“ At the age of thirteen 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. He was patronized by Sir Godfrey Kneller, and was one of the first members of the Academy of Painting which that artist instituted in 1711. His plate of Archbishop Tillotson, after Kneller, commissioned by Lord Somers, established his reputation as an engraver ”