He worked at first as a designer. He was elected an Associate in 1840 and an Academician in 1851 (retired, 1882). His "Gulliver on the Farmer's Table" (1837) made his reputation as a painter. He became an assiduous painter of landscape and genre; his best pictures being "Country Cousins" (1848), "Olivia's Return to her Parents" (1839), "The Sempstress" (1844) and "A Well-spring in the Forest" (1877). Redgrave held three important exhibitions at the Royal Academy and one at Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers.