White, Robert
WHITE, ROBERT (1645-1704), English engraver and draughtsman, was born in London in 1645. He studied engraving under David Loggan, for whom he executed many architectural subjects; his early works also include landscapes and engraved title-pages for books. He acquired great skill in portraiture, his works of this class being commonly drawn with black-lead pencil upon vellum, and afterwards excellently engraved in line. Portraits executed in this manner he marked ad vivum, and they are prized by collectors for their artistic merit and their authenticity. Virtue catalogued 275 portrait 1 J. Paine Collier, Notes and Emendations to the Text of Shakespeare's Plays from Early MS. Corrections in a Copy of the Folio, 1632 (London, 1853).
engravings by White, including the likenesses of many of the most celebrated personages of his day; and nine portraits engraved in mezzotint are assigned to him by J. Chaloner Smith. White died at Bloomsbury, London, in 1704. His son, George White, who was born about 1671 and died about 1734, is also known as an engraver and portrait-painter.
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
