John Samuel Agar
1773–1858 · English portrait painter and engraver
John Samuel Agar (1773-1858) was an English portrait painter and engraver, best known for his prints. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1796 to 1806 and at the British Institution until 1811, and did not exhibit again until 1836, the year after he was declared bankrupt in February 1835. At one point he served as president of the Society of Engravers.
His engravings were chiefly in stipple. They include prints after works by Richard and Maria Cosway and a series of allegories of the months after Edward Francis Burney, published by Rudolf Ackermann in 1807–9.
His illustrations for Richard Payne Knight's Specimens of Ancient Sculpture (1809) are the work for which he is most remembered. Nicholas Penny described them as "the finest ever made of sculpture".