Bewick was born at Cherryburn,[1] a house in the village of Mickley, Northumberland,[2] near Newcastle upon Tyne on 10 or 11 August 1753, although his birthday was always celebrated on the 12th.[3] His parents were tenant farmers:[4] his father John had been married before his union with Jane, and was in his forties when Thomas, the eldest of eight, was born. John rented a small colliery at Mickley Bank, which employed perhaps six men.[2] Bewick attended school in the nearby village of Ovingham.[5]
Bewick did not flourish at schoolwork,[6] but at a very early age showed a talent for drawing.[2] He had no lessons in art. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to Ralph Beilby, an engraver in Newcastle, where he learnt how to engrave on wood and metal, for example marking jewellery and cutlery with family names and coats of arms.[2][7] In Beilby's workshop Bewick engraved a series of diagrams on wood for Charles Hutton, illustrating a treatise on measurement.[8] He seems thereafter to have devoted himself entirely to engraving on wood, and in 1775 he received a prize from the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce for a wood engraving of the "Huntsman and the Old Hound" from Select Fables by the late Mr Gay, which he was illustrating.[2][9]