John Boyne, Caricaturist and Engraver
(b. c. 1750, d. 1810)
Caricaturist and Engraver
From A Dictionary of Irish Artists 1913
Was born in the county of Down between 1750 and 1759. At the age of nine years he was taken to England by his father, a joiner, who obtained employment in the Victualling Office at Deptford. The boy was apprenticed to William Byrne, the engraver, and afterwards attempted to work for himself; but owing to his idle and dissipated habits he was not successful. For a time he was with a company of strolling players, but in 1781 returned to London and was employed as a master in a drawing-school, and practised as an artist. He excelled in caricatures and exhibited figure subjects, eighteen in all, in the Royal Academy from 1788 to 1809. Two drawings by him are in the British Museum—"The Quack Doctor," and "King Lear," one of a series of heads from Shakespeare's Plays. A "Meeting of Connoisseurs," which was engraved in stipple by T. Williamson, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. His "C. Macklin and Miss Pope as Shylock and Portia," was engraved in stipple by Nutter in 1790. Boyne died at his residence, Penton Place, Pentonville, on 22nd June, 1810.
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