Joshua Cristall was born at in Camborne, Cornwall. His mother shared with and inspired her son a taste for classic art. His father was Scottish and bitterly opposed to his son’s artistic tastes, but his mother secretly aided him in his struggles to study art.

He went to London and commenced a life of great privations and hard efforts to study the fine arts. During this period of his life, he reportedly seriously injured his health by trying to live for a year on just potatoes and water.

Aided in secret by his mother, he persevered in his endeavours and finally gained admission to the school of the Royal Academy, where he made rapid progress. He became personally known to Dr. Monro and visited his house, where he met the rising watercolour artists of the day.

In 1805, he became a founder of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours and made the first public exhibition of his works there, continuing to exhibit there for many years, and later becoming its President. In 1822, with his health in decline, Cristall went to Goodrich on the Wye, where he had bought a house and spent happy years, until the loss of his wife in 1840 drove him again to London, where he died in 1847. His body was buried next to his wife in Goodrich, as he had requested.