John Burnet

John Burnet studied at Edinburgh College of Art. Training under Robert Scott is recorded. The recorded working language is English. Places of work recorded in the authority are Edinburgh, London and Paris. Work by John Burnet is recorded in the collections of Minneapolis Institute of Art, Tate, Nationalmuseum, National Galleries Scotland and Vanderbilt Museum of Art. Distinctions recorded are Fellow of the Royal Society.

• Illustration — Greenwich Pensioners Commemorating Trafalgar, 1837 Son of the Surveyor-General of Excise of Scotland, Burnet was born either in Edinburgh in 1781 or in Fisherrow in 1784. He was apprenticed to the engraver Robert Scott and later trained at the Trustees Academy. In 1806, he moved from Edinburgh to London, where he became an established painter of portraits, landscapes, and rural genre scenes. Between 1808 and 1862, he exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy, the British Institution and with the Society of British Artists and was finally awarded a fellowship to the Royal Society. As an engraver he provided illustrations for editions of Robert Burns’s poems and Walter Scott’s Waverley novels. • Illustration — Grave of John Burnet in Highgate Cemetery He engraved copies of paintings of several notable portraits and artists. He also wrote manuals and books on drawing, painting and artists, retiring from public life in 1860. He died in London and was buried on the eastern side of Highgate Cemetery. The Cemetery records show his age at death as 84 which suggests that he was born in 1784.

• 1817 line engraving of Thomas Bewick after James Ramsay • 1820 line engraving of Thomas Moore after Sir Martin Archer Shee • 1828 line engraving of Thomas Campbell after Sir Thomas Lawrence • 1839 mixed-method engraving of the Duke of Wellington • 1846 mixed-method engraving of Sir Edwin Landseer's painting 'The Challenge.'