Memorial Gardens Burial Biographies

Caroline Watson (1760/61-1814) was an engraver and printmaker. Born in London, she was trained by her father, James Watson an Irish mezzotint engraver.

However, she never worked in mezzotint but specialized in small-scale stipple engravings, most of them reproducing miniature portraits—in the stipple technique, the tonal effect is achieved by a mattoir, a punch-like metal tool with a head that projects a random pattern of dots or worm-like curves.

Watson was one of the few women engravers of her age who signed her own work and kept her own printing business— she published a number of prints from Fitzroy Street, London, in the 1780s. Watson’s artistic reputation was consolidated after being appointed Engraver to Queen Charlotte in 1785. Caroline Watson’s work can still be seen in collections all over the world, from the Greenwich Museums in London to the Auckland Art Gallery in New Zealand.