VERTUE, GEORGE (1684-1756), English engraver and antiquary, was born in St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, London, in 1684. At the age of 13 he was apprenticed to an heraldic engraver, a Frenchman, who failed in three or four years. Vertue then studied drawing at home, and afterwards worked for seven years as an engraver under Michael Vandergucht. His plate of Archbishop Tillotson, after Kneller, commissioned by Lord Somers, estab lished his reputation as an engraver ; and he was soon in an excel lent practice, engraving. portraits after Dahl, Richardson, Jervas
and Gib;on. In portraiture alone he executed over soo plates. In 1717 he was made engraver to the Society of Antiquaries. He died on July 24, 1756, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Vertue's forty volumes of memoranda on the history of British art were purchased by Horace Walpole, and form the basis of that author's Anecdotes of Painting in England, including an account of Vertue's life and a catalogue of his engravings.