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| Robert Nanteuil Portrait of John Evelyn 1650 engraving made in Paris British Museum |
The English author and diarist John Evelyn (1620-1706) commissioned the engraved portrait above from Robert Nanteuil in Paris, where Evelyn took refuge for several years from Cromwell's cultural and political takeover. Just before leaving England in the middle of 1649, Evelyn undertook an entirely new role as a printmaker, as explained by Antony Griffiths –
"Evelyn's interest in collecting and commissioning prints led him directly into making prints himself. Many seventeenth-century amateurs made etchings, among them Louis XIV and Prince Rupert, and some knowledge of the principles of etching was seen as part of a noble education at the time. Evelyn's prints are modest though far from incompetent, but what sets them apart from other amateur etchings is the fact that they were not, as one would expect from a man of his standing, merely distributed privately as gifts to a few friends and relations, but were published and sold on the open market. This curious episode was confined to one year only, 1649, and much remains obscure about it."
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| John Evelyn Landscapes dedicated to Lady Isabella Thynne plate 1 : Title-page 1649 etching British Museum |
"Evelyn's first prints form a set of five quite large (about seven inches across) imaginary landscapes. They were made in London between March and June, and were dedicated on the title-plate to Lady Isabella Thynne. She was a prominent lady at the court of Charles I in Oxford, and the daughter of Henry Rich, Earl of Holland, who had been beheaded by the Roundheads a few months earlier in 1649. So Evelyn's dedication was not intended to ingratiate him with the new government, to which we know from his writings that he was bitterly hostile. The title-page also bears the name of Thomas Rowlett. He was by far the most remarkable print publisher in London during the entire seventeenth century. He was active for only a few years between 1645 and 1649, when he published an extraordinary group of new plates by William Faithorne, Josiah English, Isaac de Caus, Francis Clein, and Edward Pearce. Exceptionally for a London print publisher of the period, his inventory of plates did not contain a single one purchased from an earlier publisher. Rowlett had been apprenticed to the largest print dealer and publisher in London before the Civil War, Robert Peake, a man whose loyalty to the Stuart cause had been demonstrated in his production of Biblical illustrations to the delight of Archbishop Laud and the fury of William Prynne, and later by his command of a troop of soldiers in the Civil War. It was his heroic defense of Basing House in the long siege that earned him a knighthood, and such enmity from the Roundheads that he had to go into exile.
"It was Rowlett who took his place and tried to get Peake's publishing and printselling business, which had been closed at the beginning of the war, back into action. The need was desperate. All of these artists' lives were blighted by the execution of Charles and the complete stop it put to any hope of a restoration; all were unemployed and many were penniless. Some had fought in the war -- a relative of Rowlett and the engraver Faithorne had actually been part of Peake's troop at Basing House. The rest had been ruined by the disappearance of the patrons in the Stuart court on whom they had relied. The greatest of them all, the painter William Dobson, after whom Faithorne engraved a number of plates for Rowlett, died in abject poverty in the course of 1649. A living had to be found for the rest. It was in these exceptional circumstances that Evelyn joined the team, and made a set of plates for Rowlett to publish. I would even hazard a guess that Evelyn was one of Rowlett's financial backers. Who taught Evelyn how to etch is not known; but it could have been any one of this group. Rowlett's venture failed, and by 1651 at the latest all his plates had been sold on to another publisher, Thomas Hinde. Evelyn's set was probably the last prints he published. The causes of his failure are not documented, but can easily be guessed, for who was left in London who wanted to buy the kind of prints that Rowlett was producing?"
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| John Evelyn Landscapes dedicated to Lady Isabella Thynne plate 2 : landscape with Tobias and the Angel 1649 etching British Museum |
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| John Evelyn Landscapes dedicated to Lady Isabella Thynne plate 3 : peasant and donkey 1649 etching British Museum |
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| John Evelyn Landscapes dedicated to Lady Isabella Thynne plate 4 : rider with horses at lakeside 1649 etching British Museum |
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| John Evelyn Landscapes dedicated to Lady Isabella Thynne plate 5 : night scene with hunters 1649 etching British Museum |
"The chief product of the months in Paris between August and December 1649 was a set of six smaller plates with views of places lying on the road between Rome and Naples. The subjects show a view of Naples from Vesuvius; the crater of Vesuvius; the twin peaks of Vesuvius; Cape Terracina; and the Tres Tabernae, with a reference to Acts 28 that shows that his interest in proving biblical authority was ever present. These were based on drawings he had made on his Grand Tour in 1645, and the title-plate [below] bears a dedication to Thomas Henshaw, his companion on that voyage. One of the original drawings survives in the British Museum [reproduced at bottom]."
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| John Evelyn Views between Rome and Naples plate 1 : Title-page 1649 etching British Museum |
"But he had not lost his concern to bring his prints before a wide public, for the title-plate, besides its dedication, bears in tiny letters at the bottom the name of the publisher, 'R. Hoare excud'. The name of R. Hoare is otherwise unknown in the annals of the print trade, and he must be identified with Richard Hoare, Evelyn's one-eyed private secretary, whose beautiful italic handwriting is such a delight to readers of the archive after the abominable scrawl of Evelyn himself and many of his correspondents. How poor Hoare, who knew nothing of the print trade, was supposed to publish and distribute impressions of Evelyn's prints, defeats me and evidently defeated him, for we hear no more about the plates after 1649, and the prints remain extraordinary rarities. I have seen no other set beside the one in the British Museum, though three more sets are recorded in the older literature."
– from John Evelyn and the Print, an article published in 2003 by Antony Griffiths, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum
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| John Evelyn Views between Rome and Naples plate 2 : Tres Taburna 1649 etching British Museum |
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| John Evelyn Views between Rome and Naples plate 3 : Cape Terracina 1649 etching British Museum |
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| John Evelyn Views between Rome and Naples plate 4 : twin peaks of Mt Vesuvius 1649 etching British Museum |
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| John Evelyn Views between Rome and Naples plate 5 : crater of Mt Vesuvius 1649 etching British Museum |
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| John Evelyn Views between Rome and Naples plate 6 : Naples from Mt Vesuvius 1649 etching British Museum |
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| John Evelyn Views between Rome and Naples original drawing for plate 6 1645 British Museum |
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| Prince Rupert of the Rhine The 'Little Executioner' after Jusepe de Ribera 1662 mezzotint British Museum |
"Evelyn persuaded Prince Rupert to contribute this print to include in his book, which is thereby the first mezzotint published in England. Evelyn's diary and papers reveal that Rupert demonstrated the process to him on 24 February 1661 and again on 13 March. A letter of 6 May from Sir Robert Moray makes arrangements for printing the plate in Evelyn's presence the following day; it would allow 100 impressions without retouching as long as it was printed by Rupert's own man. The head is a reduced version of the head in Rupert's masterpiece, the huge 'Great Executioner' of 1658, made after a painting then thought to be by Ribera. It was doubtless suggested as a suitable subject by Evelyn, but it was in fact too wide for the book, with the result that the plate had to be folded in."
– curator's notes, British Museum