Luke Sullivan, Engraver and Miniature Painter

(b. 1705, d. 1771)

Engraver and Miniature Painter

From A Dictionary of Irish Artists 1913

Was born in 1705 in the county of Louth. Early in life he went to England where his father found employment as a groom with the Duke of Beaufort. The Duke seeing his talent for drawing put him in the way of receiving instruction. His earliest work as an engraver was a "View of the Battle of Culloden," after A. Heckel, done in 1746, and soon afterwards he was engaged as an assistant to Hogarth for whom he engraved his celebrated plate of "The March to Finchley," published in 1750. Nineteen heads copied from the picture are in the British Museum. He also engraved Hogarth's "St. Paul before Felix," and jointly with Hogarth "The Infant Moses presented by his mother to the daughter of Pharaoh." He was of extremely irregular and dissipated habits, and Hogarth is said to have experienced considerable difficulty in keeping him under his eye; he had the habit of disappearing mysteriously for weeks at a time. Nollekens, the sculptor, described him as "a handsome lively fellow." He painted, in water-colour, landscapes and architectural views.

A "View in the Park" was engraved by him in 1751, and views of "Oatlands," "Wilton," "Ditchley," "Cliefden," "Esher" and "Woburn," drawn and etched by himself were published in 1759. In Grose's "Antiquities of England and Wales" is a view of "Stonehenge," engraved after a drawing by him. He also worked successfully as a miniature painter and exhibited with the Society of Artists, of which he was a member and director, from 1764 to 1770. A miniature of "John, 3rd Earl of Bute," and one of "A Lady" are in the Victoria and Albert Museum. He died, from the effects of the life he had led, in 1771 at the White Bear Tavern in Piccadilly.

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