Georgian satire: the shock of the old

Since last month’s post inspired by my caricature of Mary Anne Clarke (see Mrs Clarke in the House) several readers have asked me about collecting satirical prints.

James Gillray’s The Plumb-pudding in danger, Pitt and Napoleon carving up the globe. Sold for £15,000 at Bloomsbury in June 2015.

Well it so happens I have penned an article on just that subject for a special supplement to the Antiques Trade Gazette (cover date 26th March 2016)

The early 1780s witnessed a new phenomenon, the professional caricaturist.  And it was a uniquely British phenomenon. Only in Britain were the three conditions – freedom of expression, party politics, and a receptive market – combined.

Read my article on the Georgian heyday of the single-sheet satire here:  Georgian satire: the shock of the old

There is plenty to interest the bibliophile in the newly-published supplement.  It can be read online in full here:  Books, Maps & Prints

House Hunting

I get lots of requests from clients looking for old prints of their houses. We’re talking old houses natch, with considerable local history, connections to a good family name, and perhaps of some architectural significance. These are usually not houses of national, or international, renown. The lodge or gatehouse, but not the big house up the drive. You know what I mean.

These seekers often have to be very patient, sometimes not hearing from me for years, and I can empathize. For 15 years I have been on a personal quest for historical images of my parents’ house in Lincolnshire.

1820s hand-coloured engraving of Aslackby, Lincolnshire

My search has been frustrating at times – located in a part of the country not overly blessed with lavishly-illustrated county histories, the house has a somewhat obscure provenance and is not associated with any famous past residents, or great historical occasions.

I have heard tantalising tales of an engraved illustration in this or that book, maybe by one of the Buck brothers (Samuel and Nathaniel, prolific topographical draughtsmen in the eighteenth century), maybe by someone else. The closest geographically I have come so far in terms of old prints is a small c.1820s engraving of a neighbouring village, and two more substantial views of the nearest market town.

A fellow Ephemera Society member was kind enough to let me scan this postcard of my parents’ village – featuring the very house in the upper right corner. (He doesn’t want to sell.) He tells me he’s seen with his own eyes a postcard that is a full-size photo of the house alone. Wow.  Privately published, presumably in a very small print run, at the height of the postcard boom of the early 1900s. I could flick through the ‘Lincolnshire’ section of every stand at every postcard fair for the rest of my life and not come across it. Doesn’t quite seem worth it.

c.1910 photographic postcard of Dowsby, Lincolnshire

He did sell me a c.1910 handwritten bill from a local printer to a prominent former owner of the house, which is a nice little connection.

I was once very excited to see sale particulars of an early 20th century auction of the house offered very cheaply online – complete with interesting photographs and estate map – but was told the item had been sold a few days earlier and not removed from the website. Frustrated again.

I enjoy browsing old family scrap albums, all the rage in Victorian times, which can reveal very personal insights into the lives and times of their compilers, and the places in which they lived. What are the chances…?  Amateur watercolours from the 18th and 19th centuries vividly record not only architecture and topography, but can contain incidental details that have acquired considerable interest in their own right – for example fashions in dress or interior decoration. These drawings are often found in a diary or sketch book, often the work of a young lady of the house, and often very finely executed – wealthy families could afford to employ quality drawing masters.

I live in hope, dear reader.

Old Prints of Country Houses

Antiquarians, discerning homeowners and interior designers alike have long appreciated that prints of country houses can add charm and sophistication to an interior, as well as historical interest.

‘Long Leate’ by Jan Kip c. 1720

Good quality prints from the 18th and 19th centuries are very affordable, thanks to the plethora of county histories and architectural works that were published. This was the great age of building private houses when aristocrats, inspired on their Grand Tours, commissioned architects to reinterpret the Italian villa in the British countryside. Images of their houses – alongside those of the gentry and the aspirational businessmen and financiers of the age – were included in often lavishly produced volumes known as ‘plate books’. The owners subscribed to these publications on condition that their particular country pile would be represented.

Please click HERE to read the rest of my article for July’s Pall Mall Art Advisors Newsletter

Painting Paradise

Painting Paradise: The Art of the Garden explores the many ways in which the garden has been celebrated in art through over 150 paintings, drawings, books, manuscripts and decorative arts from the Royal Collection.

The exhibition runs from 20th March to 11th October at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace.

Jan Brueghel the Elder, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, 1615

The display is arranged chronologically – cleverly incorporating garden-feature props – and explores what gardens have meant to people over the centuries.

Biblical notions have permeated garden design from the outset – the word ‘paradise’ derives from the ancient Persian for an enclosed, protected space and through the book of Genesis has become intertwined with visions of the Garden of Eden.

The precedents of classical antiquity were, as one would expect, prominent in the minds of the Renaissance gardeners. A small c.1550 pen and ink and chalk drawing by an unidentified draughtsman (once attributed to Leonardo Da Vinci) is one of the first attempts in Italian Renaissance art to depict a garden accurately.  It probably shows part of a villa garden used for cultivating medicinal herbs, with regular rectangular beds.

That’s me on the left!

By way of total contrast, I particularly enjoyed the magnificently large and sweeping vista of Hampton Court rendered in oil by Leonard Knyff (1650 – 1722). The bird’s-eye prospect of the Palace perfectly exemplifies the Anglo-Dutch formality of patterned parterres and avenues fashionable at the time.

Leonard Knyff, A View of Hampton Court, c.1702-14

Knyff’s drawings were turned into etchings by Jan Kip, a fellow Dutchman born in Amsterdam. Kip’s series of plates known as ‘Britannia Illustrata’ were first issued in 1707 in a single volume of eighty. The distinctive views of country seats, instantly recognisable by their aerial perspective, are as much concerned with the formal landscape gardens as with the houses themselves. I myself have recently acquired the plate of Doddington Hall in Lincolnshire.

The freer style of landscaping that emerged in the 18th century, by such luminaries as William Kent and Lancelot “Capability” Brown, is well represented. This incorporated formal structures and wilderness elements. The exhibition ends with some contemporary interpretations, via the age of Victoria, the first monarch to hold garden parties at Buckingham Palace.

Well worth a visit.