(c.1802 - 1827)
It has been suggested that William Brett began as a pupil or assistant to painter and printmaker Samuel William Reynolds, because a mezzotint after a portrait by Thomas Foster of 1824 is signed jointly by Reynolds and Brett. Independently Brett produced mezzotint prints after portraits by John Simpson and Sir Thomas Lawrence. However, his career was cut short (his works date from 1824 to 1828) by his premature death. A brief paragraph in the ‘Morning Chronicle’ of 20 February 1828 reported that he died at the age of 25, at his parents’ home, after ‘a long and painful illness’. A mezzotint engraved by both Brett and Samuel Cousins of 1828, engraved after a portrait by William Robinson, may have been completed by Cousins after Brett’s death.
