Francis Holl

English family of artists. William Holl (1771-1838), a stipple-engraver of German origin, specialized in portrait engraving. His four sons, William Holl (1807-71), Henry Benjamin Holl (1808-84), Francis Holl (1815-84) and Charles Holl (1820-82) all practised as engravers, but William and Francis achieved greatest prominence. William, like his father, engraved many portraits for such publications as William and Edward Francis Finden’s Portraits of the Female Aristocracy of the Court of Queen Victoria (London, 1838-9), and he also reproduced, in line and stipple, such celebrated paintings as William Powell Frith’s An English Merry-making (exh. RA 1847; Elton Hall, Cambs), published in 1851 by the Art Union of London. Francis also engraved many portraits (after George Richmond, for example), but his outstanding achievement was the large line and mixed mezzotint plate reproducing Frith’s The Railway Station (1862; Egham, U. London, Royal Holloway & Bedford New Coll.), declared for publication by Henry Graves & Co. in December 1862 and actually published in 1866. The most celebrated member of the family, however, was Francis’s son Frank Holl.

[from website, artnet.com - http://www.artnet.com/library/03/0386/T038636.asp]