William Dickinson (engraver)

Early in life he began to engrave in mezzotint, mostly caricatures and portraits after Robert Edge Pine, and in 1767 he was awarded a premium by the Society of Arts.

In 1773 he commenced publishing his own works,[1] and in 1778 went into partnership with Thomas Watson, who engraved in both stipple and mezzotint, and who died in 1781.

[2] Dickinson appears to have been still carrying on the business of a printseller in 1791 in London, but he later moved to Paris, where he continued to engrave, making prints for the new regime and then for Napoleon; in 1814 Thomas Lawrence and Benjamin West visited him in Paris, the latter trying to persuade him to come back to London to engrave his paintings.

Besides these he engraved a "Holy Family", after Correggio; heads of Rubens, Helena Forman (Rubens's second wife), and Anthony van Dyck, after Rubens; "The Gardens of Carlton House, with Neapolitan Ballad-singers", after Henry William Bunbury; "The Murder of David Rizzio" and "Margaret of Anjou a Prisoner before Edward IV", after John Graham; "Lydia"," after Matthew William Peters; and "Vertumnus and Pomona" and "Madness", after Pine, some of which are in the dotted style.

[2] One of his most famous engravings was of Henry William Bunbury's A Long Minuet as Danced at Bath, which he published in 1787 and which measured around 7 feet (2.1 m) in length.