Samuel Alken Sr. was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

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History

Samuel Alken entered the Royal Academy Schools, London, as a sculptor in 1772. In 1779, he published A New Book of Ornaments Designed and Etched by Samuel Alken, afterwards establishing himself as one of the most competent engravers in the new technique of aquatint

Aquatint

Aquatint is an intaglio printmaking technique, a variant of etching.Intaglio printmaking makes marks on the matrix that are capable of holding ink. The inked plate is passed through a printing press together with a sheet of paper, resulting in a transfer of the ink to the paper...

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Relatives

The Alken family claims several well known artists.

There are some sporting paintings signed S. Alken, but they may be the work of his eldest son, Samuel.