John Burnet was a Scottish engraver and painter.

Son of the Surveyor-General of Excise of Scotland, Burnet was born either in Edinburgh in 1781 or in Fisherrow in 1784. He was apprenticed to the engraver Robert Scott and later trained at the Trustees Academy.

In 1806, he moved from Edinburgh to London, where he became an established painter of portraits, landscapes, and rural genre scenes.

Between 1808 and 1862, he exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy, the British Institution and with the Society of British Artists and was finally awarded a fellowship to the Royal Society.

As an engraver he provided illustrations for editions of Robert Burns’s poems and Walter Scott’s Waverley novels.

He engraved copies of paintings of several notable portraits and artists.

He also wrote manuals and books on drawing, painting and artists, retiring from public life in 1860. He died in London.