We have introduced Rowlandson in his later relation to the arts, as a skilful and popular contributor of book illustrations; we cannot leave this portion of our subject without offering a cursory review of his various labours in this capacity, since the wider circulation of printed publications has made his name more familiar to the great world than the finest masterpieces already alluded to, which seem doomed to remain unknown and inaccessible to the bulk of the public.
The first independent publication we have to notice was simply a gathering of subjects, extending over three or four years, collected in 1788, and issued as Rowlandson's Imitations of Modern Drawings, folio; including imitations of the styles of Gainsborough, Wheatley, Mortimer, Barrett, Gilpin, Bartolozzi, Zucchi, Cipriani, &c.
In 1786, Rowlandson supplied G. Kearsley, the publisher of those well-known satirical effusions of Dr. Wolcot, The Poems of Peter Pindar, with illustrations to the first volume of the quarto edition of these familiar works. This publication was continued the next year. In a burlesque strain, Rowlandson also came out with twenty illustrations, the drawings suggested by Collings,[6] caricaturing passages in Boswell's Journal of a Tour in the Hebrides, published by E. Jackson, small folio (1786). Our artist further supplied certain plates in parody of incidents in the Sorrows of Werther, also from suggestions by Collings, who designed a capital series of drolleries in travesty of passages literally extracted from Lord Chesterfield's Polite Letters.
G. and J. Robinson, in 1790, published the results of a trip to Brighton, which the artist had enjoyed in company with his friend, the frequent companion of his wanderings and frolics, Henry Wigstead, Esq., the sitting magistrate at Bow Street—An Excursion to Brighthelmstone made in the year 1782, by Henry Wigstead and Thomas Rowlandson, with eight engravings by Thomas Rowlandson, oblong folio.
There also appeared, in this and the following years, a series of Miniature Groups and Scenes, published by M. L., Brighthelmstone, and H. Brookes, Coventry Street, London; and a series of Sheets of Picturesque Etchings, published by S. W. Fores. Rowlandson also furnished numerous book-plates, octavo, to the series of novels published by I. Siebbald, Edinburgh; among the works thus illustrated we must particularise the novels of Fielding and Smollett.
The succeeding year (1792) our artist also contributed illustrations, in large size folding plates, designed after suggestions by Henry Woodward, to a quarto edition of Smollett's Novels. Cupid's Magic Lantern, with illustrations, etched by Rowlandson, also after designs by Henry Woodward, was published in 1797.
[The Comforts of Bath], and the folio Views of London, belong to 1798. The same year the name of W. Wigstead, Charing Cross, appears as the publisher of the following works:—
Annals of Horsemanship, with seventeen copperplates by Henry Bunbury, Esq. Engraved by Thomas Rowlandson.
The Academy for Grown Horsemen, with twelve copperplates, by Henry Bunbury, Esq. Engraved by Thomas Rowlandson.