{{Short description|British artist}} {{Use dmy dates|date=September 2019}} '''Caroline Watson''' (1761?–1814) was an English stipple engraver.
==Life== The daughter of the Irish engraver James Watson, she was born in London in 1760 or 1761, and studied under her father, who worked in mezzotint.<ref name="DNB">{{cite DNB|wstitle=Watson, James (1739?-1790)|volume=60}}</ref> She was known for her skilled worked in the stipple method, was particularly known for reproductions of miniatures, and was the only woman engraver to serve as an independent engraver in the British 18th century.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=Dictionary of women artists|date=1997|publisher=Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers|others=Gaze, Delia.|isbn=1884964214|location=London|oclc=37693713|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofwome01gaze}}</ref> She came to prominence as an engraver at about the same time as women began to make up a significant proportion print consumers.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://enfilade18thc.com/2014/08/18/exhibition-caroline-watson-and-female-printmaking/|title=Exhibition {{!}} Caroline Watson and Female Printmaking|date=2014-08-18|work=Enfilade|access-date=2018-03-08|language=en-US}}</ref> Due to ill health, her career began to wind down after 1810. She died at Pimlico on 10 June 1814.<ref name=":0" />
==Works== [[File:John Jeffries.jpg|thumb|John Jeffries, portrait engraving by Caroline Watson]] Watson's plates were numerous. In 1784, she engraved a portrait of Prince William of Gloucester, after Joshua Reynolds, and, in 1785, a pair of small plates of the Princesses Sophia and Mary, after John Hoppner, which she dedicated to Queen Charlotte. She was then appointed engraver to Queen. She engraved portraits of:<ref name="DNB"/>
* Sir James Harris, and the Hon. Mrs. Stanhope, both after Joshua Reynolds; * Catherine II of Russia, after Alexander Roslin; and * William Woollett, after Gilbert Stuart; and * Samuel Cooper's reputed portrait of John Milton.
Other works were:<ref name="DNB"/>
* ''The Marriage of St. Catherine'', after Correggio; * the plates to William Hayley's ''Life of Romney'', for which she replaced William Blake as primary engraver;<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Vesely|first=S. A.|date=1998|title=The Daughters of Eighteenth-Century Science: A Rationalist and Materialist Context for William Blake's Female Figures|journal=Colby Library Quarterly|volume=34|pages=5–24|id={{ProQuest|1290125137}}}}</ref> * for John Boydell's ''Shakespeare'', the ''Death of Cardinal Beaufort'', after Reynolds, and a scene from ''The Tempest'', after Francis Wheatley.
Watson also executed a set of aquatints of the ''Progress of Female Virtue and Female Dissipation'', from designs by Maria Cosway. She engraved several pictures belonging to the Marquess of Bute.<ref name="DNB"/>
==Notes== {{Commons category|Caroline Watson}} {{reflist}}
;Attribution {{DNB|wstitle=Watson, James (1739?-1790)|volume=60}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Watson, Caroline}} Category:1760s births Category:1814 deaths Category:18th-century English engravers Category:18th-century English women artists Category:18th-century English artists Category:Artists from London Category:English people of Irish descent Category:English women engravers Category:19th-century English engravers