# Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement/Barlow, Thomas Oldham

​BARLOW, THOMAS OLDHAM (1824–1889), mezzotint engraver, born at Oldham on 4 Aug. 1824, was son of Henry Barlow, an ironmonger living in the High Street. He was educated at the Old Grammar School, Oldham, and was then articled to Messrs. Stephenson & Royston, a firm of engravers at Manchester, and studied in the school of design in that city, where he won a ten-guinea prize in 1846 for a drawing en- ​titled 'Callings from Nature.' He moved to Ebury Street, London, in 1847. His first independent work was a plate in the line manner from John Phillip's 'Courtship,' executed in 1848, and this led to a close friendship with the painter, the most important of whose pictures he subsequently engraved. These include 'Dona Pepita,' 1858; 'The Prison Window,' 1860; 'The House of Commons in 1860,' 1866; 'Prayer in Spain,' 1873; 'Highland Breakfast,' 1877; and the celebrated ' La Gloria,' 1877. Barlow was the executor of Phillip's will, and drew up the catalogue of the collection of his works which was brought together at the London international exhibition of 1873. In 1856 he engraved Millais's ' Huguenot,' and in 1860 his 'My First Sermon,' and during the latter part of his life was largely engaged upon that artist's works. The portraits of Bright, Gladstone, Tennyson, Newman, Lord Salisbury, and other public characters, painted by Millais for Messrs. Agnew, were all engraved by Barlow. Other well-known plates by him are the ' Death of Chatterton, after it. Wallis; portrait of Sir Isaac Newton, after Kneller; portrait of Charles Dickens, after Frith; and several after Landseer, Maclise, Ansdell, and Sant. Barlow engraved Turner's 'Wreck of the Minotaur' for the Earl of Yarborough, who presented the plate to the Artists' General Benevolent Institution, and for the same charity he in 1856 executed a large etching of Turner's 'Vintage of Macon.' This he thirty years later undertook to complete in mezzotint, and he had just accomplished the work at the time of his death. Barlow was elected an associate engraver of the Royal Academy in 1873, a full associate in 1876, and an academician in 1881. He was a member and for many years secretary of the Etching club, and in 1886 was appointed director of the etching class at South Kensington. Barlow was a very accomplished engraver, and one of the last survivors of the old school of mezzotint and mixed work. He died at his house. Auburn Lodge, Victoria Road, Kensington, on 24 Dec. 1889, and was buried in the Brompton cemetery.
Portraits of him were painted by John Phillip in 1856, and by Millais in 1886, and he sat for the figure of the sick ornithologist in the latter's picture, 'The Ruling Passion;' Millais's portrait is now in the Oldham Corporation Art Gallery, and is reproduced from a photograph in the 'Manchester Quarterly,' April 1891. A photographic portrait, with biographical notice, appeared in Mr. F. G. Stephens's 'Artists at Home,' 1884.
Barlow married, in 1851, Ellen, daughter of James Cocks of Oldham, who survives. In 1891 the Oldham corporation acquired an almost complete collection of Barlow's engravings.
[Memoir by Mr. Harry Thornber, reprinted from the Manchester Quarterly, April 1891; Athenæum, 28 Dec. 1889; Times, 28 Dec. 1889; Manchester Evening News. 27 Dec. 1889; notes kindly supplied by Mr. C. W. Sutton, and private information.]
F. M. O'D.