Explore: John Wilson Carmichael

(1799 - 1868)

John Wilson Carmichael was born in Newcastle upon Tyne; the son of a shipwright. He spent his early teenage years at sea, before being apprenticed to a firm of Newcastle shipbuilders. From 1825 he showed paintings at the Northumberland Institution for the Promotion of the Fine Arts and its successors. Sets of engravings, based on his works, were published in 1828-30, 1832 and 1836-38. He exhibited in London at the Royal Academy, Society of British Artists and British Institution and moved to London in 1846, settling in Bloomsbury. From May to August 1855 he worked for the ‘Illustrated London News’. Windsor and Newton commissioned two artist’s handbooks from him (published 1859, 1865). He moved to Scarborough in 1865, where he died aged 68.