John Thompson (25 May 1785 – 20 February 1866) was a British wood-engraver. He is best known for his contribution to William Yarrell's 1843 History of British Birds . He was described as the most distinguished wood-engraver of his time.
Thompson also engraved the design for the 1839 penny postage envelope, on a brass plate; and the design for the iconic figure of Britannia which appeared on British banknotes.
Thompson was born in Manchester to a London merchant, Richard Thompson. [1]
He trained under the wood-engraver Allen Robert Branston, and then collaborated with the artist John Thurston. He engraved around 900 of Thurston's designs from 1814 onwards including illustrations for Butler's Hudibras in 1918. [1] He is described as Branston's "most celebrated pupil". [2]
He illustrated many books, becoming in the words of Freeman Marius O'Donoghue in the Dictionary of National Biography "the most distinguished wood-engraver of his time", and "perhaps the ablest exponent that has ever lived of the style of wood engraving which aimed at rivalling the effect of copper". [1] He is thanked by William Yarrell in the preface to History of British Birds for engraving the original drawings by Alexander Fussell, "nearly five hundred of the drawings on wood here employed", in what was a "very long series of engravings". [3] [4]
As well as wood-engravings for books, Thompson engraved the design for the penny postage envelope "in relief on brass" in 1839, and in 1852 he engraved on steel the figure of Britannia which appeared on British banknotes for the rest of the nineteenth century. [1]
Thompson won the grand medal of honour for wood-engraving at the 1855 Paris exhibition. [1]
His younger brother, Charles Thompson (1791–1843), was likewise an engraver. Charles studied under the Newcastle engraver John Bewick, [5] the younger brother of Thomas Bewick; the latter produced the predecessor to Yarrell's handbook, also named History of British Birds (first published 1797–1804). Charles won a gold medal for his illustrations in Paris in 1824. [1]
John Thompson's eldest son, Charles Thurston Thompson (1816–1868), followed his father into the wood-engraving profession. After assisting in organising the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, he moved into photography and became the South Kensington Museum's official photographer. [1]
His other son, Richard Anthony Thompson was an assistant director at the South Kensington Museum (until 1892). [1]
Thompson's three daughters, Isabel Agnes Cowper, Eliza Thompson and Augusta Thompson, were also accomplished wood-engravers. Cowper followed her brother, Charles Thurston Thompson into photography, assuming his role as the South Kensington Museum's official photographer upon his death.
Thomas Bewick was an English wood-engraver and natural history author. Early in his career he took on all kinds of work such as engraving cutlery, making the wood blocks for advertisements, and illustrating children's books. He gradually turned to illustrating, writing and publishing his own books, gaining an adult audience for the fine illustrations in A History of Quadrupeds.
William Yarrell was an English zoologist, prolific writer, bookseller and naturalist admired by his contemporaries for his precise scientific work.
Wood engraving is a printmaking technique, in which an artist works an image into a block of wood. Functionally a variety of woodcut, it uses relief printing, where the artist applies ink to the face of the block and prints using relatively low pressure. By contrast, ordinary engraving, like etching, uses a metal plate for the matrix, and is printed by the intaglio method, where the ink fills the valleys, the removed areas. As a result, the blocks for wood engravings deteriorate less quickly than the copper plates of engravings, and have a distinctive white-on-black character.
William Harvey was a British wood-engraver and illustrator.
Luke Clennell was a British wood-engraver and painter.
Charlton Nesbit was a British wood-engraver.
Leonard Charles Wyon was a British engraver of the Victorian era most notable for his work on the gold and silver coinage struck for the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887 and the bronze coinage of 1860 with the second ("bun") head portrait, in use from 1860 to 1894.
Josiah Wood Whymper was a British wood-engraver, book illustrator and watercolourist.
John Jackson (1801–1848) was a British wood-engraver.
John Anderson was a Scottish wood-engraver and illustrator, a pupil of the British wood-engraver Thomas Bewick.
Allen Robert Branston (1778–1827) known more generally as Robert Branston, was a British wood-engraver.
The Natural History of Ireland is a four volume work by William Thompson. The first three volumes were published by Reeve and Benham, London between 1849 and 1851. Volume 4 was published by Henry G. Bohn, London in 1856. The Natural History of Ireland is very influential of later developments.
A History of British Birds is a natural history book by Thomas Bewick, published in two volumes. Volume 1, Land Birds, appeared in 1797. Volume 2, Water Birds, appeared in 1804. A supplement was published in 1821. The text in Land Birds was written by Ralph Beilby, while Bewick took over the text for the second volume. The book is admired mainly for the beauty and clarity of Bewick's wood-engravings, which are widely considered his finest work, and among the finest in that medium.
William Yarrell's A History of British Birds was first published as a whole in three volumes in 1843, having been serialised, three sheets every two months, over the previous six years. It is not a history of ornithology but a natural history, a handbook or field guide systematically describing every species of bird known to occur in Britain. A separate article of about six pages, containing an image, a description, and an account of worldwide distribution, together with reports of behaviour, is provided for each species.
Alexander Fussell or Fussel was an English artist and illustrator. He drew the bird illustrations for William Yarrell's 1843 History of British Birds.
Robert Johnson was a British artist, an apprentice of Thomas Bewick in his Newcastle upon Tyne workshop. Bewick taught him wood-engraving, but discovered Johnson's talent for sketching in watercolour directly from nature.
William Savage (1770–1843) was an English printer, engraver, draughtsman and author of several works about printing.
Charles Thompson (1791–1843) was a British wood-engraver, who made a career in France.
Isabel Agnes Cowper, a British wood-engraver and photographer, was the first female Official Museum Photographer at the South Kensington Museum and possibly the first female Official Museum Photographer ever. From 1868, when Cowper assumed the role at the museum, to her retirement in 1891, Cowper made thousands of photographs documenting museum and loan objects and the construction of the museum buildings. In her lifetime, Cowper's photographs were widely circulated as illustrations in South Kensington Museum publications and examples of her work are continually being discovered in libraries and archives around the world.
A History of British Fishes is a natural history book by William Yarrell, serialised in nineteen parts from 1835, and then published bound in two volumes in 1836. It is a handbook or field guide systematically describing every type of fish found in the British Isles, with an article for each species.
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