5025 x 3363 px | 42,5 x 28,5 cm | 16,8 x 11,2 inches | 300dpi
Data acquisizione:
1753
Altre informazioni:
Thomas Bewick (12 August 1753 – 8 November 1828) was an English wood engraver and ornithologist. Bewick was born at Cherryburn House in the village of Mickley, in the parish of Ovingham, Northumberland, England, near Newcastle upon Tyne on 12 August 1753. His father rented a small colliery at Mickley Bank, and sent his son to school in the nearby village of Ovingham. Bewick was a poor scholar, but showed, at a very early age, a talent for drawing. He had no lessons in art. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to Ralph Beilby, an engraver in Newcastle. In Beilby's workshop Bewick engraved a series of diagrams on wood for Dr. Charles Hutton, illustrating a treatise on mensuration. He seems thereafter to have devoted himself entirely to engraving on wood, and in 1775 he received a premium from the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce for a wood engraving of the "Huntsman and the Old Hound". In 1776 he became a partner in Beilby's workshop. A vignette from Bewick's History of British Birds, mentioned in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (Chapter I): "The fiend pinning down the thief's pack behind him, I passed over quickly: it was an object of terror"His Select Fables (1784) had engravings which were far superior to any that had yet been done. A General History of Quadrupeds appeared in 1790, and Bewick's great achievement, that with which his name is inseparably associated, the History of British Birds, was published from 1797-1804. His Birds was published in two volumes, "Land Birds" and "Water Birds", with a supplement in 1821. The Quadrupeds deals with mammals of the whole world, and is particularly thorough on some of the domestic animals. It includes bats and seals but does not include whales or dolphins. The Birds is specifically British. Bewick was helped by his intimate knowledge of the habits of animals acquired during his constant excursions into the country.
