Idbury Prints: An online gallery of original fine art prints

MYLES BIRKET FOSTER (English / 1825-1899)

Myles Birket Foster was born in North Shields. Birket Foster is remembered now expecially for his watercolours of country scenes, which are more realistic and less idealised than those of Helen Allingham, with whom he is often compared. In fact he only took up watercolour at the age of 34. At 16, Birket Foster was apprenticed to a steel engraver named Stone, who killed himself on Foster's first day. After this inauspicious start, Birket Foster was apprenticed to the wood engraver Ebenezer Landells, who had known Thomas Bewick (who was also a friend of Birket Foster's grandfather). From 1846-1859 Foster worked as a wood engraver and book illustrator, and also contributed many drawings to journals such as Punch and the Illustrated London News. In later years the wood blocks from Foster's drawings tended to be cut by the Brothers Dalziel, an extraordinary Newcastle-based family firm of engravers and artists, founded by the seven sons and one daughter of the painter Alexander Dalziel.