Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Tinney, John
TINNEY, JOHN (d. 1761), engraver, practised both in line and mezzotint, but with no great ability, during the reign of George II. He was also a printseller, and carried on business at the Golden Lion in Fleet Street, London, where all his own works were published. His mezzotint plates include portraits of Lavinia Fenton, after John Ellys; George III, after Joseph Highmore; Chief Baron Parker; and John Wesley; also some fancy subjects after Boucher, Lancret, Rosalba, Correggio, and others. He engraved in line a set of ten views of Hampton Court and Kensington Palace, after Anthony Highmore, and some of Fontainebleau and Versailles, after Jean Rigaud. Some of the plates in Ball's ‘Antiquities of Constantinople,’ 1729, are also by him. Tinney is now remembered as the master of the distinguished engravers William Woollett [q. v.], Anthony Walker [q. v.], and John Browne (1741–1801) [q. v.] He died in 1761.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Chaloner Smith's British Mezzotinto Portraits; Dodd's manuscript Hist. of English Engravers in Brit. Mus. (Addit. MSS. 33406).]