Richard Sebright is possibly the most highly regarded fruit painter of all time. He worked at the Royal Worcester factory painting fruit for a total of fifty six years and during all of that time was never to make what you might call a decent living at it.
Painters at the works were paid piecemeal, for example the more they produced the more they earned, but Richard Sebright was so painstaking in his work, so determined that each piece he did would be the best that he could produce, that he was never able to work fast enough to earn as much as many of the others did.
He refused to cut corners in his work. It is said that he was a very religious man who never married. His religion and work were all that mattered to him and the level of his earnings was considered to be of only minor importance.
He was considered to be the best living painter of fruit by his fellow fruit painters.