John Landseer

John Landseer ARA (1769 – 20 February 1852 London) was an English landscape engraver.

Landseer was born in Lincoln in 1769, according to Cosmo Monkhouse, or in London in 1761, according to his son Edwin's biographer, F.G. Stephens. However, according to the England and Wales Christening Index 1530-1980, he was born on 23/1/1765 and baptised in London on 3/2/1765 at Westminster. The son of a jeweller, he was apprenticed to the engraver William Byrne.

As a 16 year old apprentice he contributed the frame surrounding a Byrne engraving for the frontispiece of "Antiquities of Great Britain: VOL.I.", in 1785. A work published in 1786.

He then went to work for the publisher Thomas Macklin, noted for his illustrated edition of the Bible. He started a series Views of the Isle of Wight after pictures by Ibbetson and Turner, but publication was halted when he had only executed three plates. His largest series of engravings was Twenty Views of the South of Scotland, after James Moore. Others included one after drawings of animals by Dutch artists, and another of Biblical subjects, after Raphael and others.

In 1806, he delivered a series of lectures on engraving at the Royal Institution, in which he defended engraving its status as an independent art, and criticised the issuing of inferior plates by commercially minded publishers. The series was terminated after the sixth lecture, following protests by Josiah Boydell, who claimed that Landseer had unfairly criticised his uncle John Boydell, the leading publisher of engravings, who had died in 1804. He published the lectures in 1807, with added comments reinforcing his criticism of Boydell.

Also in 1806, he was elected an Associate Engraver of the Royal Academy despite his dispute with the institution over their failure to admit engravers as full members. He had previously only exhibited there once, in 1792. Some leading engravers – including Landseer's teacher, William Byrne – chose to boycott the academy completely over the issue, but Landseer hoped to challenge its rules from within. His protests, which included petitioning the Prince Regent, proved ineffective however, and the academy's policy was not changed until after his death.

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