Robert Thew. Robert Thew was an English engraver.
   He was born in 1758 at Patrington, Holderness, Yorkshire, where his father kept an inn. He received but little education, and for a time followed the trade of a cooper; but, possessing great natural abilities, he invented an ingenious camera obscura, and later took up engraving, in which art, although entirely self-taught, he attained to a high degree of excellence.
   In 1783 he went to Hull, where he resided for a few years, engraving at first shop-bills and tradesmen's cards. His earliest work of a higher class was a portrait of Harry Rowe, the famous puppet-show man, and in 1786 he etched and published a pair of views of the new dock at Hull, which were overlooked by Francis Jukes.
   Having executed a good plate of a woman's head after Gerard Dou, he obtained from the Marquis of Carmarthen an introduction to John Boydell, for whose large edition of Shakespeare he engraved in the dot manner twenty-two plates after Northcote, Westall, Opie, Peters, and others. Of these the finest is the entry of Cardinal Wolsey into Leicester Abbey, after Westall.
   Thew also engraved a few excellent portraits, including Master Hare, after Reynolds, 1790; Sir Thomas Gresham, after Sir Anthony More, 1792; and Miss Turner, with the title Reflections on Werter,' after Richard Crosse. He held the appointment of historical engraver to the Prince of Wales, and died at
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