Bewick, William

(1795 - 1866)

William Bewick (born 1795 in Darlington, County Durham; died 1866) was a British engraver.

At the age of twenty, Bewick, son of an upholsterer, went to London to be trained under the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon.

Works

Bewick did several drawings for Goethe as part of the Elgin Marbles. He also worked as a copyist, so successful that Sir Thomas Lawrence sent him to copy Michelangelo's frescoes of the Sistine Chapel in Rome in 1826. Upon his return three years later, he worked as a history and portrait painter.

Forced to retire by a sickness, Bewick spent his last twenty years in north-east England.