Keeley Halswelle began his career making drawings for the Illustrated London News and continued with book illustration. His early paintings depicted scenes of fishing life at Newhaven. In the late 1860s he made the first of many visits to Rome and exhibited Italian subjects for many years. During the 1880s he largely abandoned figure subjects and concentrated on Highland landscapes and views of the Thames, painted from a houseboat.
Exhibited Royal Academy, London, 1886, no. 258; Manchester Exhibition, 1886, no. 269; Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, 1887, no. 15; Grosvenor Gallery Intercolonial exhibition, Melbourne, 1887–88, no. 59.