Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Delatre, Jean Marie

1216175Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 14 — Delatre, Jean Marie1888Frank Thomas Marzials ‎

DELATRE or DELATTRE, JEAN MARIE (1745–1840), engraver, was born in 1745 at Abbeville, and, after exercising his craft for some time in Paris, was brought to England in 1770 by William Wynne Ryland. Here he became one of Bartolozzi's numerous pupils, and then his principal assistant, a good deal of the work bearing Bartolozzi's name being in reality the work of Delatre. The work bearing Delatre's own name is comparatively rare, and not of the highest quality. In 1801 he brought an action against Copley, by whom he had been commissioned to engrave a smaller plate of the ‘Death of the Earl of Chatham,’ and recovered 600l. Raimbach, who apparently was present, gives in his ‘Memoirs’ an account of the trial, which turned on the artistic merit of the work, and seems to have been mainly a contest of evidence between painters and engravers. As to the plate itself, if one may venture to decide where doctors have disagreed, it is not admirable. Delatre died at North End, Fulham, on 30 June 1840.

[Memoirs and Recollections of the late Abraham Raimbach, privately printed, London, 1843; Redgrave's Dictionary of Artists, 1878; Tuer, Bartolozzi and his Works.]

F. T. M.