John Pye

John Pye (Birmingham 7 November 1782 – 6 February 1874 London) was an English landscape engraver.

The second son of Charles Pye of Birmingham, where he was born on 7 November 1782; his mother was a daughter of John Radclyffe, also of Birmingham, and aunt of William Radclyffe the engraver. Charles Pye, and his elder brother Charles Pye was also an engraver. His father published an account of Birmingham, a geographical dictionary, and several series of plates of provincial coins and tokens. These engraved by himself, with the assistance of his son John, who was removed from school when still a child, and received his first instruction in engraving from his father. Later he was a pupil of Joseph Barber of Birmingham, and was then apprenticed to a plate-engraver named Tolley.

In 1801 John Pye went to London with his cousin, William Radclyffe, and became a paid assistant of James Heath, to whom his elder brother was articled. He was employed on works of natural history and in engraving the backgrounds of book illustrations.

Pye made a career of illustrations to popular annuals and pocket-books. In 1830, at the request of John Sheepshanks, he undertook the publication of a series of engravings from pictures in the National Gallery during the 1830s. He retired in 1858.

Pye was among the founders of the Artists' Annuity Fund, with his friend William Mulready. He spent much of his time in France, where, in 1862, he was elected a corresponding member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts; he had already, in 1846, received a gold medal from the French government, and he was also an honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. But he never sought or received honours from the Royal Academy, to which he was hostile because of its refusal to recognise engravers as the equals of painters and sculptors; he appeared before a select committee of the House of Commons appointed to inquire into the subject in 1836.

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