Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Scott, John (1774-1827)
SCOTT, JOHN (1774–1827), engraver, was born on 12 March 1774 at Newcastle-on-Tyne, where his father, John Scott, worked in a brewery. At the age of twelve he was apprenticed to a tallow-chandler, but devoted all his spare time to the study of drawing and engraving, and at the expiration of his articles came to London, where his fellow-townsman, Robert Pollard [q. v.], gave him two years' instruction, at the same time paying him for his work. On leaving Pollard he obtained employment from Wheble, the proprietor of the ‘Sporting Magazine,’ and for many years the portraits of racehorses published in that periodical were executed by him. The next work upon which Scott was engaged was W. B. Daniel's well-known ‘British Rural Sports,’ 1801, many of the plates in which were both designed and engraved by him. He became the ablest of English animal engravers, and his ‘Sportsman's Cabinet, a correct delineation of the Canine Race,’ 1804; ‘History and Delineation of the Horse,’ 1809; and ‘Sportsman's Repository, comprising a series of engravings representing the horse and the dog in all their varieties, from paintings by Marshall, Reinagle, Gilpin, Stubbs, and Cooper,’ 1820, earned for him great celebrity. A pair of large plates, ‘Breaking Cover,’ after Reinagle, and ‘Death of the Fox,’ after Gilpin, issued in 1811, are regarded as his masterpieces. Scott also did much work for publications of a different kind, such as Tresham and Ottley's ‘British Gallery,’ Ottley's ‘Stafford Gallery,’ Britton's ‘Fine Arts of the English School,’ Hakewill's ‘Tour in Italy,’ and Coxe's ‘Social Day.’ He laboured unceasingly at his profession until 1821, when a stroke of paralysis practically terminated his career; during the last years of his life he was assisted by the Artists' Benevolent Fund, of which he had been one of the originators. Scott died at his residence in Chelsea, on 24 Dec. 1827, leaving a widow, several daughters, and one son, John R. Scott, who also became an engraver, and executed a few plates for the ‘Sporting Magazine.’
A portrait of Scott, drawn by J. Jackson, R.A., in 1823, was engraved by W. T. Fry and published in 1826. A crayon portrait by his son is in the print-room of the British Museum.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Gent. Mag. 1828, i. 376; Sporting Mag. lvii. 290; manuscript notes in print-room of British Museum.]