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| Anonymous printmaker The Favourite Lamb Killed by Lightning ca. 1790-1800 hand-colored mezzotint and etching British Museum |
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| Robert Sayer (publisher) The Fighting Boys ca. 1760-90 hand-colored mezzotint British Museum |
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| William Ward after George Morland The Delightful Story ("two blooming nymphs all in a downy bed") 1787 hand-colored mezzotint British Museum |
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| 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
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| 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
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| Valentine Green after John Hoppner Jupiter and Io 1785 hand-colored mezzotint British Museum |
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| 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
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| 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"]
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| Charles Spooner after Godfried Schalcken (for Carrington Bowles) Boy Blowing Charcoal before 1767 hand-colored mezzotint British Museum |
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| Sayer & Bennett The Beautiful Fruit-Gatherer 1782 hand-colored mezzotint British Museum |
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| William Humphrey The Storm 1782 hand-colored mezzotint British Museum |
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| Anonymous printmaker Winter - Inverno ca. 1790-1800 hand-colored mezzotint and etching British Museum |
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| 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)
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| 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.