William Billingsley (1758–1828) was an influential painter of porcelain in several English porcelain factories, who also developed his own recipe for soft-paste porcelain, which produced beautiful results but a very high rate of failure in firing. He is a leading name associated with the English Romantic style of paintings of groups of flowers on porcelain that is sometimes called "naturalistic" by older sources, although that may not seem its main characteristic today.

China painting, or porcelain painting, is the decoration of glazed porcelain objects such as plates, bowls, vases or statues. The body of the object may be hard-paste porcelain, developed in China in the 7th or 8th century, or soft-paste porcelain, developed in 18th-century Europe. The broader term ceramic painting includes painted decoration on lead-glazed earthenware such as creamware or tin-glazed pottery such as maiolica or faience.