William Lewin
Encyclopedia
William Lewin was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 naturalist
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...

 and illustrator.

Lewin grew up in Stepney
Stepney
Stepney is a district of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in London's East End that grew out of a medieval village around St Dunstan's church and the 15th century ribbon development of Mile End Road...

, the son of a rate mariner. In 1776 he was earning a living as a pattern drawer, and by 1783 was describing himself as a painter. He specialised in natural history subjects.

In 1789 he began to issue his The Birds of Great Britain, with Their Eggs, Accurately Figured, which he had been working on for the previous twenty years. It included 323 watercolour sketches of each of the 271 of birds and 52 plates of eggs, all which he hand-painted himself for the 60 copy first edition, a total of 19,380 individual paintings. Assisted by his three sons, he immediately began work on a second edition which was issued in parts from 1793 to 1801. The Second Edition, of 150 copies, was produced using copper plates onto which Lewin directly scribed the images which were not copies of the First Edition work, but entirely new and very much more detailed. Lewin died suddenly in 1795 having completed only the first 103 copper-plates himself. His sons (Thomas, Thomas William and John William
John Lewin
John William Lewin was an English-born artist active in Australia from 1800. The first professional artist of the colony of New South Wales, he illustrated the earliest volumes of Australian natural history.-Early life:...

) completed the remaining plates (104-336) after Lewin's death.

In 1791 his friend John Latham
John Latham (ornithologist)
John Latham was an English physician, naturalist and author. He was born at Eltham in Kent, and was the eldest son of John Latham, a surgeon there, and his mother was a descendant of the Sothebys, in Yorkshire....

 sponsored Lewin's membership of the Linnean Society.

Lewin was buried at Edmonton
Edmonton, London
Edmonton is an area in the east of the London Borough of Enfield, England, north-north-east of Charing Cross. It has a long history as a settlement distinct from Enfield.-Location:...

on December 10, 1795.

The First Edition of Birds of Great Britain and their Eggs almost immediately suffered from being broken-up for the individual watercolors, most of which have, as a consequence, been lost or destroyed. The Second Edition has also suffered in this way and complete copies are now also extremely rare with less than 30 known complete examples remaining.
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