Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mason, James (fl.1743-1783)
MASON, JAMES (fl. 1743–1783), landscape engraver, was born about 1710, and practised his art in London. Between 1743 and 1748 he executed a series of plates from pictures by Claude and Gaspar Poussin in various English collections, which were published in numbers by Arthur Pond, and during the next twenty years engraved much from the works of Smith of Derby, Scott, Lambert, Serres, Bellers, and other contemporary English painters. Subsequently he was employed by Boydell, for whom he produced his two finest prints, ‘A View on the River Po,’ 1769, and ‘The Landing of Æneas,’ 1772, both after Claude, and many others after Swanevelt, Moucheron, Zuccarelli, and R. Wilson. Mason exhibited frequently with the Society of Artists, of which he was a member, and with the Free Society between 1761 and 1783. His latest plate, ‘A Village Farm,’ after Hobbema, was published in 1786. He was very skilful in rendering the effect and colour of the original pictures, and ranks with Canot, Chatelain, and Vivares, in conjunction with whom much of his work was done.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Graves's Dict. of Artists, 1760–1880; Nagler's Kunstler-Lexikon; Dodd's Memoirs of English Engravers in Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 33403.]