Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Benazech, Peter Paul

1250842Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 04 — Benazech, Peter Paul1885Robert Edmund Graves

BENAZECH, PETER PAUL (1744?–1783?), line-engraver, is said to have been born in England about the year 1744. He was a pupil of Francis Vivarès, and worked as a draughtsman and engraver both in London and in Paris, His engravings are tastefully executed, and consist chiefly of landscapes and marine subjects, the best being those after Dietrich and Joseph Vernet. He engraved also a series of anatomical plates, a set of seven scenes from the Seven Years' War, and, in conjunction with Canot, four plates of engagements between the English and French fleets, after Francis Swaine. Besides these he engraved 'Peasants playing at Bowls,' after Adriaan van Oslade, and views in England after Chatelain and Brooks. The year of his death is not known, but his latest dated plate is 'The Tomb of Virgil,' after Hugh Dean, engraved in 1783.

[Redgrave's Dictionary of Artists, 1878; Mayer's Allgemaines Künstler-Lexikon, 1872, &c, iii, 500-1; Portalis and Béraldi's Graveure du Dix-huitième Siècle, 1880-2, i. 157.]

R. E. G.