Background
He was born at Maidstone, of a family which came originally from the Netherlands.
He was born at Maidstone, of a family which came originally from the Netherlands.
He was apprenticed to John Tinney, an engraver in Fleet Street, London, and studied in the St Martin's Lane academy.
After Benjamin West he engraved his fine plate of the "Battle of La Hogue" (1781), and "The Death of General Wolfe" (1776), which is usually considered Woollett's masterpiece. In his plates, which unite work with the etching-needle, the dry-point and the graver, Woollett shows the greatest richness and variety of execution. In his landscapes the rendering of water is particularly excellent.
In his portraits and historical subjects the rendering of flesh is characterized by great softness and delicacy. Louis Fagan, in his Catalogue Raisonné of the Engraved Works of William Woollett (1885), has enumerated 123 plates by this engraver. He died in London and is one of the many lost graves in Old St. Pancras Churchyard.
He is not listed on the memorial to important lost graves erected in the 19th century. A monument to his memory, by Thomas Banks, stands in Westminster Abbey.
In 1775 he was appointed engraver-in-ordinary to George III. And he was a member of the Incorporated Society of Artists, of which for several years he acted as secretary.
