Overview

Notes on Thomas Bewick by John Rayner:

Tributes→

Introduction

Early Life

Main Works

Final Comments

Examples:

Quadrupeds

Birds

General images

Tributes

/ have heard those who loved the country, and loved it because they knew it, say, that the opening of Bewick was a new era in their lives.
—William Howitt, The Rural Life of England, 1844.

Xylographer I name thee, Bewick, taught
   By thy wood-Art, that from rock, flood, and tree

   Home to our hearths, all lively, light and free

In suited scene each living thing has brought,

As life elastic, animate with thought.
—The Rev. J. F. M. Dovaston, sonnet to Thomas Bewick, 1823.

Among a considerable number which had been forwarded to the London markets for sale, I was fortunate enough to select five examples of this new species. . . . I described them in a paper read before the Linnean Society, and proposed to call it Bewick's Swan, thus devoting it to the memory of one whose beautiful and animated delineation of subjects in natural history entitle him to this tribute.

—William Yarrell, A History of British Birds, 1843