PREFATORY NOTE.
The Editor desires to express his thanks to the following Collectors who have kindly lent their prints for reproduction in this volume:—Mrs. Julia Frankau, Mr. Frederick Behrens, Major E. F. Coates, M.P., Mr. Basil Dighton, Mr. J. H. Edwards, and Sir Spencer Ponsonby-Fane, P.C., G.C.B. Also to Mr. Malcolm C. Salaman, who, in addition to contributing the letterpress, has rendered valuable assistance in the preparation of the work.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
| Plate | [I.] | “Jane, Countess of Harrington, Lord Viscount Petersham and the Hon. Lincoln Stanhope.” Stipple-Engraving by F. Bartolozzi, R.A., after Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A. |
| ” | [II.] | “Robinetta.” Stipple-Engraving by John Jones, after Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A. |
| ” | [III.] | “Master Henry Hoare.” Stipple-Engraving by C. Wilkin, after Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A. |
| ” | [IV.] | “The Duchess of Devonshire and Lady Georgiana Cavendish.” Mezzotint-Engraving by Geo. Keating, after Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A. |
| ” | [V.] | “The Mask.” Stipple-Engraving by L. Schiavonetti, after Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A. |
| ” | [VI.] | “Bacchante” (Lady Hamilton). Stipple-Engraving by C. Knight, after George Romney. |
| ” | [VII.] | “Mrs. Jordan in the character of ‘The Country Girl’” (“The Romp”). Stipple-Engraving by John Ogborne, after George Romney. |
| ” | [VIII.] | “Hobbinol and Ganderetta.” Stipple-Engraving by P. W. Tomkins, after Thomas Gainsborough, R.A. |
| ” | [IX.] | “Countess of Oxford.” Mezzotint-Engraving by S. W. Reynolds, after J. Hoppner, R.A. |
| ” | [X.] | “Viscountess Andover.” Stipple-Engraving by C. Wilkin, after J. Hoppner, R.A. |
| ” | [XI.] | “The Squire’s Door.” Stipple-Engraving by B. Duterreau, after George Morland. |
| ” | [XII.] | “The Farmer’s Door.” Stipple-Engraving by B. Duterreau, after George Morland. |
| ” | [XIII.] | “A Visit to the Boarding School.” Mezzotint-Engraving by W. Ward, A.R.A., after George Morland. |
| ” | [XIV.] | “St. James’s Park.” Stipple-Engraving by F. D. Soiron, after George Morland. |
| ” | [XV.] | “A Tea Garden.” Stipple-Engraving by F. D. Soiron, after George Morland. |
| ” | [XVI.] | “The Lass of Livingstone.” Stipple-Engraving by T. Gaugain, after George Morland. |
| ” | [XVII.] | “Rustic Employment.” Stipple-Engraving by J. R. Smith, after George Morland. |
| ” | [XVIII.] | “The Soliloquy.” Stipple-Engraving by and after William Ward, A.R.A. |
| ” | [XIX.] | “Harriet, Lady Cockerell as a Gipsy Woman.” Stipple-Engraving by J. S. Agar, after Richard Cosway, R.A. |
| ” | [XX.] | “Lady Duncannon.” Stipple-Engraving by F. Bartolozzi, R.A., after John Downman, A.R.A. |
| ” | [XXI.] | “Cupid bound by Nymphs.” Stipple-Engraving by W. W. Ryland, after Angelica Kauffman, R.A. |
| ” | [XXII.] | “Rinaldo and Armida.” Stipple-Engraving by Thos. Burke, after Angelica Kauffman, R.A. |
| ” | [XXIII.] | “Angelica Kauffman in the character of Design listening to the Inspiration of Poetry.” Stipple-Engraving by Thos. Burke, after Angelica Kauffman, R.A. |
| ” | [XXIV.] | “Love and Beauty” (Marchioness of Townshend). Stipple-Engraving by Thos. Cheesman, after Angelica Kauffman, R.A. |
| ” | [XXV.] | “Two Bunches a Penny, Primroses” (“Cries of London”). Stipple-Engraving by L. Schiavonetti, after F. Wheatley, R.A. |
| ” | [XXVI.] | “Knives, Scissors and Razors to Grind” (“Cries of London”). Stipple-Engraving by G. Vendramini, after F. Wheatley, R.A. |
| ” | [XXVII.] | “Mrs. Crewe.” Stipple-Engraving by Thos. Watson, after Daniel Gardner. |
| ” | [XXVIII.] | “The Dance.” Stipple-Engraving by F. Bartolozzi, R.A., after H. W. Bunbury. |
| ” | [XXIX.] | “Morning Employments.” Stipple-Engraving by P. W. Tomkins, after H. W. Bunbury. |
| ” | [XXX.] | “The Farm-Yard.” Stipple-Engraving by William Nutter, after Henry Singleton. |
| ” | [XXXI.] | “The Vicar of the Parish receiving his Tithes.” Stipple-Engraving by Thos. Burke, after Henry Singleton. |
| ” | [XXXII.] | “The English Dressing-Room.” Stipple-Engraving by P. W. Tomkins, after Chas. Ansell. |
| ” | [XXXIII.] | “The French Dressing-Room.” Stipple-Engraving by P. W. Tomkins, after Chas. Ansell. |
| ” | [XXXIV.] | “January” (“The Months”). Stipple-Engraving by F. Bartolozzi, R.A., after Wm. Hamilton, R.A. |
| ” | [XXXV.] | “Virtuous Love” (from Thomson’s “Seasons”). Stipple-Engraving by F. Bartolozzi, R.A., after Wm. Hamilton, R.A. |
| ” | [XXXVI.] | “The Chanters.” Stipple-Engraving by J. R. Smith, after Rev. Matthew W. Peters, R.A. |
| ” | [XXXVII.] | “Mdlle. Parisot.” Stipple-Engraving by C. Turner, A.R.A., after J. J. Masquerier. |
| ” | [XXXVIII.] | “Maria.” Stipple-Engraving by P. W. Tomkins, after J. Russell, R.A. |
| ” | [XXXIX.] | “Commerce.” Stipple-Engraving by M. Bovi, after J. B. Cipriani, R.A., and F. Bartolozzi, R.A. |
| ” | [XL.] | “The Love-Letter.” Stipple-Engraving, probably by Thos. Cheesman. |
OLD ENGLISH COLOUR-PRINTS
“Other pictures we look at—his prints we read,” said Charles Lamb, speaking with affectionate reverence of Hogarth. Now, after “reading” those wonderful Progresses of the Rake and the Harlot, which had for him all the effect of books, intellectually vivid with human interest, let us suppose our beloved essayist looking at those “other pictures,” Morland’s “Story of Letitia” series, in John Raphael Smith’s charming stipple-plates, colour-printed for choice, first issued while Lamb was hardly in his teens. Though they might not be, as in Hogarth’s prints, “intense thinking faces,” expressive of “permanent abiding ideas” in which he would read Letitia’s world-old story, Lamb would doubtless look at these Morland prints with a difference. He would look at them with an interest awakened less by their not too poignant intention of dramatic pathos than by the charm of their simple pictorial appeal, heightened by the dainty persuasion of colour.
There is a fascination about eighteenth-century prints which tempts me in fancy to picture the gentle Elia stopping at every printseller’s window that lay on his daily route to the East India House in Leadenhall Street. How many these were might “admit a wide solution,” since he arrived invariably late at the office; but Alderman Boydell’s in Cheapside, where the engraving art could be seen in its dignified variety and beauty, and Mr. Carington Bowles’s in St. Paul’s Churchyard, with the humorous mezzotints, plain and coloured, must have stayed him long. Then, surely among the old colour-prints which charm us to-day there were some that would make their contemporary appeal to Elia’s fancy, as he would linger among the curious crowd outside the windows of Mr. J. R. Smith in King Street, Covent Garden, or Mr. Macklin’s Poet’s Gallery in Fleet Street, Mr. Tomkins in Bond Street, or Mr. Colnaghi—Bartolozzi’s “much-beloved Signor Colnaghi”—in Pall Mall. Not arcadian scenes, perhaps, with “flocks of silly sheep,” nor “boys as infant Bacchuses or Jupiters,” nor even the beautiful ladies of rank and fashion; but the Cries of London at Colnaghi’s must have arrided so true a Londoner, and may we not imagine the relish with which Lamb would stop to look at the prints of the players? The Downman Mrs. Siddons, say, or the Miss Farren, or that most joyous of Romney prints, Mrs. Jordan as “The Romp”, which would seem to give pictorial justification for Lamb’s own vivid reminiscence of the actress, as his words lend almost the breath of life to the picture. Yet these had not then come to the dignity of “old prints,” with a mellow lure of antique tone. Their beautiful soft paper—hand-made as a matter of course, since there was no other—which we handle and hold up to the light with such sensitive reverence, was not yet grown venerable from the touch of long-vanished hands. They were as fresh as a busy industry of engravers, printers, and paper-makers could turn them out, and of a contemporary popularity that died early of a plethora.
What, then, is their peculiar charm for us to-day, those colour-prints of stipple or mezzotint engravings which pervaded the later years of the eighteenth century, and the earliest of the nineteenth? No serious student, perhaps, would accord them a very high or important place in the history of art. Yet a pleasant little corner of their own they certainly merit, representing, as they do, a characteristic contemporary phase of popular taste, and of artistic activity, essentially English. Whatever may be thought of their intrinsic value as works of art, there is no denying their special appeal of pictorial prettiness and sentiment and of dainty decorative charm. Nor, to judge from the recent records of the sale-rooms, would this appeal seem to be of any uncertain kind. It has lately been eloquent enough to compete with the claims of artistic works of indisputable worth, and those collectors who have heard it for the first time only during the last ten years or so have had to pay highly for their belated responsiveness. Those, on the other hand, who listened long ago to the gentle appeal of the old English colour-prints, who listened before the market had heard it, and, loving them for their own pretty sakes, or their old-time illustrative interest, or their decorative accompaniment to Sheraton and Chippendale, would pick them up in the printsellers’ shops for equitable sums that would now be regarded as “mere songs,” can to-day look round their walls at the rare and brilliant impressions of prints which first charmed them twenty or thirty years ago, and smile contentedly at the inflated prices clamorous from Christie’s. For nowadays the decorative legacy of the eighteenth century—a legacy of dignity, elegance, beauty, charm—seems to involve ever-increasing legacy duties, which must be paid ungrudgingly.
A collector, whose house is permeated with the charm and beauty of eighteenth-century arts and crafts, asked recently my advice as to what he should next begin to collect. I suggested the original pictures of the more accomplished and promising of our younger living painters, a comparatively inexpensive luxury. He shook his head, and, before the evening, a choice William Ward, exceptional in colour, had proved irresistible. Yes, it is a curious and noteworthy fact that the collector of old English colour-prints has rarely, if ever, any sympathy with modern art, however fine, however beautiful. He will frankly admit this, and, while he tells you that he loves colour, you discover that it is only colour which has acquired the mellowing charm of time and old associations. So your colour-print collector will gladly buy a dainty drawing by Downman, delicately tinted on the back, or a pastel by J. R. Smith, somewhat purple, maybe, in the flesh-tints, while the sumptuous colouring of a Brangwyn will rouse in him no desire for possession, a Lavery’s harmonies will stir him not at all, and the mystic beauty of tones in any Late Moonrise that a Clausen may paint will say to him little or nothing. But then, one may ask, why is he content with the simple colour-schemes of these dainty and engaging prints, when the old Japanese, and still older Chinese, colour-prints offer wonderful and beautiful harmonies that no English colour-printer ever dreamt of? And why, if we chance to meet this lover of colour at the National Gallery, do we find him, not revelling joyously in the marvellously rich, luminous tones of a Filippino Lippi, for example, or the glorious hues of a Titian, but quietly happy in front of, say, Morland’s Inside of a Stable, or Reynolds’s Snake in the Grass?
Well, we have only to pass a little while in his rooms, looking at his prints in their appropriate environment of beautiful old furniture, giving ourselves up to the pervading old-time atmosphere, and we shall begin to understand him and sympathise with his consistency. And, as the spell works, we shall find ourselves growing convinced that even a Venice set of Whistler etchings would seem decoratively incongruous amid those particular surroundings. For it is the spell, not of intrinsic artistic beauty, but of the eighteenth century that is upon us. It is the spell of a graceful period, compact of charm, elegance and sensibility, that these pretty old colour-prints, so typically English in subject and design, cast over us as we look at them. Thus they present themselves to us, not as so many mere engravings printed in varied hues, but rather as so many pictorial messages—whispered smilingly, some of them—from those years of ever-fascinating memory, when the newly-born Royal Academy was focussing the artistic taste and accomplishment of the English people, and Reynolds, Gainsborough, Romney, were translating the typical transient beauty in terms of enduring art, while the great engravers were extending the painters’ fame, and the furniture-makers and all the craftsmen were supporting them with a new and a classic grace; when Johnson was talking stately, inspiring common-sense, Goldsmith was “writing like an angel,” and Sheridan was “catching the manners living as they rose”; when Fanny Burney was keeping her vivid diaries, and Walpole and Mrs. Delany were—we thank Providence—writing letters; when the doings of the players at Drury Lane and Covent Garden, or the fashionable revellers at Ranelagh, Vauxhall, and the Pantheon, were as momentous to “the town” as the debates at Westminster, and a lovely duchess could immortalise a parliamentary election with a democratic kiss. These prints, hinting of Fielding and Richardson, Goldsmith and Sterne, tell us that sentiment, romantic, rustic and domestic, had become as fashionable as wit and elegance, and far more popular; while a spreading feeling for nature, awakened by the poetry of Thomson, Gray and Collins, and nurtured later by Cowper, Crabbe and Burns, was forming a popular taste quite out of sympathy with the cold academic formalism and trammelled feeling of the age of Pope.