Monday, June 4, 2018

"The Favourite Lamb Killed by Lightning" – Mezzotints

Anonymous printmaker
The Favourite Lamb Killed by Lightning
ca. 1790-1800
hand-colored mezzotint and etching
British Museum

Robert Sayer (publisher)
The Fighting Boys
ca. 1760-90
hand-colored mezzotint
British Museum

William Ward after George Morland
 The Delightful Story ("two blooming nymphs all in a downy bed")
1787
hand-colored mezzotint
British Museum

Anonymous printmaker
Miss Calash in contemplation
ca. 1770-80
hand-colored mezzotint
British Museum

"The calash bonnet was worn during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries for protection from both inclement weather (particularly wind) and the sun.  . . .  It first came into use in the 1760s in the form of a supported, collapsible hood.  This new style could shield the wearer, like its predecessor the padded hood, without crushing the hairstyle, cap or headdress worn beneath.  Calash bonnets were usually constructed from green or black silk, and often lined with pinkish linen, said to improve any complexion.  They could also be brown, but very few other colours seem to have been popular.  It was given a concertina shape using cane or whalebone inserted into channels.  . . .  The calash takes its name from calèche, a French carriage with a similar collapsible hood."

– Serena Dyer

William Ward after Mather Brown
Monsieur de St George
1788
hand-colored mezzotint
British Museum

Joseph de Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745-1799) – Composer, violin player and swordsman; born in Guadeloupe to a French father and an African mother.  Went to Paris in 1749, where he learnt and mastered music and composition.  During the Revolution, he joined the military force, but was later falsely imprisoned for misappropriation of funds.  After his release, he briefly returned to a career in music, which ended unsuccessfully.

– biographical notes from the British Museum

Valentine Green after John Hoppner
Jupiter and Io
1785
hand-colored mezzotint
British Museum

Richard Earlom after Robert Dighton (for Carrington Bowles)
The Twelve Months - April
ca. 1781
hand-colored mezzotint
British Museum

"Fashion plates are small printed images, often hand-colored, of people wearing the latest fashions and depicted in conventional minimally narrative social contexts.  They flourished from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries  . . .  In The Painter of Modern Life Charles Baudelaire described fashion plates as an image of the "ideal self" and thus a reflection of the artistic, historical, moral and aesthetic feeling of their time."

– Madeleine Ginsberg

Robert Sayer (publisher)
The Conversion of Galen
1775
hand-colored mezzotint
British Museum

Blest pair! O, had not souls like yours been given,
The stupid Atheist well might doubt a Heaven;
Convinced, he now deserts his gloomy stand,
Owns Mind the noblest proof of a creating hand.
Galen's conversion, by externals wrought,
Dropt far beneath sublimity of Thought;
But could he those superior wonders find
Which form and actuate our nobler mind,
How would the Heathen, struck with vast surprise,
Atoms deny, while spirit filled his eyes.

– Ann Yearsley (1753-1806)

[Eighteenth-century viewers and readers understood "Galen's conversion" as referring to the ancient physician's realization that "Soul" or "Mind" could not be considered separate from "Body"]

Charles Spooner after Godfried Schalcken (for Carrington Bowles)
Boy Blowing Charcoal
before 1767
hand-colored mezzotint
British Museum

Sayer & Bennett
The Beautiful Fruit-Gatherer
1782
hand-colored mezzotint
British Museum

William Humphrey
The Storm
1782
hand-colored mezzotint
British Museum

Anonymous printmaker
Winter - Inverno
ca. 1790-1800
hand-colored mezzotint and etching
British Museum

John Raphael Smith
A Lady coming from the Circulating Library
1781
hand-colored mezzotint
British Museum

"Circulating libraries were commercial enterprises that rented books to patrons, typically for an annual or quarterly fee.  . . .  Between the 1730s and 1842 the standard annual fee generally amounted to about double the purchase price of a normal three-volume novel of the time.  . . .  Only middle- and upper-class readers could reasonably afford circulating library fees before the twentieth century.  . . .  Overall, circulating libraries increased the number of books relatively well-off readers could afford to read far more than they increased the number of people who could afford to read books."

Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature (2006)

Sayer & Bennett
 The Toilet
1780
hand-colored mezzotint
British Museum

The print directly above represents a notably early fashion depiction of a female model in a seated pose with crossed legs – which would have appeared a good deal more daring and obtrusive to the viewer of 1780 than it does now.