Richard Newton Biography

Richard Newton (1777-1798) was an English caricaturist, miniaturist and book illustrator.

Born in London, Newton published his first caricature at thirteen. His work included caricatures expressing the English prejudice of the Scots as lean and hungry opportunists. He worked for radical publisher William Holland, producing anti-slavery works among his output, as well as "rude assaults" against Napoleon and the royal family. Newton minded Holland's shop when Holland was imprisoned for sedition during 1793-94. His watercolour (now in the British Museum) of fashionably dressed Londoners looking at prints in Holland's shop in Oxford Street, London, gives a depiction of an 18th-century print shop, and images of many of Holland's actual prints can be recognised on the walls. In 1794, Holland published an edition of Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy with twelve plates by Newton.

Newton produced nearly 300 single-sheet prints, of which the British Museum's collection includes more than half. M. Dorothy George's "Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum" lists 98 prints by Newton.