(1814 - 1896)
John Cooke Bourne is best known for producing two series of lithographs on railway construction. The first was published as ‘Drawings of the London and Birmingham Railway’ in 1839 and the second, ‘The History and Description of the Great Western Railway’, was published in 1846. The success of these works caused Bourne to be known as the ‘Piranesi of the Railway Age’. He also illustrated ‘Views in Kairo’ (1840) and ‘The History of Steam Navigation’ (1846) and made drawings of the road bridge spanning the Dnieper River in Kiev, Ukraine, for the engineer Charles Vignoles. From 1866 to 1877 he was unsuccessful three times in standing for election to the New Watercolour Society. He died in Brentford at the age of 81.
