John Byrne (English artist)

John Byrne (1786–1847) was an English painter and engraver. He came from a family of artists and he lived with his sister Elizabeth Byrne who also exhibited her landscapes.

View from the south side of King George's Sound, first published in Matthew Flinders' 1814 A voyage to Terra Australis. After a painting by William Westall.

Life

He was the only son of engraver William Byrne and followed his father's profession in the arts.^[1] After his father's death in 1805, he moved to 54 John Street, London. He had four sisters who were all talented artists including Elizabeth Byrne who lived with him. Elizabeth exhibited her own landscapes starting in 1838. The views were of foreign as well as British locations. She created six steel engravings for Thomas H. Shepherd's "Modern Athens".^[2] This was published in 1829.^[3] Her last known work to be exhibited was in 1849.^[2]

He provided sets of engravings for Charles Wild's works on cathedrals.^[4]

Byrne around 1818 was drawing-master at Eton College.^[4] He subsequently concentrated on landscape painting in watercolours; his sister Mary and her son were also painters.

His work is included in Cadell and Davies' Britannia depicta. He sent pictures to the exhibitions of the Water-Colour Society and the Royal Academy; and spent some years (about 1832–37) in Italy. He died in 1847. In the Victoria and Albert Museum are:^[1]

• The Ferry at Twickenham (exhibited in 1830).
• Italian Landscape, with Monastery.

Matlock church: engraving by John and Letitia Byrne after a painting by Joseph Farington. Published in 1817 in Britannia Depicta, Part VI, Derbyshire

References

1. Bryan, Michael; Robert Edmund Graves, Sir Walter Armstrong (1886). "Dictionary of painters and engravers, biographical and critical". Internet Archive (3 ed.). London: G. Bell & Sons. p. 206. Retrieved 30 April 2017.
2. "Byrne family (per. 1765–1849), engravers and painters". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/65026. Retrieved 23 October 2020. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
3. John Britton, Thomas Hosmer Shepherd (1829). Modern Athens! Displayed in a Series of Views: Or Edinburgh in the ... Oxford University. Jones & Co.
4. Clayton, Timothy; McConnell, Anita. "Byrne family". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/65026. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Bryan, Michael (1886). "Byrne, John". In Graves, Robert Edmund (ed.). Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers (A–K). Vol. I (3rd ed.). London: George Bell & Sons. p. 206.