Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Woollett, William
WOOLLETT, WILLIAM (1735–1785), draughtsman and line engraver, son of Philip Woollett, a flax-dresser at Maidstone, was born there on 15 Aug. 1735. Shortly after that date his father, having won a share in a lottery prize, took the Turk's Head inn at Maidstone, and there young Woollett gave the first indication of his artistic talent by scratching the sign of the house on a pewter pot. He was, in consequence, sent to London, where he became a pupil of John Tinney [q. v.], and also studied drawing in the St. Martin's Lane Academy. His earliest plates, which were of a purely topographical character, in the style of his master, by whom they were published, included a set of eight views of Oxford, after Donowell, 1755; four views of the gardens of West Wycombe, after Hannan, 1757; and two views of Whitton, from his own drawings, 1757. His first important work of a higher class was the ‘Temple of Apollo,’ after Claude, published in 1760 by Boydell, who then commissioned him to engrave the ‘Niobe’ of Richard Wilson. This established his reputation as the ablest landscape engraver who had yet appeared in England, and was followed by the ‘Phaeton,’ 1763, and ‘Celadon and Amelia,’ 1776, both from paintings by Wilson, and two admirable plates after C. Dusart, ‘The Cottagers’ and ‘The Jocund Peasants.’ So far Wollett had confined his practice almost exclusively to landscape work, but on the appearance in 1771 of West's ‘Death of General Wolfe,’ he undertook to engrave it, sharing the venture with Boydell and William Wynne Ryland [q. v.] The plate, which is his most celebrated work, was published in January 1776, and achieved extraordinary popularity both in England and abroad. On a proof of it being shown to the king shortly before its publication, the title of ‘Historical Engraver to His Majesty’ was conferred upon Woollett. The ‘Battle of La Hogue,’ also after West, which appeared in 1781, was almost equally well received, and both prints were copied by the best engravers in Paris and Vienna. Besides those already mentioned, Woollett produced about a hundred plates from pictures by Claude, Pillement, Zuccarelli, R. Wright, the Smiths of Chichester, W. Pars, G. Stubbs, J. Vernet, A. Carracci, and others. The last published by him was ‘Tobias and the Angel,’ after J. Glauber and G. Lairesse, 1785. ‘Morning’ and ‘Evening,’ a pair, after H. Swanevelt, which he left unfinished, were completed by B. T. Pouncy and S. Smith, and published by his widow in 1787. Some of his topographical drawings were engraved by Mason, Canot, and Elliott. In 1766 Woollett became a member of the Incorporated Society of Artists, of which he was also secretary for several years. He resided for some time in Green Street, Leicester Square, and later in Charlotte Street, Rathbone Place, where he died, after great suffering, on 23 May 1785, from an injury received some years before in playing at bowls. He was buried in old St. Pancras churchyard, his grave being marked by a plain headstone, which was restored in 1846 and now stands at the south-west angle of the church. A mural tablet to his memory, sculptured by T. Banks, R.A., was erected in the west cloister of Westminster Abbey.
Woollett stands in the front rank of the professors of his art, and he was the first English engraver whose works were admired and purchased on the continent. In his landscapes he succeeded, by a skilful combination of the graver and needle, in rendering the effects of distance, light, and atmosphere in a way not previously attempted, and his figure subjects are executed with remarkable vigour and purity of line. In landscape work he has, however, been surpassed by the modern school founded by John Pye [q. v.], and his prints of that class are now greatly depreciated. William Blake, who knew Woollett intimately, and did not like him, asserted that all his important plates were etched by his assistant, John Browne (1741–1801) [q. v.], and owed entirely to him whatever merit they possessed (Gilchrist, Life of Blake, i. 20).
Woollett left a widow Elizabeth and two daughters, who, when the trade in prints between this country and the continent was destroyed by the war which broke out in 1793, were reduced to great poverty, and in 1814 a subscription was raised for their benefit. Mrs. Woollett died in 1819, and her husband's plates were then sold to Messrs. Hurst & Robinson in consideration of an annuity for two lives, but, the firm failing six years later, this was lost. In 1843 the surviving daughter, Elizabeth Sophia, then aged sixty-eight, was the subject of another appeal for public assistance.
A portrait of Woollett, drawn and engraved by J. K. Sherwin, was published in 1784, and another, by Caroline Watson, from a painting by G. Stuart, in 1785. The portrait by Stuart is now in the National Portrait Gallery, London. A pencil drawing by T. Hearne, now in the print-room of the British Museum, was engraved by Bartolozzi in 1794.
[Fagan's Cat. of the Works of Woollett, 1885; Artists' Repository, iv. 134; Nägler's Künstler-Lexicon; Bryan's Dict. of Painters and Engravers (Armstrong); Dodd's manuscript Hist. of English Engravers in Brit. Mus., Addit. MS. 33407; Carlisle MSS. in Hist. MSS. Comm. 15th Rep. App. pt. vi. pp. 489, 547.]