France; but, whether these prints had been done with the design of
embellishing the walls of houses in that country, I know not. They
had been taken from paintings of eminent old masters, and were
mostly Scripture pieces. They were well drawn, and perhaps correctly
copied from the originals, yet in my opinion none of them looked
well. Jackson left Newcastle quite enfeebled with age, and, it was
said, ended his days in an asylum, under the protecting care of Sir
Gilbert Elliot, Bart., at some place on the border near the Teviot,
or on Tweedside.

[Footnote 42: Bewick, 1925, pp. 213-214.]

If Bewick was correct in reporting that Jackson died while under the
protection of Sir Gilbert Elliot, probably in a Poor Law institution, it
is unlikely that the date could have been much later than 1777, the year
in which Sir Gilbert died. This would place the meeting of both artists
shortly before this time, when Bewick was in his early twenties (he was
born in 1753). Sir Gilbert lived in Minto House, Roxburghshire,
Scotland, but no evidence can be found for the supposition that Jackson
died in the vicinity. No obituary has been discovered. The record of
Jackson's death, if it exists, probably lies in a parish register
somewhere on the Scottish border.

_Critical Opinion_

In most histories of prints it was considered sufficient to note that
certain artists worked in woodcut chiaroscuro; the quality of such work
was rarely discussed. But Jackson was an exception: something about his
prints aroused critics to defense or attack. The cleavage is absolute,
strange for one who was presumably a mere reproductive artist. Nothing
could show more clearly the unsettled nature of Jackson's standing than
a sampling of these opinions.

Horace Walpole in a letter, dated June 12, 1753, to Sir Horace Mann
describing the furnishings in Strawberry Hill, commented:[43]

The bow window below leads into a little parlour hung with a
stone-colour Gothic paper and Jackson's Venetian prints, which I
could never endure while they pretended, infamous as they are, to be
after Titian, &c., but when I gave them this air of barbarous
bas-reliefs, they succeeded to a miracle; it is impossible at first
sight not to conclude that they contain the history of Attila or
Tottila done about the very era.

[Footnote 43: _The Letters of Horace Walpole_, ed. Toynbee, 1903,
vol. 3, p. 166.]

Von Heinecken[44] says