Thomas Bewick was an English engraver and natural history author.
Background
Bewick was born at Cherryburn, a house in the village of Mickley, Northumberland, near Newcastle upon Tyne on 10 or 11 August 1753. His father, John Bewick, rented a small colliery, combining this trade with his farming. Thomas, the eldest of eight children, enjoyed a pleasant boyhood which he pictured in A Memoir of Thomas Bewick, Written by Himself (not published until 1862).
Education
Bewick attended school in the nearby village of Ovingham. Most of his schooling was obtained from the Rev. Christopher Gregson of Ovingham.
Career
In 1767 Bewick was apprenticed to Ralph Beilby, then the only engraver in Newcastle, and one of a gifted family practicing design and crafts. At the conclusion of his apprenticeship, Bewick spent a wanderyear which began with a walking tour through parts of Scotland and ended with a stay of nine months in London, which he disliked.
He seems thereafter to have devoted himself entirely to engraving on wood, and in 1775 he received a premium from the Society for the Encouragement of Arts and Manufactures for a woodcut of the "Huntsman and the Old Hound. "
In 1784 appeared his Select Fables, the engravings in which, though far surpassed by his later productions, were incomparably superior to anything that had yet been done in that line.
Of his other productions the engravings for Goldsmith's Traveller and Deserted Village, for Parnell's Hermit, for Somerville's Chase, and for the collection of Fables of Aesop and Others, may be specially mentioned.
His autobiography, Memoirs of Thomas Bewick, by Himself, appeared in 1862.
Achievements
Connections
Thomas Bewick was married to Isabella Elliott from Ovingham. They had four children, Robert, Jane, Isabella, and Elizabeth.