Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Stephenson, James
STEPHENSON, JAMES (1808–1886), engraver, born at Manchester on 26 Nov. 1808, was the son of Thomas Stephenson, boot and shoe maker, of Stable Street, near Oldham Street, in that town. James was educated at a school kept by Thomas Rain, adjoining Oldham Street chapel, and before the end of his schooldays was apprenticed to John Fothergill, an engraver, of Prince's Court, Market Street. While there he made the acquaintance of the artist, Henry Liverseege [q. v.], and, probably by his advice, he came to London at the expiry of his apprenticeship and entered the studio of William Finden [q. v.] While there he gained the silver medal of the Society of Arts for an original design of a figure engraved in line.
About 1838 he returned to Manchester and established himself as an historical and landscape engraver in Ridgefield, and afterwards in a studio in St. Ann Street. Besides furnishing illustrations for ‘Manchester as it is’ (1839), for Charles Swain's ‘Mind and other Poems,’ and for other books, he engraved the members' card for the Anti-Corn-law League, and executed for Agnew & Sons portraits of prominent members, among others of Sir John Bowring [q. v.], Edward Baines [q. v.], and John Heyworth. During this period he also engraved Du Val's portrait of Richard Cobden, George Putten's portrait of John Frederick Foster, and John Boston's portrait of Daniel Grant, one of the original ‘Cheeryble Brothers.’ In 1842, for the British Association, which met in that year in Manchester, he executed a portrait of John Dalton (1766–1844) [q. v.], the chemist.
About 1847 Stephenson took up his permanent abode in London, and from 1856 exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy. Among his later engravings were ‘The Day of Wrath,’ ‘The Last Judgment,’ and ‘The Plains of Heaven,’ after John Morton; ‘The Highland Whiskey Still,’ the ‘Taming of the Shrew,’ and ‘The Queen at Osborne,’ after Landseer; ‘Ophelia,’ after Millais; and the ‘Portrait of Lord Tennyson,’ after George Frederick Watts. He also engraved pictures by Maclise, Gilbert Stuart Newton, Thomas Faed, and Sir John Watson Gordon. Stephenson died at his residence in Dartmouth Park Road, London, on 28 May 1886. Among his contemporaries he was regarded as one of the finest line engravers in the country, and in vignette engraving he was probably unsurpassed.
[Manchester Guardian, 4 June 1886; Times, 5 June 1886; Athenæum, 1886, i. 787; Bryan's Dict. of Engravers, supplement.]
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.258
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
| Page | Col. | Line | |
| 188 | i | 1 | Stephenson, James: for Morton read Martin |