Career
His early in life he was articled to an uncle who was a writing engraver. Around 1830 he came to London, and at first found employment in engraving coats-of-arms. He then entered the service of Messrs.
Fenner & Sears, engravers and publishers.
Moving employment to James Sprent Virtue, he engraved landscapes after William Henry Bartlett and Thomas Allom. Topham first visited Ireland in 1844 and 1845, with Frederick Goodall and Alfred Fripp.
His career as watercolourist appears to have started self-taught, helped by practice at the meetings of the Artists" Society in Clipstone Street. He was in 1850 one of Charles Dickens"s company of actors (the "splendid strollers") in The Rent Day of Douglas Jerrold and Bulwer Lytton"s Not so bad as we seem.
Towards the end of 1852 he went for a few months to Spain in search of the picturesque.
South. C. West. West. They had ten children. Their son Frank William Warwick Topham (1838–1924) became known as a painter.
