John D. Batten

John Dickson Batten (Plymouth, 1860 – 1932) was an English painter, book illustrator and printmaker of the late Victorian period. He worked in oils, tempera and fresco, painting figures, but much of his time went to illustrations and small works on paper. He was an active member of the Society of Painters in Tempera.

He studied at Cambridge and then at the Slade School under Alphonse Legros, and exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery alongside Burne-Jones. His large canvases focus on mythological and allegorical subjects, such as Atalanta and Melanion. In the 1890s he illustrated several fairy tale collections edited by Joseph Jacobs, including English Fairy Tales and Celtic Fairy Tales, and later Europa's Fairy Book. He also illustrated English versions of the Arabian Nights and Dante's Inferno.

At the end of the 1890s he took up egg tempera and, working with Birmingham artists such as Arthur Gaskin, played a part in its revival. His Pandora in this medium was shown at the Royal Academy in 1913. His legacy rests mainly on the revival of tempera and on his fairy tale illustrations.