Perez Burdett was born 1734 or 1735 in
Eastwood in Essex, the son of William and Elizabeth Burdett. He inherited a small estate and the name
Perez from his maternal grandfather who was the clergyman in Eastwood. Burdett was a model for several of Wright's paintings and he was able to benefit from his friendship and finance whilst Burdett explained the finer points of perspective to Wright. He produced the aquatint
Two Boys Blowing a Bladder by Candle-light. Burdett published a first aquatint based on an image by
John Hamilton Mortimer, but he eventually sold the process to another cartographer,
Paul Sandby. He showed two plates at the Society of Arts Exhibition of 1772,
An Etching in imitation of a Wash Drawing and
An Etching from a design of Mr. Mortimer. In 1773 he exhibited a plate entitled
The effect of a stained drawing attempted by printing from a plate wrought chemically, without the use of any instrument of sculpture. There are extant three known images by Burdett,
Banditti Terrifying Fishermen of 1771 and
Skeleton on a Rocky Shore, both after the painter J.H. Mortimer, and
Two Boys Blowing a Bladder by Candle-light after Wright of Derby. A copy of the latter in Liverpool Public Library bears on its back the inscription "First Speciman of aquatinta invented in Liverpool by P.P. Burdett, 1774, assisted by Mr. S. Chubbard". The artist Paul Sandby learnt the basic techniques of aquatint from the Hon. Charles Greville, who himself had purchased the knowledge either from Burdett or from Le Prince. It appears that Greville had received incomplete information, and Sandby found it difficult to produce a plate by Le Prince's method of sifting the rosin over the surface. He discovered that by dissolving the rosin and floating it on the copper a better effect was obtained.
Benjamin Franklin wrote to Perez Burdett on 21 August 1773 "I should be glad to be inform’d where I can see some example of the new Art you mention of printing in Imitation of Paintings. It must be a most valuable Discovery: but more likely to meet with adequate Encouragement on this side the water than on ours". In 1771 he produced 'A Chart for the Harbour of Liverpool'. and in 1772 Survey of the County Palatine of Chester.
Karlsruhe In 1774 he left Liverpool, to escape debt, and entered the service of
Charles Frederick, Grand Duke of Baden. He took with him the double portrait by Joseph Wright of himself and his first wife, leaving her behind to face his debtors. The painting is now in the collection of the
National Gallery of Prague; it recently returned for an exhibition in Liverpool, the second time the work was seen in the United Kingdom since it departed from Liverpool with Burdett in the eighteenth century. Perez Burdett died in Karlsruhe on 9 September 1793. Perez Burdett has been described as "if not in the centre at least in the penumbra of the
Lunar Society of Birmingham". He was a correspondent of
Benjamin Franklin who was an early member of the Lunar Society which included such figures as
Erasmus Darwin,
John Whitehurst,
Matthew Boulton,
Joseph Priestley,
Josiah Wedgwood and
James Watt. ==Major works==