Of these, some are in private collections while two are in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Peter Thomas Westcott had a number of articles published anonymously in THE MIRROR OF LITERATURE. This was a cheap monthly publication intended for a wide audience, including those who would not normally buy books. There was a wide range of topics in each publication.
Westcott sent articles in anonymously, signing as PTW.
He contributed a piece on the ROSE OF JERICHO, with details of the nature of the plant. When an elephant was in the news, Westcott had a piece about elephants. He had a literary tone in ON THE RESPLENDANT BEAUTIES OF THE FIREFLY
Westcott was described by the editor, Byerly, as “a gentleman of independent property who in his ubiquitous career of utility did good by stealth and carried the ‘twopenny’ into public institutions and intellectual resorts of a description most calculated to serve its distribution.” Presumably Westcott acted as an agent for the publication or simply gave copies of it away.
He also had work in the rather more prestigious GENTLEMAN’S MAGAZINE
(See "Literature: Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical: Reading the Magazine of Nature" By Geoffrey N. Cantor published by CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS)
He was buried in his home parish of St Andrew's Holborn on February 10th 1845.
Provenance
THE WESTCOTTS OF KINGSBRIDGE, DEVON
In fact the family had moved to London, the parish of St Andrew, Holborn. There was a slate business - it was said that they worked on the roof of the church.
The portrait was one of a set of family pictures painted in 1793, commissioned by Mrs Hannah Westcott, widow of John Westcott who had died in 1790. When Mrs Westcott died in 1794, the pictures were given to the members of the family.
Literature
THE CORNISH WONDER: A PORTRAIT OF JOHN OPIE by Viv Hendra
(copies available from the Lander Gallery)