John Pye

His father published an account of Birmingham, a geographical dictionary, and several series of plates of provincial coins and tokens.

In 1801 John Pye went to London with his cousin, William Radclyffe, and became a paid assistant of James Heath, to whom his elder brother was articled.

But he never sought or received honours from the Royal Academy, to which he was hostile because of its refusal to recognise engravers as the equals of painters and sculptors; he appeared before a select committee of the House of Commons appointed to inquire into the subject in 1836.

In 1810 John Britton, who was then publishing his work, The Fine Arts of the English School, commissioned Pye to engrave for it Turner's picture, Pope's Villa at Twickenham.

Pye formed a collection of impressions of Turner's Liber Studiorum, which went to the print-room of the British Museum; his notes on the subject, edited by John Lewis Roget, were published in 1879.

John Pye, photograph from the 1860s by John Watkins .
Rye House, Hertfordshire , engraving by Pye, after J. C. Smith.
The Junction of the Greta and Tees at Rokeby (1823), after Turner; hand-coloured.
Porch of Harlington , Middlesex, engraved by John Pye, drawn by L. Francia, for the Beauties of England and Wales , 1812, published by John Harris , London.