John Smith (
c. 1652 – c. 1742) was an English
mezzotint engraver and print seller. Closely associated with the portrait painter
Godfrey Kneller, Smith was one of leading exponents of the mezzotint medium during the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and was regarded among first English-born artists to receive international recognition, along the younger painter
William Hogarth.
Life
Smith was born in
Daventry, Northamptonshire, about 1652. He was articled to a painter named Tillet in London, and studied mezzotint engraving under
Isaac Beckett and
Jan van der Vaart. Smith became the favourite engraver of
Sir Godfrey Kneller, whose paintings he extensively reproduced, and in whose house he is said to have lived for some time.
At the end of his career, Smith retired to Northamptonshire, where he died on 17 January 1742 at age 90. He was buried in the churchyard of
St Peter's, Northampton church, where there was a tablet to his memory and that of his wife Sarah, who died in 1717.
Most of Smith's early plates had been published by the renowned print seller
Edward Cooper. In 1700, Smith became a printseller at the Lyon and Crown in
Covent Garden and started publishing his own works. Smith also reissued many plates by Beckett,
Bernard Lens, Williams, and others, retouching them and erasing the original engravers' names. Smith's latest print appears to have been the portrait of the young
Prince William, Duke of Cumberland, after
Joseph Highmore, dated 1729.
The bulk of Smith's copperplates eventually came into the hands of publisher
John Boydell, who reprinted them in large numbers.
In 1696, Kneller painted a portrait of Smith holding a Kneller engraving and gave it to him. In 1716, Smith created a print from that portrait.
Samuel Freeman later engraved that image for
Horace Walpole's Anecdotes. Kneller's portrait of Smith is part of the collection of the
Tate Gallery, London.[1]
Vertue, George (1934). "The Note-Books of George Vertue Relating to Artists and Collections in England (III)". The Walpole Society. 22. whole issue.
JSTORi40086509.