Dighton, Robert

c.1752

1814

Dighton, who styled himself ‘drawing master’, was in fact an accomplished man of many talents including those of actor, caricaturist, portrait painter, etcher and humourist. Dighton exhibited at the Free Society of Artists from 1769 until 1773. His etchings were chiefly satirical portrait heads of leading members of the bar. There was a scandal in 1806 when it was discovered that Dighton had walked off with a number of valuable prints from the British Museum. Samuel Woodburn, a highly regarded art dealer, bought a Rembrandt landscape etching from Dighton in May of that year. On visiting the British Museum to compare it with their impression, he found that the paste marks on the back of the print matched those on a page in the museum’s guard book, from which the item was, of course, missing. After an inquiry, no action was taken against Dighton, for want of evidence, although the unfortunate Keeper of the Department, the Reverend William Beloe, was dismissed for not keeping a firmer eye on him. There appears to have been some sort of rough justice lately in the fact that a drawing by Dighton belonging to the Garrick Club (G0561 in the Club’s 1936 catalogue) was stolen from the lavatory in the Ladies’ Room. The remaining pictures are now screwed to the wall. All the Club’s Dightons were in Charles Mathews’s collection. Dighton also acted and sang in several London theatres and pleasure gardens, and his wife, Mrs Dighton (née Bertles), also performed. For Dighton’s career as a professional actor see the BDA, 4: 412-415.