- Also known as
-
Michael Tyson
-
primary name: Tyson, Michael
- Details
- individual; cleric/religious official; printmaker; British; Male
- Life dates
- 1740-1780
- Biography
- Amateur etcher of Trinity College, Cambridge. Correspondent of Walpole. Tyson was educated in Lincolnshire, entered Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, as a pensioner in October 1759 and took the degrees of BA in 1764, MA in 1767, and BD in 1775. Having been ordained deacon at Whitehall Chapel in 1770 and priest at Peterborough in 1773, Tyson became vicar of Sawston, Cambridgeshire, from 1772 to 1776 and vicar of St Benet's, Cambridge, from 1773 to 1776 in which year he was Whitehall preacher. His last preferment, attended by considerable delay and legal wrangling, was to the rectory of St Mary and All Saints at Lambourne, Essex, a college living, where he was instituted on 16 March 1778, and remained until his early death. He was elected fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in June 1768 and of the Royal Society in February 1769. He was one of the Benedictines, a group of Corpus contemporaries with similar tastes in books and antiquarian researches,and he was also a keen botanist. He corresponded with Thomas Gray (q.v.). Tyson enjoyed celebrity in his circle as a versatile artist and engraver especially of topographical scenes and portraits and miniatures of dead worthies such as Archbishop Parker and Browne Willis, and of his own contemporaries; he 'has left off engraving for some time, and I don't believe will ever resume it' wrote Cole in December 1775 (Walpole, 1.386). His last drawing, The Hospital of St Petronilla at Bury (April 1780), was engraved for the Antiquarian Repertory (4, 1784, 57). Gough warmly acknowledged Tyson's contribution in the preface to his Sepulchral Monuments, but his artistic work was largely unknown to a wide audience as he did not attempt to make money by it and it was soon forgotten.
- Bibliography
- DNB
