John Browne
British, 1741 - 1801
English engraver. He was apprenticed to the engraver John Tinney (d 1761), who was also the master of William Woollett, to whom Browne transferred his apprenticeship in 1761–3. He remained with Woollett until 1766, and Woollett found in him the ideal assistant for his system of preliminary etching. According to Blake, ‘Woollett’s best works…all that are called Woolletts were Etchd by Jack Brown’ (William Blake’s Writings, ed. G. E. Bentley jr, Oxford, 1977, ii, p. 1035); in fairness to Woollett, however, Browne’s contribution was acknowledged on the prints and in advertisements. Browne engraved many plates of his own and made his name with a number of large prints of pictures by Claude Lorrain, Meindert Hobbema, Peter Paul Rubens and Salvator Rosa, which he engraved for John Boydell in the late 1760s. In 1770 he was one of the first Associate Engravers elected to the Royal Academy. Browne was a specialist engraver and all his prints, which include four after his own drawings (published in the late 1790s), have a landscape element.
David Alexander. " Browne, John." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T011635 (accessed May 1, 2012).
Person TypeIndividual
American, 1896 - 1961
British, 1757 - 1802
