Background
Bentley was born at Bradford, Yorkshire.
Bentley was born at Bradford, Yorkshire.
He began his artistic career as a landscape-painter, but in 1832 he went to London where he studied engraving under Robert Brandard.
He died at Sydenham on 9 October 1851. The Art Journal noted:
Such, unfortunately, did not prove to be the case, though it was not until the approach of autumn that any immediate apprehensions of the result were entertained. During the three months prior to his decease, the unfavourable symptoms rapidly increased till the day of his death, on the 9th of October.
The indefatigable perseverance of Mr. Bentley, and his anxiety to attain excellence in whatever he undertook, operated prejudicially, it is to be feared, on a constitution naturally weak, and for the last seven or eight years his health had become very precarious. Still he laboured on, and it was hoped that a removal to Sydenham, for the benefit of a purer air, would have arrested, if not entirely removed, the tendency to consumption which his constitution exhibited.
