John Barak Swaine (1815-1838), Printmaker and painter

Artist associated with 2 portraits
John Barak Swaine, printmaker and painter, was the son of the engraver John Swaine. He studied at the Royal Academy schools, and in 1833, he was awarded the Isis gold medal of the Society of Arts for an etching. Having taken up oil painting, he was employed in 1834 by an American named Jones to copy some of the best pictures at The Hague and in the Louvre, Paris, where he engraved Rembrandt's Spanish Officer in mezzotint. Swaine was a versatile artist of great promise, but he died of a debilitating illness at the age of only twenty-three.