Saturday, August 20, 2016

Drawings and Prints from the 18th century

Richard Wilson
Portrait of Thomas Jenkins
18th century
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

George Bickham the Younger after Canaletto
Monument to the Great Fire of 1666
1752
hand-colored etching
British Museum

"– No doubt, Sir,  there is a whole chapter wanting here  and a chasm of ten pages  made in the book by it  but the book-binder is neither a fool, or a knave, or a puppy  nor is the book a jot more imperfect (at least upon that score)  but, on the contrary, the book is more perfect and complete by wanting the chapter, then having it, as I shall demonstrate to your reverences in this manner. – I question first, by-the-bye, whether the same experiment might not be made as successfully upon sundry other chapters – but there is no end, an' please your reverences, in trying experiments upon chapters  we have had enough of it. – So there's an end of that matter."

 – from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne (1760)

James Barry
Study for Adam
ca. 1792-95
drawing
British Museum

Anonymous French artist
Set design for the final scene of Mozart's Don Giovanni
18th century
drawing
British Museum

James Barry
Study for Ecce Homo
ca. 1773
drawing
British Museum

Carrington Bowles (publisher)
Susanna and the Elders
ca. 1780-95
hand-colored mezzotint
British Museum

Anonymous Flemish artist
Two Amorini
18th century
drawing
British Museum

Carrington Bowles (publisher) after Anthony van Dyck
The Clipping of the Wings of Love
1780s
hand-colored mezzotint
British Museum

Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain
Capriccio with Obelisk
1750
etching
National Gallery of Art (U.S.)

John Flaxman
Amorini in relief
1787
drawing
British Museum

John Boydell (publisher)
David Garrick's villa, called Hampton House
1793
hand-colored etching
British Museum

Anonymous print-maker
Invitation to David Garrick's Funeral
1779
etching
British Museum

Edward Francis Burney
Garrick Memorial Concert
1779
drawing
British Museum

Robert Adam
Design for a Monument to David Garrick
1779
drawing
British Museum

"The old man ... became something still more mysterious and impressive: a stone abandoned in a field, cut by an unknown hand, according to unknown rules. Such survivors, deprived of descendants, have faces that are striking in their isolation. Their uselessness is majestic, and the wisdom they perhaps do not possess and surely do not wish to hand on gazes at us in silence, like every memory that agrees to destroy itself." 

a description of Prince Talleyrand, from The Ruin of Kasch by Roberto Calasso, translated by William Weaver and Stephen Sartarelli (Harvard University Press, 1994)