plates for ‘The Fool of Quality,’ a frontispiece to Robertson’s ‘Charles V’ (1772), cuts for Sparrman’s ‘Cape of Good Hope,’ Clavigero’s ‘Mexico,’ Chambers’s ‘Cyclopædia,’ and numerous other publications. Among his best engravings were those for his friend Samuel Richardson’s novel of ‘Sir Charles Grandison,’ the plates for which he exhibited with the Society of Artists in 1778. ‘Not many plates,’ says Bewick, ‘have been superior to these,’ though ‘as designer,’ he adds, ‘he has in these attended too much to fashion and the change of mode.’ Taylor seems to have moved to the Bible and Crown, Holborn, about 1770, to Chancery Lane in 1773, and back to Holborn by 1776. When Bewick visited London in that year he received much kindness from Taylor; when, however, after a short experience, Bewick decided that he would ‘rather herd sheep at five shillings a week than be tied to live in London . . . my kind friend left me in a pet and I never saw him more’ (Memoir, 1887, p. 105). Soon after 1780 Taylor retired to Edmonton, and amused himself with painting a few subjects in oil. He died at Edmonton on 17 Oct. 1807, aged 77, and was buried in Edmonton churchyard, where there is a monument to him. Taylor’s style was finished, his workmanship sound, and his plates were supposed to wear better at the press than those of any other engraver of the time. He laid the foundation of that ornamental style of library decoration in which at the close of the last century English craftsmanship won decided triumphs over that of the continent. Among Taylor’s personal friends, besides Bewick, were Garrick, Goldsmith, Bartolozzi, Richard Smirke, and Fuseli.
Taylor married at Shenfield, Essex, on 9 May 1754, Sarah Hackshaw Jefferys (1733–1809), daughter of Josiah and niece of Thomas Jefferys [q. v.], and had issue Charles Taylor (1756–1823) [q.v.]; Isaac Taylor (1759–1829) [q.v.]; Josiah (1761–1834), a prosperous publisher of Hatton Garden; Sarah (1763–1845), who married Daniel Hooper; and Ann (1765–1832), who married James Hinton, a clergyman, and was mother of John Howard Hinton [q. v.] He brought up his two eldest sons with great care in his own profession.
His excellence as a portrait-painter is evidenced by the pictures of himself and his wife which he painted soon after their marriage, and which are now in the possession of Mr. Medland Taylor of Manchester. They are out-of-door subjects in which the landscape is treated with great skill.
Among other portraits by Taylor there are several specimens in the British Museum print-room, including a pencil drawing of Cornelius Cayley (1773), Mrs. Abingdon as Lady Betty Modish (drawn and engraved), Garrick in the character of a drunken sailor speaking the prologue to ‘Britannia’ (1778), Garrick as Tancred (1776).
James Taylor (1745–1797), younger brother of the above, practised for many years as a china painter in the porcelain works at Worcester, but about 1771 came up to London to work under his brother. He exhibited at the Incorporated Society between 1771 and 1775, and worked upon illustrations for the magazines. Among his pupils was Anker Smith [q. v.] James Taylor died in London on 21 Dec. 1797. A son of James, who was for some time a singer at Vauxhall Gardens, was also an engraver.
[Gent. Mag. 1807; Literary Panorama, January 1808; Chambers’s Worcestershire Biography; Bryan’s Dict. of Painters and Engravers, ed. Graves and Armstrong; Redgrave’s Dict.; Tuer’s Bartolozzi and his Works, pp. 416 sq.; Bewick’s Autobiographical Memoir, 1887; private information.]
TAYLOR, ISAAC (1759–1829), of Ongar, engraver and writer for the young, son of Isaac Taylor (1730–1807) [q. v.], by his wife Sarah, daughter of Josiah Jefferys of Shenfield, Essex, was born in London on 30 Jan. 1759. With his elder brother Charles (1756–1823) [q. v.], after some education at Brentford grammar school, he was brought up as an engraver in the studio of his father, and he developed considerable skill both in landscape and portraiture. During his apprenticeship the plates for Rees’s ‘Cyclopædia’ were executed under his superintendence at his father’s establishment, and he always considered that these and his frequent interviews with Dr. Rees during the progress of them were a primary means of exciting his thirst for all kinds of knowledge. In 1781 he commissioned Richard Smirke to paint four small circular subjects representing morning, noon, evening, and night, which he engraved and published; and two years later he painted and engraved a set of views on the Thames near London. In 1783 he moved from Islington to Red Lion Street, Holborn, and in June 1786 he left London for Lavenham in Suffolk, where he rented a house and a large garden for 6l. a year. In the meantime he continued his work as an engraver. He was commissioned to engrave a number of plates for Boydell’s Bible and for Boydell’s ‘Shakespeare.’ In 1791 he engraved the assassination of Rizzio after Opie (for which the Society of Arts awarded him their gold palette and twenty-five guineas), and in 1796 he completed a book of forty
