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Artists and Print Makers - Biographies

Angelica (Maria Anna Catharina) Kauffmann (1741-1807) The daughter of Johann Joseph Kauffmann, a painter, Angelica was a precocious child and a talented musician and painter by her 12th year. Her early paintings were influenced by the French Rococo works of Henri Gravelot and François Boucher. In 1754 and 1763 she visited Italy, and while in Rome she was influenced by the Neoclassicism of Anton Raphael Mengs.

She was induced by Lady Wentworth, wife of the English ambassador, to accompany her to London in 1766. She was well received and was particularly favoured by the royal family. Sir Joshua Reynolds became a close friend, and most of the numerous portraits and self-portraits done in her English period were influenced by his style of portrait painting. Her name is found among the signatories to the petition for the establishment of the Royal Academy, and in its first catalogue of 1769 she is listed as a member. During the 1770s Kauffmann was one of a team of artists who supplied the painted decorations for Adam-designed interiors. Kauffmann retired to Rome in the early 1780s with her second husband, the Venetian painter Antonio Zucchi.

Francesco Bartolozzi RA 1727 - 1815
Famous Italian draughtsman, etcher, line and stipple engraver of portraits , decorative and historical subjects after his own designs and those of his contemporaries and old master painters. Born in Florence on the 25th September 1727, he originally intended to follow his father's profession as a gold and silversmith. He came under the tutelage of two Florentine artists, Ignazio Hugford and Giovanni Domenico Ferretti who instructed him in painting. After three years he became a pupil of Joseph Wagner in Venice, he started his career reproducing works by Italian painters and his best plates of this period are his etchings of the 'Months of the Year' after G. Zocchi.

In 1764, he came to to England where, after reproducing Guercino's drawings in the Royal Collection, he took up stipple engraving, the medium for which he is best known. He setup a studio which turned out vast quantities of 'furniture prints', invariably roundels or ovals. He is particularly remembered for his renderings of allegorical or mythological subjects after his fellow Italian painters especially G. B. Cipriani and Angelica Kauffman which often found printed in red, sepia or other colours.

Latterly, (1802) Bartolozzi became director of the National Academy of Lisbon, the city where he died on the 7th of March 1815.

Francesco Bartolozzi

David Wilkie - The son of a minister, was born in Cults, Fife, on 18 November 1785. He attended the Trustees' Academy of Design in Edinburgh from 1799 to 1804 and, upon completing his studies, moved to London in 1805 and gained admission at the Royal Academy where his contemporaries included Andrew Geddes. Here he encountered almost immediate success when the first of his realistic portrayals of rural life, The Village Politicians, was unveiled at the Academy's 1806 exhibition. A string of equally acclaimed paintings in the same vein followed, including The Blind Fiddler (1807), The Card Players, The Rent Day (both 1808), The Village Festival (1812), Blind Man's Buff (1813), Distraining for Rent (1815), The Scotch, or Penny Wedding (1818). The homely simplicity of Wilkie's compositions stood in marked contrast to the artificial and contrived nature of much contemporary genre painting and signalled a turning-point in British Art. Together with Sir Henry Raeburn, he was hailed as the founder of a new 'Scottish School' of painting. Wilkie collaborated on popular print-versions of his paintings with Abraham Raimbach which brought both men considerable financial success. Public acclaim was accompanied by professional recognition. Wilkie was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1809, when he was only 24 years old, and a full member in 1812. Following the death of Raeburn in 1823, he was appointed His Majesty's Limner for Scotland.

Wilkie's always frail health was badly shaken in 1825 by a series of family bereavements and by the financial collapse of his print sellers Heath & Robinson. A long stay in Italy permitted him to convalesce, followed by a visit to Spain which would prove an artistic revelation. Velasquez and Murillo now displaced the Dutch masters as his chief mentors and in the Royal Academy's 1829 exhibition he unveiled eight new works painted under their influence, including The Maid of Saragossa, The Pifferari, and The Guerrilla Council of War. The Spanish style continued to inform his most important later works such as Preaching of Knox before the Lords of the Congregation (1832), The First Earring (1835), Napoleon and the Pope in Conference at Fontainebleau (1836), and Sir David Baird Discovering the Body of Tippoo Saib (1839). He succeeded Sir Thomas Lawrence as Painter-in-Ordinary to the King in 1830 and was knighted in 1836. In 1840 he travelled to Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Alexandria (where he painted the Pacha Mehemet Ali). He died suddenly on the return journey and was buried at sea near Gibraltar, an event commemorated in one of J.M.W. Turner's most celebrated paintings.

John Burnet (1781 or 1784–1868)

Scottish painter and engraver, born either in Edinburgh in March 1781 or in Fisherrow in March 1784. His father was Surveyor-General of Excise for Scotland. Young Burnett was apprenticed to the engraver Robert Scott (1771–1841) and later trained at the Trustees Academy.

In 1806 he moved from Edinburgh to London, where he became established as a painter of portraits, landscapes and rural genre scenes. Some of the seven oil sketches for a representation of ‘Greenwich Pensioners Commemorating the Anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, 1835’ in the National Maritime Museum, London, show Burnett at his best. They reveal spontaneity and immediacy in the fluid handling of the paint, lacking in the final work (painted as a pendant to Wilkie’s ‘Chelsea Pensioners reading the Waterloo Dispatch’ for the Duke of Wellington and now in Apsley House, London).

Between 1808 and 1862, he regularly exhibited at the Royal Academy, the British Institution and with the Society of British Artists. A skilful engraver, Burnett provided illustrations for editions of Robert Burns’s poems and Walter Scott’s ‘Waverley’ novels. He also engraved his ‘Greenwich Pensioners’ painting, working from a fine watercolour reduced copy made by S. P. Denning, which is also in the National Maritime Museum, London. He combined his artistic activities with writing manuals and books on drawing, painting and artists. His contribution to the arts was recognized with the award of a fellowship to the Royal Society. Retiring from public life in 1860, he died in Stoke Newington, London, on 29 April 1868.

Abraham Raimbach (1766 - 1843)
Line engraver of genre, sentimental and historical subjects after his contemporaries. Born in London, of a Swiss father, he was apprenticed to J. Hall and studied at the R.A. Schools. He is best known for his large plates after david Wilkie R.A., though he also engraved many book plates. He died in Greenwich.

James R. Mackrell:
Working as an aquatinter of sporting subjects in the mid nineteenth century after his contemporaries. Lived in London.

William Joseph Shayer:
English painter of animals and landscapes, was born in 1811 and died in 1892.

He was the son of the painter William Shayer and was born in Chichester. He trained in his father’s studio and began to exhibit his own work at the age of 17. Subsequently he contributed regularly to the Society of Artists, the British Institution and the Royal Academy.

His father, also called William, was also an artist and, since both artists signed their work “W.S.”, some confusion can arise between the two.

William Joseph Shayer had a studio in Holborn and specialized in coaching and hunting scenes, capturing the golden age of foxhunting at the beginning of the 19th century. Shayer’s work became popular and well known, particularly through engravings, which were mostly published by Ackermann’s.

Exhibited at the RA in 1858 and 1885 and also at the BI and Sussex Street Gallery.

Henry Pyall (1795 - 1833)
Aquatint engraver of sporting, coaching and railway subjects and topographical views after his contemporaries. He lived and worked in London and ran a publishing company with George Hunt.

Bibl: British Prints Dictionary and Price Guide - Ian Mackenzie.

James POLLARD (1792-1867)
The youngest son of the London engraver and print-seller Robert Pollard. He began work at the age of fifteen as a painter but quickly turned to engraving as well. In the 1820s his coaching scenes became both fashionable and lucrative. From 1821 he exhibited a small number of pictures at the Royal Academy and the British Institution which brought him more patrons. Between 1830 and 1840, Pollard also painted a number of racing pictures and some of the earliest scenes of steeple chasing. In all his work he took great pains over accuracy, this is particularly true of his large scale works, such as the present busy London scene, the people are all individuals going about their daily lives, and the coaches, carts and cabs have all been very carefully observed: a true microcosm of London.

Phillip Mitchell RI
His home address is listed as 4, Bedford Terrace, North Hill, Plymouth.
He painted mainly marine and landscape views in a similar style to that of another Plymouth artist William Payne. A former naval officer he settled in Plymouth and was elected to the new watercolour society in 1854.
Exhibited: 114 @ RI, 338 @ NWS, 2 @ RBA, 8 @ M.

From 'Art in Devonshire' by George Pycroft pub. 1881
'Landscape painter in watercolour, born in Devonport in 1814. He took to art in early life, but had
no art instruction, except a few hints from an elder brother, who painted miniatures.
At the age of fourteen years, he went to Falmouth, and there became acquainted
Philp and Williams and with them used to go a-sketching. At the second exhibition of the Cornwall Polytechnic he sent in a drawing, 'Pendennis Castle, and by it gained a prize.

About the year 1845 he settled in Plymouth, and since that time has always practiced there, and with success.. In early life he painted mainly coastal scenes, from his living near the sea, but latterly has drawn inland landscapes. He was a member of The Plymouth Sketching Club, and a friend of Condy, Johns, S. Cook, W. Eastlake and others, and drew frequently with the renowned marine artist, Brierly.
He is an old member of The Institute of Painters in Watercolours, and has regularly exhibited their galleries for the last twenty years. His pictures are to be seen at Mount Edgecumbe, and at most Devonshire houses where watercolours are to be found, as he has for many years been reputed one of our leading Devonshire landscape painters.'

William Spreat
Painter, etcher and lithographer mainly of West country views. He worked in Exeter and was also a publisher of prints.

William Daniell RA 1769 - 1837
English painter. Born in Kingston-upon-Thames in Surrey. His father was a bricklayer and owner of a public house called The Swan in near-by Chertsey. Daniell’s future career was dramatically changed when he was sent to live with his uncle Thomas (1749–1840) after the premature death of his father in 1779. His uncle was an artist and later Royal Academician, and William became his pupil. Uncle and nephew left Britain in April 1785 to voyage throughout China and India. In Calcutta in 1791, they held a lottery of their combined paintings, using the proceeds to continue their travelling and sketching. They returned to Britain in 1794, where they put their experiences to use in exhibition-size oil paintings. Daniell’s ‘View of the East India Fleet in the Sunda Strait’ reflects his travels, and in 1819 he published an illustrated book A Picturesque Voyage to India by way of China. In 1821, he was elected a Royal Academician. His shipping scenes, such ‘A Bird’s-Eye View of the East India Dock at Blackwell’ (National Maritime Museum, London), were supplemented by greatly admired battle pieces. In 1825, he won a prize of £100 for a pair of the ‘Battle of Trafalgar’, exhibited at the British Institution. He continued to work until his death 12 years later.

A Voyage Round Great Britain' In early 1813, Daniell conceived of the ambitious plan to travel around the entire coastline of Britain while producing an illustrated work of the voyage. ,In 1814, artist engraver William Daniell set out to record the people, places, towns and villages around Britain's coastline. Eleven years later he completed his magnum opus having travelled from Land's End to John 0'Groats via the west coast, then back to Land's End via the east.The result was a collection of 308 aquatint engravings, the last great artist's voyage before photography was invented. images all 9" x 11",

A draughtsman, watercolourist and aquatinter, he belonged to a family of English artists. Raised by his uncle, Thomas Daniell, a painter and engraver, lived with him in India from 1784-94, and worked with him on publications based on his travels. In 1795 he settled in London, where he remained for the rest of his life. He collaborated with Thomas on A Voyage Round Great Britain (1814-25). Daniell was a member of the Royal Academy and exhibited there from 1795 to 1838

This series was published in 8 volumes during the period 1814 to 1825. The journey was initially started in 1813 and was a joint project with William Daniell producing the drawings and William Ayton the text. This partnership lasted for the first two volumes, thereafter Daniell produced the text as well. The latter text relates to the plates and is relatively pedestrian, whereas Ayton used the voyage for his own agenda and sociological interests, his text is only loosely related to the plates and concentrates on the manners and customs of people he met.308 hand coloured aquatints.

Thomas Sutton in The Daniells Artists and Travellers outlines the journey as follows: . . "During the summer of 1813 Ayton and Daniell surveyed the coast from Land's End up to Holyhead, where the first year's voyage closed near the middle of October (plates 1-26). The following year their journeys re commenced at Holyhead, at the beginning of August, and proceeded as far as Creetown or Dunsky Castle in Kircudbright. This at any rate, was the limit of Ayton's tour (plates 27-56). Daniell started off alone from Wigtown, early in the summer and finished his survey of the entire coast of Scotland, as far as Dundee, which he reached in October. This very lengthy tour was rendered possible by an exceptionally fine spell of weather (plates 57-195).

Six years elapsed before Daniell commenced the further prosecution of his journey. Arriving at St. Andrews on August 4th, 1821, he surveyed the remaining portion of the Scottish coast, and the east coast of England as far as Southend, which he reached towards the end of September (plates 196-224). The following year he left Sheerness on July 28th, and explored the south coast as far as Torquay, whence he returned to London on September 27th (plates 225-277). The concluding tour, a comparatively short one, commenced from Torquay on Thursday, August 21st, 1823, and embraced the final portion of the south coast to Land's end, which was reached for the second time on September 14th (plates 278-308).

Antony Van Dyck - born Antwerp, 22 March 1599; d London, 9 Dec 1641). Flemish painter and draughtsman, active also in Italy and England. He was the leading Flemish painter after Rubens in the first half of the 17th century and in the 18th century was often considered no less than his match. A number of van Dyck's studies in oil of characterful heads were included in Rubens's estate inventory in 1640, where they were distinguished neither in quality nor in purpose from those stocked by the older master. Although frustrated as a designer of tapestry and, with an almost solitary exception, as a deviser of palatial decoration, van Dyck succeeded brilliantly as an etcher. He was also skilled at organizing reproductive engravers in Antwerp to publish his works, in particular The Iconography (c. 1632-44), comprising scores of contemporary etched and engraved portraits, eventually numbering 100, by which election he revived the Renaissance tradition of promoting images of uomini illustri. His fame as a portrait painter in the cities of the southern Netherlands, as well as in London, Genoa, Rome and Palermo, has never been outshone; and from at least the early 18th century his full-length portraits were especially prized in Genoese, British and Flemish houses, where they were appreciated as much for their own sake as for the identities and families of the sitters.

Pierre Lombart 1620 - 1681
A well known 17th century French line engraver of portraits and religious subjects. Apprenticed in Paris under Simon Vouet. There, he gained a strong reputation for his portrait work and his engravings after the old masters. Pierre Lombart was then convinced into coming to England to pursue his engraving skills during the final years of the reign of King Charles the First. The tempestuous times the followed, however, did not harm Pierre Lombart. Under the austere rule of the Roundheads Lombart simply adapted his skills to suit their needs. A perfect example is Lombard's renowned 'headless' equestrian portrait. Originally it was created as a royal portrait of King Charles on horseback, but it was poorly timed as the monarch was executed only months after its completion. Pierre Lombart, not permitting politics to interfere with art, simply created a second state of the engraving by substituting Charles's head with that of the victorious Cromwell. Years later, when Cromwell's Restoration had fallen by the wayside, Pierre Lombart again reworked the original plate by once more uniting Charles's head with his body.

Pierre Lombart was a brilliant master of the portrait, and during his long stay in England he created many fine studies. Perhaps his greatest works are the prints which are now known as "The Countesses" These are the half-length portraits, all after van Dyke, and consist of this original example (the Earl of Arundel), the Earl of Pembroke and ten of high standing ladies of the court. This splendid portrait depicts the powerful Earl of Arundel in his full suit of armour. The inscription under the Earl's helmet is on the Arundel Coat of Arms.

Pierre Lombart is known to have resided in London up to 1672, returning to Paris after the restoration where he died.

John Newman and Co.
London firm of engravers. lithographers and publishers of topographical views after their own designs and those of their contemporaries.

George Greatbach
Etcher and engraver of military, sporting, sentimental subjects, portraits and landscapes after his contemporaries and Old Master paintings.

John Faber II c.1695 - 1756
Well known Dutch Mezzotint engraver of portraits and decorative subjects after his contemporaries and Old Master painters. Born at Holland, he was the son of John Faber I who brought him to England at the end of the 17th century.

He published most of his engravings himself from various addresses in and around the Strand. Immensely productive, he engraved portraits from the period of Kneller right up to the time of Reynolds, and was mainly responsible for preserving the continuity of mezzotint during that period.


Sir Godfrey Kneller
Born in Germany, first studied in Amsterdam under Bol and later in Italy. In the mid 1670’s, he moved to England and became the leading court and society painter around the beginning of the reign of James II. In 1689, when William III and Mary II took the throne, Kneller became their principal painter along with John Riley. He was knighted in 1692 and became a baronet under George I in 1715.

Kneller had a large output, mainly due to his many assistants. The majority of his work was quick and mechanical, but he paid better attention to his portraits when the sitters held higher importance.

Norman Wilkinson CBE PRI ROI RBA RSMA HRWS (1878-1971)
Artist in oil, watercolour and dry point etching, usually of marine subjects, also landscapes which invariably used rivers as a focal point. An illustrator and poster artist, he also made an important to both world wars in the field of camouflage.

Born at Cambridge on the 24th November 1878, he was educated at Berkhamstead School and studied at Portsmouth and Southsea School of Art, where he later taught. In 1898 his first contribution to The Illustrated London News was accepted and proved to be be the beginning of a long association with that journal. He also worked for the Illustrated Mail. Married Evelyn Harriet.

In 1899 he went to Paris to study figure painting but was already firmly established as a marine artist. At this stage he also spent some time painting in Cornwall and worked under Louis Grier. His love of the sea led him to travel extensively, including visits to Spain, Italy, Malta, Greece, Aden, Germany, Bahamas, Canada, USA, and Brazil.

Elected R.B.A. in 1902, R.I. in 1906, R.O.I in 1908, Hon. Marine Painter to the Royal Yacht Squadron in 1909 and President of the RI in 1937. Awarded the C.B.E. in 1948. He worked into his nineties and died on the 30th May 1971.

Exhibited: 55@RA, 25@RBA, 97 @RI, 37@ROI, and numerous provincial galleries.

John Pine 1690 - 1756
A line engraver, mainly of book plates. Ran a print shop in St. Martin's Lane London and was a friend of William Hogarth who introduced his portrait in 'Oh the Roas Beff of Old England' as the Friar.

John Bowles
fl. mid 18th century. Draughtsman and line engraver or Topographical views. He worked in London, often in conjunction with Thomas Bowles. They published their own prints as well as those commissioned by them.

Benjamin Cole c. 1697 - 1783
Line engraver of bookplates, including portraits, decorative, marine and military subjects after his contemporary artists.

Samuel (1696 - 1779) and Nathaniel Buck
Brothers who lived in England in the 18th century and were engravers and printmakers. Samuel did much work on his own but, then the brothers worked together.

Well known draughtsmen etchers and line engravers of English topographical views. Samuel engraved his own drawings from 1711 to 1726, after which Nathaniel collaborated with his brother in both the drawing and engraving of the plates. They went on sketching tours during the summer and engraved the sketches during the winter.

Samuel Buck was born in Yorkshire in 1696. After publishing some prints in that county, he moved to London. With Nathaniel he embarked on making a number of series of prints of "antiquities", which consisted of ruined castles and former religious buildings in England and Wales. Starting in 1724, they travelled around the countries, completing the sets of prints for the regions of England by 1738 and producing those for Wales between 1739 and 1742. These are commonly known as Buck's Antiquities.

They also worked on a series of townscapes in England and Wales entitled Cities, Sea-ports and Capital Towns.[1] Engraving of 1737 by Buck Brothers, showing Bodiam Castle in Sussex from the northeast Nathaniel was the first to die, sometime between 1759 and 1774. Samuel's later years were spent in poverty. He died on 17 August 1779 in London and was buried in the churchyard of St. Clement Danes.

While the perspective of the Buck views is often primitive and the engraving technique rather crude compared to contemporary topographers, the body of their work none-the-less represents a significant contribution to the topographical genre and their 'Prospects of English Towns' have always been well known and viewed with affection.

Robert Hills O.W.S. 1769 - 1844
painter and etcher of animals, Born in Islington, he seems to have been self taught. He was the secretary and later Treasurer of the Old Watercolour Society. All his plates were etched around the turn of the 19th century and is recorded as producing one lithograph at this time.

Hills studied at the Royal Academy Schools from 1788, having first received lessons in drawing from J.A. Gresse (1741-1794), and he began exhibiting at the Academy in 1791. He became best known for his watercolours and drawings of animals, and he was also a prolific etcher of such subjects, as the large number of prints which he made between 1798 and 1815 demonstrate. He was a founder member in 1804 of the important exhibiting society known as The Old Society of Painters in Watercolour or Old Water-Colour Society (OWS), and became its first secretary. The O.W.S became the Royal Watercolour Society in 1804

William Greatbach 1802 - c.1885
A line engraver of portraits and historical and sentimental subjects after his contemporaries and Old Master painters. He worked in London.

 

Artists and engravers biographies.

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