Foster was born in
North Shields, England of a primarily Quaker family, but his family moved south to London in 1830, where his father founded M. B. Foster & sons — a successful beer-bottling company. He was schooled at
Hitchin,
Hertfordshire and on leaving initially went into his father's business. However, noticing his talent for art, his father secured an apprenticeship with the wood-engraver,
Ebenezer Landells, and exhibited some 400 of his paintings at the
Royal Academy over more than 2 decades. Birket Foster travelled widely, painting the countryside around
Scotland, the
Rhine Valley, the
Swiss lakes and in
Italy, especially
Venice. In 1863 he moved to
Witley, near
Godalming in
Surrey where he had an elaborate
Tudor-style house ("The Hill") built. Being friendly with
Edward Burne-Jones and
William Morris, he had the house decorated and furnished in contemporary style, with tiles and paintings by Burne-Jones and Morris' firm,
Morris and Company. The same year he published a volume of "English Landscapes," with text by
Tom Taylor. Although he had painted great numbers of landscape scenes from
Scotland to the
Mediterranean, it was after moving to Witley that Birket Foster produced the works for which he is best known—a sentimentalised view of the contemporary English countryside, particularly in the west Surrey area. Although criticised for their idealised view of rural life, they were recognised for their detail and execution. Birket Foster's work (along with that of other artists) was used by
Cadburys, the chocolate manufacturer, on the cover of their
chocolate boxes from the 1860s onwards. Printed in 1861,
The Carewes: a tale of the Civil Wars was the swashbuckling royalist family history of a gentry on the edge of Windsor Forest, illustrated with fine images and a dashing flourish; it was much appreciated in America. "the dainty water-colour drawings executed...appeal to the majority of the British public more than the works of any other." So wrote H.M. Cundall in 1906 in the preface to a first biography. He became ill in 1893 and moved to
Weybridge. He continued painting, but died on 27 March 1899. His obituary in
The Times referred to him as "certainly the most popular water-colour artist of our time". He is buried at
All Saints' Church in Witley. ==Friends and family==