Derrick Pritchard Webley (Q69910)

Derrick Pritchard Webley (1922-1994) spent his professional career as a scientific civil servant, specialising in nematology, and in addition achieved widespread recognition as an amateur archaeologist with a particular interest in the environmental archaeology of the Mediterranean region. He published widely in this field, notably in association with the excavation of neolithic sites in Greece by Professor Geoff Bailey of Cambridge University. He was also an avid collector of Welsh art, and in his later years became absorbed in the life and work of Penry Williams (1802-1885), known as the 'first English painter in Rome', who like Webley had been a native of Merthyr Tydfil. Recognising the need for a study of Williams and his work, Webley undertook painstaking research throughout England and Wales, and especially in Italy, where Williams had spent most of his life. Derrick Webley died in 1994, but his biography of Penry Williams was almost complete, and his papers were used by his wife, Joan, to enable it to be published in 1997.