THOMA S BE WICK. 



(12 or 13 years), he thinks it very like. I hope you will do it to please yourself, 

 & that you will reap sufficient profit by it in the sale as a frontispiece to my Books. 

 — Mr. Kidd's was so very unlike, that it was almost universally condemned by my 

 London Friends, & of course fell into neglect. An eminent Bookbinder here, who 

 bought Kidd's Plate, has, however, sold a great number of them. ... I am Dear 

 Sir with best wishes, yours, Thomas Bewick." 



In 1 816 Thomas Ranson, a pupil of Kidd, executed a fine plate in line 

 of a portrait by Nicholson, Bewick's pupil. On October 25th, 1817, 

 Colnaghi published the very excellent portrait of Bewick, engraved by John 

 Burnett after James Ramsay, which was reprinted in Bell's Catalogue in 

 1 85 1. In 1820 Nesbit's wood engraving of Bewick was issued, having been 

 taken from a picture by Nicholson. It was used in the "Select Fables" of 

 that date, together with reduced woodcuts of the four plates above named. 

 A portrait, also by Nicholson, has been recently published as an etching, 

 executed by one of the first of modern artists, Leopold Flameng. John 

 Jackson drew two portraits of Bewick, both on wood, one of which was printed 

 in Bell's Catalogue and the other in the " Treatise on Wood Engraving: " 

 it is also to be found in this volume at page 162. Baily's bust, mentioned 

 further on, was engraved in 1830, but the sculptor thought it "not like the 

 cast from which it has been taken, nor like the great original." " Howitt's 

 Journal," No. 38, 1846, has a woodcut, and Jardine's "Naturalist's Library" 

 (Parrots volume), 1843, a small steel plate by Lizars. A full-length 

 portrait by F. Bacon, after Ramsay (painted in 1823), was published in 1852, 

 and used also in Hugo's folio volume, 1870, and in Mr. Pearson's large 

 " Select Fables." This is a full-length portrait of the old man, and at once 

 recalls the "better sort of gardener, or small farmer," to which Bewick has 

 been likened. The original belongs to Mr. R. S. Newall, Ferndene, Gateshead. 



The Frontispiece to our volume is from a plate engraved by Meyer after 

 Ramsay, which has been kindly lent for use here by the Rev. Mr. Pearson. 



The other portraits in oil colour that exist of Bewick are the two head-size 

 canvases by Ramsay, one in the artist's house at Gateshead, and the other 



