Burton, Edward
1819 – 1899
Mezzotint engraver who was born at Colinton in 1819 (birth or baptism date was 1819-04-26) the 10th child of Mungo Burton, a wright, and his wife Mary. An elder brother was the portrait painter Mungo Burton ARSA. He is not listed in Bryan, Benezit, nor the Witt Checklist. He exhibited 1 work, his own print after Sir John Watson Gordon's Self Portrait at the 1865 Royal Academy exhibition (cat 873), only posthumously at the RSA (in 1926) and not at the RGI. The Scottish Census records him throughout his life in Colinton, always in the same house as his elder brother William, a Wright and various other family members over the years, though never with his painter brother Mungo. In 1841 he is with his father, Mungo Burton alongside Edward's two older brothers William and Walter Simpson, and a younger brother John. Edward is recorded in successive Censuses as engraver (1841), mezzotint engraver (1851-71), retired engraver (1881) and living on his private means (1891). He engraved in mezzotint many works after Sir John Watson Gordon PRSA RA ,Sir Daniel Macnee PRSA, Colvin Smith RSA, Thomas Duncan RSA ARA, J M Barclay RSA, James Drummond RSA, John Graham-Gilbert RSA, Sir Francis Grant PRA RSA, D O Hill RSA, Charles Lees RSA and Sir Henry Landseer RA HRSA, all of whom had connections with the RSA. These were in many cases published by Alexander Hill, although other Scottish publishers including Alexander Crichton in Edinburgh and James McClure & Son in Glasgow also published his works, a number of which were printed by Archibald McGlashan, or by McGlashan and Wilding, both Edinburgh.
