjects set in Turkey and India.

The editor of Friendshipʼs Offering between 1828 and his death in 1834, Thomas Pringle, engaged Ruskin to compose a poem, “Saltzburg”, to accompany an engraving by Edward Goodall (1795–1870) after Purserʼs view of that city.