Thomas Walmsley was born in Dublin but, after quarrelling with his family, he went to London where he studied scene painting. He worked in this capacity at the Covent Garden Theatre, the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, and also back in Dublin. By 1790 he was practising as a landscape painter in London and became a regular exhibitor of English, Welsh and Irish views at the Royal Academy until 1796. He probably visited the Lake District in 1790 or 1791; a gouache drawing of Bowness and Windermere in the Victoria & Albert Museum is dated 1791.

He was producing work of great beauty and refinement before he succumbed to illness; he retired to Bath in search of a cure in the mid 1790s. Some of Walmsley’s Lake District subjects were published in highly exaggerated form shortly after 1800 and were advertised in West’s Guide in 1802.

Thomas Walmsley spent much of his career in England, at first creating designs for the theatre and later exhibiting at the Royal Academy, but he died in Bath before he reached his full potential.