William Watts (engraver)
William Watts | |
---|---|
Born | 1752 |
Died | 7 December 1851 Surrey | (aged 99)
Known for | Engravings printmaker |
William Watts (1752โ1851) was an English line-engraver.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Grove_House_in_Middlesex%2C_The_Seat_of..._-_William_Watts.png/220px-Grove_House_in_Middlesex%2C_The_Seat_of..._-_William_Watts.png)
Life
The son of a master silk weaver in Moorfields, London, Watts was born early in 1752. He received his art training from Paul Sandby and Edward Rooker, and on Rooker's death in 1774 continued the Copper-plate Magazine.[1]
Watts sold up at his house at Kemp's Row, Chelsea, London and went to Italy, reaching Naples in September 1786. After about a year he returned, and lived at Sunbury, Middlesex. In 1789 he went to Carmarthen, in 1790 to the Hotwells in Bristol, and in 1791 to Bath where he spent two years. Interested by the French Revolution, and went to Paris in 1793, where some of his views of English country seats were engraved in colours by Laurent Guyot. He invested most of the property that he had inherited from his father, with his own earnings, in the French funds; and all of it was confiscated (though he recovered some of it after the peace in 1815). His losses compelled him to return to engraving, retiring early in the 19th century.[1]
Watts then lived for a short time at Mill Hill, Hendon. In 1814 he purchased a small property at Cobham, Surrey, where he died on 7 December 1851, after having been blind for some years, within a few months of his hundredth birthday.[1]
Works
Watts published a number of engravings of country seats after Sandby. His own Seats of the Nobility and Gentry, a series of 84 plates, followed in 1779โ86. His views of the principal buildings in Bath and Bristol, prepared around 1790, were not published until 1819. Thirty-six Views in Scotland appeared in two parts (1791โ4).[1]
Watts also engraved three of the plates in Select Views in London and Westminster (1800), and sixty-five coloured plates, from drawings by Luigi Mayer, for Sir Robert Ainslie's Views in Turkey in Europe and Asia (1801).[1]
Gallery
Notes
- ^ a b c d e Lee, Sidney, ed. (1899). . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 60. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
External links
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)
Attribution
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Lee, Sidney, ed. (1899). "Watts, William (1752-1851)". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 60. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
- Articles incorporating Cite DNB template
- Use dmy dates from September 2019
- Articles with hCards
- Commons category link is on Wikidata
- Articles incorporating DNB text with Wikisource reference
- Articles with FAST identifiers
- Articles with ISNI identifiers
- Articles with VIAF identifiers
- Articles with WorldCat Entities identifiers
- Articles with BIBSYS identifiers
- Articles with BNE identifiers
- Articles with BNF identifiers
- Articles with BNFdata identifiers
- Articles with CANTICN identifiers
- Articles with GND identifiers
- Articles with J9U identifiers
- Articles with LCCN identifiers
- Articles with NLA identifiers
- Articles with PLWABN identifiers
- Articles with PortugalA identifiers
- Articles with VcBA identifiers
- Articles with DSI identifiers
- Articles with KULTURNAV identifiers
- Articles with RKDartists identifiers
- Articles with ULAN identifiers
- Articles with DTBIO identifiers
- Articles with Trove identifiers
- Articles with SUDOC identifiers
- Articles with TePapa identifiers
- 1752 births
- 1851 deaths
- English engravers