James Baylis Allen

James Baylis Allen (1803–1876) was an English line-engraver. Allen, together with William and Edward Radclyffe and the Willmores, belonged to a school of landscape-engravers which arose in Birmingham, where there were numerous engravers working on iron and steel manufactures.

Allen was born in Birmingham, 18 April 1803, the son of a button-manufacturer. As a boy he followed his father's business; then about age 15 he was articled to Josiah Allen, an elder brother and general engraver in Birmingham. Three years later he began his artistic training by attending the drawing classes of John Vincent Barber and Samuel Lines.

In 1824 Allen went to London, and found employment in the studio of the Findens, for whose Royal Gallery of British Art he engraved at a later period "Trent in the Tyrol", after Augustus Wall Callcott.

Allen died after a long illness at Camden Town, London, 10 January 1876.

St Martin Ongar, London, an 1831 Steel line engraving on paper engraved by Allen from the original pencil drawing Thomas Hosmer Shepherd (1793-1864)

Allen's best known plates are those after J. M. W. Turner's drawings for the ‘Rivers of France,’ 1833–5, consisting of views of Amboise, Caudebec, Havre, and St. Germain; and for the ‘England and Wales,’ 1827–32, for which he engraved the plates of Stonyhurst, Upnor Castle, Orfordness, Harborough Sands, and Lowestoft Lighthouse. Other works were ‘The Falls of the Rhine,’ after Turner, for the Keepsake of 1833; some plates after Clarkson Stanfield and Thomas Allom for Charles Heath's Picturesque Annual, and others after Samuel Prout, Roberts, Holland, and James Duffield Harding, for Robert Jennings's Landscape Annual; and ‘The Grand Bal Masqué at the Opera, Paris,’ after Eugène Lami for Allom's France Illustrated.

His larger works were executed chiefly for The Art Journal:

• ‘The Columns of St. Mark, Venice,’ after Bonington;
• the ‘Battle of Borodino,’ ‘Lady Godiva,’ and ‘The Fiery Furnace,’ after George Jones, R.A.;
• ‘Westminster Bridge, 1745,’ and ‘London Bridge, 1745,’ after Samuel Scott, for the Vernon Gallery;
• the ‘Death of Nelson,’ ‘Phryne going to the Bath as Venus,’ the ‘Decline of Carthage,’ ‘Ehrenbreitstein,’ ‘St. Mawes, Cornwall,’ and ‘Upnor Castle,’ for the Turner Gallery;
• the ‘Battle of Meeanee,’ after Edward Armitage;
• ‘Greenwich Hospital,’ after Chambers;
• ‘Hyde Park in 1851,’ after J. D. Harding;
• ‘Venice: the Bucentaur’ and ‘The Dogana, Venice,’ after Canaletto, and ‘The Herdsman,’ after Berchem, for the Royal Gallery;
• ‘The Nelson Column,’ after G. Hawkins;
• ‘Smyrna,’ after Allom;
• and ‘The Temple of Jupiter Panhellenius,’ after Turner.

He engraved also a set of five views on the coasts of Suffolk and Kent, and plates for William Henry Bartlett's ‘Ireland,’ 1835, Bartlett's ‘Switzerland,’ 1839, Bartlett's ‘Canadian Scenery,’ 1840, Beattie's ‘Scotland,’ 1836, Finden's ‘Views of the Ports and Harbours of Great Britain,’ 1839, and George Newenham Wright's ‘Rhine, Italy, and Greece,’ 1843.