Christ blessing the children, 1856
First achieved recognition in 1830 on exhibiting a 24 x 18 ft panel depicting "The Field of the Cloth of Gold" based on a painting by R.T. Bone. Unfortunately this was destroyed in a fire two years later.
Wilmshurst, together with Charles Clutterbuck and George Hedgeland, remained faithful to the pictorial Nazarene approach of the early 1850s. His window in St Catherine's Chapel in Ely Cathedral was an adaptation of Friedrich Overbeck's "Christ Blessing the Children" and, with the changing fashions of the latter part of the century, was criticised by the Ecclesiologist who said of the window "He has adopted the worst landscape style of thirty years back".
In 1853, he seems to have formed a short partnership with Francis Wilson Oliphant (1818-59) (Apse window in Wissington, Suffolk, signed with monogram W & 0). This lasted until 1855 when Oliphant started his own studio.
By 1861, he had apparently ceased business when his pictorial style was no longer in demand.