Sunset over a coastal landscape with a ruin

White was born in London, the son of the politician James White. He studied in Paris and came under the influence of Millet, and in London that of the Pre-Raphaelites, particularly Rossetti and John Brett. He travelled to southern Italy in the 1850s, setting up a studio in Capri from 1861, where he made richly detailed and atmospheric watercolours of the Mediterranean landscape.