Thomas Oldham Barlow

Thomas Oldham Barlow
Thomas Oldham Barlow (Walter William Ouless, 1882)
Born	(1824-08-04)4 August 1824 Oldham
Died	24 December 1889(1889-12-24) (aged 65) Kensington
Resting place	Brompton cemetery
Known for	mezzotint engraving

Thomas Oldham Barlow RA (4 August 1824 – 24 December 1889) was an English mezzotint engraver. His prints helped to popularise the works of painters like John Phillip and Sir John Everett Millais.

Barlow was born in Oldham in Lancashire, the son of Henry Barlow, an ironmonger living in the High Street, and Sarah (née) Oldham. He was educated at the Old Grammar School, Oldham, and was then articled to "Stephenson & Royston", a firm of engravers in Manchester. He studied at the Manchester School of Design, where he won a prize of 10 guineas in 1846 for a drawing entitled 'Cullings from Nature'.

He moved to Ebury Street, London, in 1847. His first independent work was a line engraving of John Phillip's 'Courtship', made in 1848, and this led to a close friendship with the painter, the most important of whose pictures he subsequently engraved. These include 'Dona Pepita' (1858); 'The Prison Window' (1860); 'The House of Commons in 1860' (1866); 'Prayer in Spain' (1873); 'Highland Breakfast' (1877); and the celebrated 'La Gloria' (1877). Barlow was the executor of Phillip's will, and drew up a catalogue of the collection of the artist's works which were shown at the Third Annual International Exhibition in London in 1873.

In 1856, Barlow engraved John Everett Millais's 'Huguenot', and in 1860 his 'My First Sermon', and during the latter part of his life was largely engaged upon that artist's works. Portraits of John Bright, Gladstone, Tennyson, Cardinal Newman, Lord Salisbury, and other public characters, painted by Millais for the art dealer "Agnew's", were all engraved by Barlow. Other well-known engravings include the 'Death of Chatterton' (after Henry Wallis); portrait of Sir Isaac Newton (after Godfrey Kneller); portrait of Charles Dickens (after William Powell Frith); and several after Landseer, Maclise, Ansdell, and James Sant.