Robert Sayer

The recorded working language is English. Places of work recorded in the authority are London. Employment is recorded with Robert Sayer & Co. Work by Robert Sayer is recorded in the collections of Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Museum De Lakenhal, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Print Collection and Musea Brugge.

• Name — Robert Sayer • Born — 1725 • Birthplace — England, Great Britain • Died — 29 January 1794 • Place of death — Bath, England, Great Britain • Occupation — * Map publisher • engraver • Harlequinade publisher • Children — James • Illustration — Samuel Boulton's 1787 map of Africa, published by Robert Sayer

Sayer's brother James married the widowed Mary Overton, daughter-in-law of John Overton the print seller. Sayer became her assistant, being called manager of the Golden Buck by 1748, and in this way gradually took over the existing Overton business as a going concern. John Bennett, who began as a servant to Sayer in 1760, and later an apprentice (1765) and a free journeyman (1774), eventually partnered with Sayer with one-third share in the Fleet Street business. The business traded as Sayer & Bennett. In 1781, Bennett was admitted to Dr Thomas Monro's Brook House asylum in Clapton. Sayer would seek to dissolve the partnership in 1785 based on Bennett's mental condition. Bennett later died in 1787. Upon the partnership dissolution, the business was renamed Sayer & Co. or Robert Sayer & Co., probably a reference to his assistants Robert Laurie and James Whittle. Sayer published atlases and other cartographic works, publishing the Mundane System (1774) of Samuel Dunn and the famous North American Pilot (1775), which included important charts made by the great circumnavigator and explorer Captain James Cook. Sayer also had an "almost complete set of copies" of painter William Hograth's plates and sold prints at prices that undercut those of Hogarth's widow and printseller, Jane Hogarth.

Sayer organised the engraving of paintings by some leading artists of the day, most importantly Johan Zoffany RA, and sold prints from the engravings. In this way, he helped to secure Zoffany's international reputation. Sayer and the artist became longstanding friends as well as business associates. In 1781 Zoffany painted Robert Sayer in an important ‘conversation piece’. The Sayer Family of Richmond depicts Robert Sayer, his son, James, from his first marriage, and his second wife, Alice Longfield (née Tilson). Behind the family group is the substantial villa on Richmond Hill overlooking the River Thames, built for Sayer between 1777 and 1780 to the designs of William Eves, a little-known architect and property developer. From 1794, after Robert Sayer's death, the house was the country residence for three years of the Duke of Clarence (later King William IV) and Mrs Jordan, and their three eldest (of ten) children. The third child was born at the house. Having fallen into disrepair, the house was demolished in 1970 when it was unknown that it had been built for Sayer and that it had subsequently been the home of a future king of Great Britain.

On his death, Sayer's business was taken over by Robert Laurie and James Whittle, both of whom had worked for him.

• Engravings and Prints • Illustration — A New Book of Ornaments, MET DP270225, pre-1753. • Illustration — Hudibras Vanquished by Trulla (Twelve Large Illustrations for Samuel Butler's Hudibras, Plate 5) MET DP826950, Artist, William Hogarth. • Illustration — David Garrick by Charles Spooner, 1761. • Illustration — Ladies Amusement, MET DP285711, 1760. • Illustration — Accurate Map of North America, 1775 (top)