Joseph Clayton Bentley

He began his artistic career as a landscape-painter, but in 1832 he went to London, where he studied engraving under Robert Brandard.

[1] Bentley's engravings included plates for the publications of Fisher, Son & Co.; George Virtue, for whose Gems of European Art,[2] he engraved The Fountain after Francesco Zuccarelli, and A Sunny Day after Cuyp; and for The Art Journal.

He also produced work for the Vernon Gallery:[1] The Brook by the Way, after Thomas Gainsborough; Lake Avernus, after Richard Wilson; The Valley Farm after John Constable; The Windmill, after John Linnell; The Way to Church, after Thomas Creswick; and The Wooden Bridge, the Port of Leghorn, and Sea-shore in Holland, after Augustus Wall Callcott.

[1] The Art Journal noted: The indefatigable perseverance of Mr. Bentley, and his anxiety to attain excellence in whatever he undertook, operated prejudicially, it is to be feared, on a constitution naturally weak, and for the last seven or eight years his health had become very precarious; still he laboured on, and it was hoped that a removal to Sydenham, for the benefit of a purer air, would have arrested, if not entirely removed, the tendency to consumption which his constitution exhibited.

During the three months prior to his decease, the unfavourable symptoms rapidly increased till the day of his death, on the 9th of October.