John Smith (engraver born 1652)

John Smith (c. 1652 – c. 1742) was an English mezzotint engraver.

Smith was born at 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 Vaardt. 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.

Smith created approximately 500 plates; nearly 300 of these plates were portraits of notable men and women of the period between the reigns of Charles II and George II. Smith used pictures from artists such as Peter Lely, Godfrey Kneller, Willem Wissing, Michael Dahl, John Riley, John Closterman, Edward Gibson, and Thomas Murray. The rest of Smith's plates have sacred, mythological, and genre subjects after Titian, Correggio, Parmigianino, Carlo Maratti, Godfried Schalcken, Egbert van Heemskerck, Marcellus Laroon and others.

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