John Smith (ca. 1798-1846)

John Smith (ca. 1798-1847)

Little is known about the landscape and figure engraver John Smith who was active from 1832 to 1847. He is believed to have been born around 1798 and to have attended the Royal Academy Schools in London. His landscape engravings first appeared in J. Britton and W.W. Brayley's Devonshire and Cornwall Illustrated (1832). He next worked with William Tombleson on his Views of the Rhine (1832), Upper Rhine, and Thames (both 1834), and with Leith Ritchie on his Travelling Sketches in Northern Italy (1832), Travelling Sketches on the Rhine (1833), and Wanderings by the Seine (1835). Smith went on to contribute to further examples of the flourishing illustrated travel genre: Thomas Roscoe's Tour in Italy (1833), William Beattie's Switzerland (1836), James Browne's A History of the Highlands (1838), W.J. Hooker's Perthshire Illustrated (1843), and W.G. Fearnside's Picturesque Beauties of the Rhine (1846).

Smith engraved two Scott-related images: 1) Henry Meville's Solway Firth, Embarkation of Queen Mary, an episode from The Abbot, for Landscape-Historical Illustrations of Scotland and the Waverley Novels (1838) (click on thumbnail, right), and 2) Smith's last recorded published work, The Abbotsford Family by Sir David Wilkie for the Abbotsford Edition of the Waverley Novels (1847).

Bibliography

Hunnisett, Basil. A Dictionary of British Steel Engravers (Leigh-on-Sea: F. Lewis, 1980)

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