William Watts

William Watts was an English line-engraver.

The son of a master silk weaver in Moorfields, London, Watts was born early in 1752. He received his art training from Paul Sandby and Edward Rooker, and on Rooker's death in 1774 continued the Copper-plate Magazine.

Watts sold up at his house at Kemp's Row, Chelsea, London and went to Italy, reaching Naples in September 1786. After about a year he returned, and lived at Sunbury, Middlesex. In 1789 he went to Carmarthen, in 1790 to the Hotwells in Bristol, and in 1791 to Bath where he spent two years. Interested by the French Revolution, and went to Paris in 1793, where some of his views of English country seats were engraved in colours by Laurent Guyot. He invested most of the property that he had inherited from his father, with his own earnings, in the French funds; and all of it was confiscated (though he recovered some of it after the peace in 1815). His losses compelled him to return to engraving, retiring early in the 19th century.

Watts then lived for a short time at Mill Hill, Hendon. In 1814 he purchased a small property at Cobham, Surrey, where he died on 7 December 1851, after having been blind for some years, within a few months of his hundredth birthday.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023