Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Green, Benjamin (1736?-1800?)

741985Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 23 — Green, Benjamin (1736?-1800?)1890Robert Edmund Graves

GREEN, BENJAMIN (1736?–1800?), mezzotint engraver, was born at Halesowen in Worcestershire about 1736. He was probably brother of Amos Green [q.v.], the flower painter, and John Green of Oxford, the line engraver. He became a member of the Incorporated Society of Artists, and contributed to its exhibitions from 1765 to 1774. He was a good draughtsman and became drawing-master at Christ's Hospital. He published many plates of antiquities drawn and etched by himself, and also engraved in line the views for the Oxford almanacs from 1760 to 1766, and the illustrations to Morant's 'History and Antiquities of the County of Essex,' published in 1768. Some of his plates after the works of George Stubbs, A.R.A., are good examples of mezzotint engraving They include 'Phaeton driving the Chariot of the Sun,' 'The Horse before the Lion's Den,' 'The Lion and Stag,' 'The Horse and the Lioness,' and an equestrian portrait of George, lord Pigot. Besides these he engraved in mezzotint a few portraits, among which are those of Mrs. Baldwin, after Tilly Kettle, and Lieutenant-colonel Townshend, a small oval after Hudson. He died in London not later than 1800.

[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists of the English School, 1878; John Chaloner Smith's British Mezzotinto Portraits, 1878-83, pp. 529-31; Exhibition Catalogues of the Incorporated Society of Artists, 1765-74; Rev. Mark Noble's Continuation of Vertue's Catalogue of Engravers, MS. dated 1806.]