Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Elliott, William (1727-1766)
ELLIOTT or ELLIOT, WILLIAM (1727–1766), engraver, born at Hampton Court in 1727, resided in London in Church Street, Soho, and produced some good landscape engravings, remarkable for their taste and his free and graceful handling of the point. Great expectations were formed of him, but were frustrated by his early death in 1766, at the age of thirty-nine. According to Strutt, he was a man 'of an amiable and benevolent disposition, and greatly beloved by all who knew him.' His chief engravings are the so-called 'View in the Environs of Maestricht,' from the picture by A. Cuyp in the collection of the Marquis of Bute; a 'View of Tivoli' (companion to the above), from the picture by Rosa da Tivoli, in the collection of John Hadley, esq.; 'The Flight into Egypt,' after Poelemburg; 'Kilgarren Castle,' after R. Wilson; 'Spring' and 'Summer,' after J. van Goyen; 'The Setting Sun,' and other landscapes, after J. Pillement; 'The Town and Harbour of Sauzon,' after Serres, and other landscapes after Gaspar Poussin, Paul Sandby, and the Smiths of Chichester. In a series of engravings from drawings by Captain Hervey Smyth of events during the siege of Quebec by General Wolfe in 1759, Elliott engraved 'A View of the Fall of Montmorenci and the Attack made by General Wolfe on the French Intrenchments near Beauport, 31 July 1759.' He exhibited some of his engravings at the Society of Artists from 1761 to 1766.
[Strutt's Dict. of Engravers; Huber et Roost's Manuel des Curieux et des Amateurs de l'Art; Le Blanc's Manuel de l'Amateur d'Estampes; Graves's Dict. of Artists, 1760-1880; Boydell's and Sayer's Catalogues.]