Thomas A. Woolnoth (1785-1857)

Thomas A. Woolnoth (1785-1857)

The portrait painter and engraver Thomas A. Woolnoth was best known for his theatrical portraits after Thomas Charles Wageman and for large plates after Correggio and Vandyck. A pupil of Charles Heath, he contributed steel engravings to E.W. Brayley and J. Britton's The History of the Ancient Palace and Late Houses of Parliament at Westminster (1836), Heath's Gallery (1836), Finden's Tableaux (1837), J. Wilson and R. Chambers's The Land of Burns (1840), G.N. Wright's Gallery of Engravings (1844-46), and The Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Poets (1853). He also engraved from his own designs, furnishing both drawings and engravings for Sarah Bowditch's Juvenile Album (1841), and for his own Flowers of Infancy (1839), Facts and Faces (1852), and The Study of the Human Face (1865). He became Engraver in Ordinary to Queen Victoria and exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1842 to 1857.

Click on the thumbnails to see full-size images of Woolnoth's engravings of Jean Calvin after Cornelis Dankerts (left) and John Milton after William Faithorne (right).

Woolnoth appears to have executed three Scott-related engravings: the 1818 portrait by Andrew Geddes, the 1829 portrait by John Graham Gilbert, and an image illustrating Tales of the Crusaders (see The Talisman and The Betrothed) for the March 1826 number of the Lady's Magazine.

Bibliography

Bryan, Michael. Dictionary of Painters and Engravers: Biographical and Critical. New ed., rev. and enl., ed. Robert Edmund Graves (London: G. Bell, 1886-1889)
Buss, Jacques (ed.). Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs de tous les temps et de tous les pays (Paris: Gründ, 1999)
Houfe, Simon. The Dictionary of 19th Century British Book Illustrators and Caricaturists (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors’ Club, 1996)
Hunnisett, Basil. A Dictionary of British Steel Engravers (Leigh-on-Sea: F. Lewis, 1980)
Redgrave, Samuel. A Dictionary of Artists of the English School: Painters, Sculptors, Architects with Notices of their Lives and Work (London: G. Bell, 1878)
Thieme, Ulrich, and Felix Becker (eds). Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler: von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (Leipzig: Seemann, 1907-50)
Todd, William. B., and Ann Bowden. Sir Walter Scott: A Bibliographical History, 1796-1832 (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 1998)

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