Wilson Lowry FRS  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...

 engraver. He was born at Whitehaven

Whitehaven

Whitehaven is a small town and port on the coast of Cumbria, England, which lies equidistant between the county's two largest settlements, Carlisle and Barrow-in-Furness, and is served by the Cumbrian Coast Line and the A595 road...

, Cumberland

Cumberland

Cumberland is a historic county of North West England, on the border with Scotland, from the 12th century until 1974. It formed an administrative county from 1889 to 1974 and now forms part of Cumbria....

, the son of Strickland Lowry, a portrait painter. The family settled in Worcester

Worcester

The City of Worcester, commonly known as Worcester, , is a city and county town of Worcestershire in the West Midlands of England. Worcester is situated some southwest of Birmingham and north of Gloucester, and has an approximate population of 94,000 people. The River Severn runs through the...

, and Wilson Lowry, as a boy, left home to work as a house painter in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 and Arundel

Arundel

Arundel is a market town and civil parish in the South Downs of West Sussex in the south of England. It lies south southwest of London, west of Brighton, and east of the county town of Chichester. Other nearby towns include Worthing east southeast, Littlehampton to the south and Bognor Regis to...

, Sussex

Sussex

Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...

. On returning home is received some instruction in engraving from a local craftsman.

He went to London at the age of 18 with an introduction to the print seller John Boydell

John Boydell

John Boydell was an 18th-century British publisher noted for his reproductions of engravings. He helped alter the trade imbalance between Britain and France in engravings and initiated a British tradition in the art form...

, who gave him work and introduced him to William Blizard

William Blizard

Sir William Blizard was an English surgeon.He was born in Barn Elms, Surrey, the fourth child of auctioneer William Blizard. After an apprenticeship to a surgeon in Mortlake he went to study at the London Hospital where he was a pupil of Sir Percivall Pott and John Hunter...

, the surgeon

Surgery

Surgery is an ancient medical specialty that uses operative manual and instrumental techniques on a patient to investigate and/or treat a pathological condition such as disease or injury, or to help improve bodily function or appearance.An act of performing surgery may be called a surgical...

. Blizard encouraged Lowry to become a surgeon and for four years he undertook training, but abandoned it.

Lowry received training at the Royal Academy

Royal Academy

The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...

 and worked for a number of engravers, as well as Boydell. Lowry developed a number of special instruments to assist his work: about 1790 he devised a ruling machine; in 1801 a device for generating elliptical curves; in 1806 another for making perspective drawings. Lowry was the first engraver to use diamond points and to discover the composition of a corrosive fluid for biting the lines into steel plates.

Lowry specialised in making engraving of architectural and mechanical topics, and excelled in perspective views of machinery. His work appears in Tilloch's Philosophical Magazine

Philosophical Magazine

The Philosophical Magazine is one of the oldest scientific journals published in English. Initiated by Alexander Tilloch in 1798, in 1822 Richard Taylor became joint editor and it has been published continuously by Taylor & Francis ever since; it was the journal of choice for such luminaries as...

, and the Journal of the Society of Arts, Wilkins's Magna Graecia (1807), and Vitruvius (1812), Peter Nicholson

Peter Nicholson (architect)

Peter Nicholson was a Scottish architect, mathematician and engineer. Largely self-taught, he was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker but soon abandoned his trade in favour of teaching and writing...

's Principles of Architecture (1795–98), and Architectural Dictionary (1819), Crabbe's Technological Dictionary (1823), and the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana

Encyclopaedia Metropolitana

The Encyclopædia Metropolitana was an encyclopedic work published in London, from 1817 to 1845, by part publication. In all it came to quarto, 30 vols., having been issued in 59 parts .-Origins:...

. Lowry's most famous work in this field was undoubtedly the work he did for Rees's Cyclopaedia

Rees's Cyclopaedia

Rees's Cyclopædia, or The New Cyclopaedia, or, Universal Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences was an important 19th Century encyclopaedia which was regarded by some as subversive when it first appeared. It was edited by Revd...

 between 1802 and 1809, including contributing articles, but did work for other encyclopaedias including Pantologia

Pantologia

Pantologia was an English encyclopedia, published in 12 volumes, 8vo in 1813, with 370 plates . Its full title page was A New Cyclopedia, comprehending a complete series of Essays, Treatises and Systems, alphabetically arranged, with a general dictionary of Arts, Sciences and Words: the whole...

 and the British Encyclopaedia

British Encyclopaedia

The British Encyclopaedia, or Dictionary of Arts and Sciences was published in 1809 in six octavo volumes and around 150 plates.It was nominally edited by William Nicholson, but the bulk of the work was overseen by Jeremiah Joyce. It was published by a syndicate of twenty four booksellers whose...

.

Lowry was of a scientific bent, and was a founder member of the Geological Society and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society

Royal Society

The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...

 in 1812.

He married firstly a Miss Porter: they had two daughters, one of whom, Matilda, (who became Mrs Hemming) was a portrait painter. He married secondly Rebecca Delvalle (1761–1848) a mineralogist: they had a son Joseph Wilson Lowry

Joseph Wilson Lowry

Joseph Wilson Lowry was an English engraver.He was the son of Wilson Lowry and his second wife Rebecca Delvalle and was born on 7 October 1803. He was trained by his father and from both parents inherited a taste for science and mathematics; in his work he specialised in scientific subjects...

 and a daughter Delvalle, who married John Varley

John Varley (painter)

John Varley was an English watercolour painter and astrologer, and a close friend of William Blake. They collaborated in 1819–1820 on the book Visionary Heads, written by Varley and illustrated by Blake...

the landscape painter.

Wilson Lowry died at his residence, Great Titchfield Street, London.