Robert Dighton (1751–1814) was the eldest in a dynasty of artists and the son of London printseller John Dighton. He was a portrait painter, printmaker and caricaturist, and was also an actor and singer in plays at the Haymarket Theatre, Covent Garden and Sadler's Wells. His work is noted as being less savage than that of his contemporaries, James Gilray and George Cruickshank.
Dighton entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1772, and exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Free Society of Artists. He set up as a drawing master and miniature portrait painter, producing drawings of actors in character for John Bell's edition of Shakespeare (1775–76). He is credited with creating the genre of coloured prints of actors in their favourite roles.
He gained consistent employment with the publisher Carington Bowles (fl.1752–93), producing large numbers of droll mezzotints, executed in watercolour then engraved. Much of Dighton's early work was issued anonymously, but in the 1790s he began publishing under his own name. In 1793, Dighton brought out his first Collection of Portraits of Public Characters, which proved so successful that he focused increasingly on caricature and, in the following year, moved to 12 Charing Cross to open his own shop.
In 1806 it emerged that Dighton had stolen and copied works from the British Museum to sell at his shop. He escaped prosecution by cooperating with the investigation, but this precipitated a move from the capital to work as a caricaturist in Oxford (1807-8), Bath (1809) and Cambridge (1809–10). Returning to London in 1810, Dighton reopened his studio, where he worked with his sons until his death in 1814.
His work is represented in the Royal Collection, and numerous public collections, including the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
