James Parker trained as an engraver under James Basire (1730-1802) with fellow apprentice William Blake (1757-1827); Between 1784-5 Blake and Parker established a print shop. This venture failed, or the pair had a falling out (accounts differ). Parker engraved numerous illustrative plates for, amongst others, Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield, 1792 and Falconer’s The Shipwreck, 1795 in addition to producing prints work for the publisher John Boydell. Parker was a founding member, and later President, of the short-lived Society of Engravers.
