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- James Walker
- Also known as
-
James Walker
-
primary name: Walker, James
- Details
- individual; printmaker; publisher/printer; British; Male
- Life dates
- 1758/60-1822
- Address
- No 50, Frith Street, Soho (1780)
No 50 Charlotte Street, Portland Place (1781)
No 51 Great Portland Street (1781/2)
No 49 Upper Mary le Bone Street (1783-4)
No 148 Strand (1784, 1787) SEE BIOGRAPHY
St Petersburg (address in publication line, 1792, 1797)
No.8 Conway Street, Fitzroy Square, London (1807)
- Biography
- Engraver in mezzotint and (occasionally) stipple; apprenticed to Valentine Green in 1773, worked on his own account from 1780. In London 1780-4; then appointed court mezzotinter in Russia 1784, giong with his wife, family and step-son J.A. Atkinson, and returning to London on various occasions to arrange publication of his plates. Finally returned with a pension in 1802, losing 26 copper plates at sea. He continued to work to his death in 1822, to judge from the sale of his plates at Sotheby's in November 1822.
His name with the address as 148 Strand appears on a print by Bartolozzi where he describes himself as "carver and printseller"; it is possible that this is another James Walker.
- Bibliography
- Chaloner Smith (26 nos)
Anthony Cross, 'Engraved in Memory: JW engraver to the Empress Catherine the Great and his Russian anecdotes', Oxford 1993 (including a reprint of Walker's 'Paramythia', a volume of reminiscences published in 1821, which has nothing about printmaking), plus a checklist of 91 plates.
D. Alexander, 'James Walker: a British engraver in Russia', in 'Print Quarterly', XII 1995, pp.412-4 (review of the above with extra information)
Ekaterina Skvortcova, 'New facts about JW in Russia', PQ XXXII 2015, pp.271-93 (with a list of 52 prints made in Russia)
Peter Fuhring, 'JW's stocklist and the prospectus for the portrait of Catherine the Great', PQ XXXIII 2016, pp.286-93.
ODNB (by Timothy Clayton)
