Lane,

Lane, RICHARD JAMES, engraver and lithographic artist, elder brother of the preceding, was born in 1800, and trained as an engraver by Charles Heath so successfully that at the age of twenty-seven he was chosen an A.R.A., partly on the strength of a fine engraving after Lawrence. Lithography, however, was just then coming in, and Lane abandoned engraving in favour of the new art, in which 'he displayed a dignity and refinement of expression and an instinctive sympathy with his originals which have never been equalled.' His pencil was so delicate that his lithographs have often been mistaken at the first glance for line engravings. As a draughtsman in pencil or chalk he was very successful. In 1829 he executed an excellent profile of the Princess Victoria, then ten years of age, and he afterwards made portraits of most of the members of the royal family, and was appointed lithographer to the Queen and Prince Consort. His best lithographs (which number more than a thousand) include Lawrence's cycle of George IV., his own grand-uncle Gainsborough's sketches, and many works of Leslie, Landseer, and G. Richmond. He was also no mean sculptor, and attracted Chantrey's hearty admiration by such modelling as his life-size figure of his brother Edward. In his last years he directed the etching-class at the South Kensington Art Schools. He died 21st November 1872. See Mag. of Art, August 1881.