James Heath (engraver)
Encyclopedia
George III of the United Kingdom
George III was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of these two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death...
and successive monarchs, and was an associate engraver of the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
.
Life and work
Heath was born in NewgateNewgate
Newgate at the west end of Newgate Street was one of the historic seven gates of London Wall round the City of London and one of the six which date back to Roman times. From it a Roman road led west to Silchester...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, the son of George Heath, a bookbinder
Bookbinding
Bookbinding is the process of physically assembling a book from a number of folded or unfolded sheets of paper or other material. It usually involves attaching covers to the resulting text-block.-Origins of the book:...
(d. 1773). He was articled to the engraver Joseph Collyer the younger
Joseph Collyer
Joseph Collyer , also called Joseph Collyer the Younger, was an English engraver; associate of the Royal Academy and portrait engraver to the British Queen Consort, Queen Charlotte.-Life and work:...
, an exacting master who required steady application from his pupil - as a result, Heath acquired a great mechanical skill in his art. His earliest engravings were of portraits in the collected edition of Horace Walpole's works. He was subsequently employed to engrave Thomas Stothard
Thomas Stothard
Thomas Stothard was an English painter, illustrator and engraver.-Life and work:Stothard was born in London, the son of a well-to-do innkeeper in Long Acre, London. A delicate child, he was sent at the age of five to a relative in Yorkshire, and attended school at Acomb, and afterwards at...
's designs for Harrison's "The Novelist's Magazine" and Bell's
John Bell (publisher)
John Bell was an English publisher. The Dictionary of National Biography has Charles Knight calling Bell a "mischievous spirit, the very Puck of booksellers." His 109-volume, literature-for-the-masses Poets of Great Britain Complete from Chaucer to Churchill, which rivaled Samuel Johnson's Lives...
"Poets of Great Britain", and the taste and dexterity with which he rendered these small illustrations brought this style of illustration into great popularity. He made many engravings after artists such as Stothard, Smirke
Robert Smirke (painter)
Robert Smirke , was an English painter and illustrator.-Life and work:Smirke was born at Wigton near Carlisle, the son of a clever but eccentric travelling artist. In his thirteenth year he was apprenticed in London with an heraldic painter, and, at the age of twenty, began to study at the schools...
, and others, and these were to be found in publications such as: Sharpe's "British Classics", the "Lady's Poetical Magazine", Forster's "Arabian Nights", Glover's "Leonidas", and many similar editions of popular works.
He engraved some of the plates for John Boydell
John Boydell
John Boydell was an 18th-century British publisher noted for his reproductions of engravings. He helped alter the trade imbalance between Britain and France in engravings and initiated a British tradition in the art form...
's "Shakespeare
Boydell Shakespeare Gallery
The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery in London, England, was the first stage of a three-part project initiated in November 1786 by engraver and publisher John Boydell in an effort to foster a school of British history painting...
" and also, in 1802, published his own six-volume illustrated edition of Shakespeare. In 1780, he exhibited three engravings at the exhibition of the Society of Artists
Society of Artists
The Society of Artists of Great Britain was founded in London in May 1761 by an association of artists in order to provide a venue for the public exhibition of recent work by living artists, such as was having success in the long-established Paris salons....
. In 1791, he was elected an associate engraver of the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
, and, in 1794, was appointed historical engraver to George III
George III of the United Kingdom
George III was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of these two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death...
, continuing in that post under successive sovereigns until his death. He engraved some large plates, notably "The Dead Soldier" (after Joseph Wright of Derby
Joseph Wright of Derby
Joseph Wright , styled Wright of Derby, was an English landscape and portrait painter. He has been acclaimed as "the first professional painter to express the spirit of the Industrial Revolution"....
), "The Death of Nelson" (after Benjamin West
Benjamin West
Benjamin West, RA was an Anglo-American painter of historical scenes around and after the time of the American War of Independence...
), "The Riots in Broad Street. 1780" (after Francis Wheatley
Francis Wheatley (painter)
Francis Wheatley was an English portrait and landscape painter.-Life and work:Wheatley was born at Wild Court, Covent Garden, London, the son of a master tailor. He studied at William Shipley's drawing school and the Royal Academy, and won several prizes from the Society of Arts...
, "The Death of Major Pierson" (after J S Copley
John Singleton Copley
John Singleton Copley was an American painter, born presumably in Boston, Massachusetts, and a son of Richard and Mary Singleton Copley, both Irish. He is famous for his portrait paintings of important figures in colonial New England, depicting in particular middle-class subjects...
), "Titian's daughter" (after Titian
Titian
Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/1490 – 27 August 1576 better known as Titian was an Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near...
),"The Holy Family" and "The Good Shepherd" (after Murillo
Bartolomé Estéban Murillo
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo was a Spanish Baroque painter. Although he is best known for his religious works, Murillo also produced a considerable number of paintings of contemporary women and children...
), "The Holy family" (after Raphael
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...
) etc.
He worked first in stipple
Stippling
Stippling is the creation of a pattern simulating varying degrees of solidity or shading by using small dots. Such a pattern may occur in nature and these effects are frequently emulated by artists.-Art:...
and afterwards in line, sometimes in conjunction with others, keeping a large number of pupils working under his direction. He re-engraved the existing set of Hogarth's plates, and completed the engravings of Stothard's "Canterbury Pilgrims", left unfinished by Schiavonetti
Luigi Schiavonetti
Luigi Schiavonetti , Italian reproductive engraver and etcher, was born at Bassano in Venetia.After having studied art for several years he was employed by Testolini, an engraver of very indifferent abilities, to execute imitations of Bartolozzi's works, which he passed off as his own...
at his death. He also engraved numerous portraits.
Heath amassed a considerable fortune, but lost much property by a fire in 1789. About 1823 he retired from his profession and his stock of proofs and other engravings was dispersed by auction in that year. Around 1777, he married Elizabeth Thomas (daughter of the Rev. Dr. Thomas, a Welsh clergyman), and they had one son, George Heath, who became a Serjeant-at-law
Serjeant-at-law
The Serjeants-at-Law was an order of barristers at the English bar. The position of Serjeant-at-Law , or Sergeant-Counter, was centuries old; there are writs dating to 1300 which identify them as descended from figures in France prior to the Norman Conquest...
. His illegitimate son was Charles Heath
Charles Heath
Charles Theodosius Heath was an English engraver, currency and stamp printer, book publisher and illustrator.-Life and work:...
(1785-1848), also a notable engraver.
James Heath died in Great Coram Street, London, on 15th July 1834. His portraits were painted by Joshua Reynolds
Joshua Reynolds
Sir Joshua Reynolds RA FRS FRSA was an influential 18th-century English painter, specialising in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy...
, James Lonsdale (1777-1839), William Behnes
William Behnes
William Behnes was an English sculptor of the early 19th century.Born in London, Behnes was the son of a Hanoverian pianoforte-maker and his English wife. His early life was spent in Dublin where he studied art at the Dublin Academy....
, L. F. Abbott
Lemuel Francis Abbott
Lemuel "Francis" Abbot was an English portrait painter, famous for his likeness of Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson and for those of other naval officers and literary figures of the 18th century.-Life and work:He was born Lemuel Abbott in Leicestershire in 1760 or 1761,...
, and Thomas George (fl. 1829-1838); the latter three were engraved. A small oval portrait was also engraved for the "Monthly Mirror" in 1796. In 1834, he exhibited "Children playing with a Donkey" at the Royal Academy, but it was not stated to
have been on engraving.
External links
- Biography and selected list of works (by J. J. Heath-Caldwell)
- Biography, works and connection with Walter Scott (Walter Scott Digital Archive, Edinburgh University Library)
- Engraved portraits by James Heath] (National Portrait Gallery, London)
- Engravings by James Heath] (Grosvenor's Prints)
- George washington (engraving after Gilbert StuartGilbert StuartGilbert Charles Stuart was an American painter from Rhode Island.Gilbert Stuart is widely considered to be one of America's foremost portraitists...
- George Glazer Gallery)