- Museum number
- 1869,1224.604.1-591
- Description
-
Edward Edwards, Anecdotes of Painters who have resided or been born in England, 1808. Extra-illustrated with 591 illustrations (of which two have been excised, 1869,1224.604.295 and 1869,1224.604.409) and numerous handwritten notes by J.H. Anderdon, Esq. and presented by him in 1869. Bound in two tooled red leather quarto volumes (rebound from one volume shortly after acquisition), in which the extra illustrations are individually numbered. There is an index on blue slips, and in a bound volume (Desk D.2.3.), to portraits, masters, artists and engravers. [ ] indicates handwritten additions.
Volume I:
Edwards's visiting card, featuring an allegory of painting, precedes the title page, the title page followed by a note from Anderdon; [1869- 3 July/The Curator of the Prints in the British Museum/having passed a morning with me in looking over/some of the Works of Art in my possession,/and having expressed his approval of/some Notes and Memoranda expressed through these pages/ of Edwards' Anecdotes of Painters…I had no hesitation in appropriating it to the use of the Museum in addition to the Gift of 6.Vols of the Catalogues of the 'Society of Artists of Great Britain' which I had and ? to illustrated in the same way. J. Anderdon]
Frontispieces include 'The Descriptive Inventory of Mr. Cox's Museum' engraved by John Keyse Sherwin; Edwards's Practical treatise of Perspective engraved by Edward Edwards and R. Duppa (two proofs, one before letters); frontispiece to the sale of Horace Walpole's house Strawberry Hill engraved by Morris; The Musical Entertainer engraved by George Bickham the younger and John Hamilton Mortimer's Frontispiece Dedicated to Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Portraits include Edward Edwards engraved by Anthony Cardon, Thomas Arne playing a harpsichord by William Nelson Gardiner after John Nixon Horace (Dorothy George no. 8240), Walpole engraved by D.P. Pariset after Peter Falconet, George Vertue engraved by T. Priscott, Sir James Thornhill engraved by Samuel Ireland after William Hogarth, Mrs Jackson engraved by Jean Conde after Richard Cosway, Gervase Spencer after Joshua Reynolds and a pencil drawing of F. Tonson by Peter Falconet.
Allegorical subjects include the figure of painting, engraved in aquatint by Edwards after John Thornthwaite.
Subscription tickets and receipts include one for Francis Hayman's illustrations for Tobias Smollett's History of England engraved by Charles Grignion.
Anderdon's handwritten transcriptions of letters from Edward Edwards.
Invitations include the Society of Painters at St Luke's Feast of 1687 and the Society of Painters at St Luke's Feast of 1690 engraved by R Hayes.
Book illustrations include Plate 13 from Ackerman's 'Microcosm of London' (1808) a view inside the British Institution, etching and aquatint by John Bluck after Thomas Rowlandson and Augustus Charles Pugin.
Drawings include a pen and black ink with graphite figure composition of a youth with a girl carrying a basket containing loaves and a flask, approaching a woman and child lying on the ground, lower left, with fainter figures below. Attributed by Binyon to Mortimer, later attributed to James Jeffereys.
Volume II:
Portraits include Thomas Gainsborough engraved by H.Meyer, Lady Curzon engraved by John Keyse Sherwin, Jeremiah Mayer engraved by D.P. Pariset after Falconet, Samuel Reddish as Posthumus engraved by Green after Robert Edge Pine, William Blakely engraved by James McArdell after George Chalmers, Madam Morichelli engraved by John Godefroy, Edward Bell in watercolour by Jean Marie Delattre, Maria Anne Fitzherbert engraved by J Collyer after J Russell.
Frontispieces include Darly's Comic-Prints of Characters, Caricatures, Macaronies. Dedicated to D. Garrick'.
Landscape subjects include a wooded landscape with a cart and figures designed and engraved by Gainsborough,
Drawings include a watercolour of 'Bristol Channel..from Catherston Lodge Somerset' by John Richards.
Satirical subjects include a Neapolitan Painter, painted and etched by David Allan.
The index heavily annotated by Anderdon.
- Production date
- 1848 (Extra-Illustrated)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 426 millimetres
-
Width: 290 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- 1869,1224.604.116 Stamped on verso with Anderdon's collector's mark (L. 50) and annotated in ink with his initials and the date '8 Nov 1833.'
1869,1224.604.198, formerly attributed to John Hamilton Mortimer, later attributed to James Jeffereys by J. Sunderland in 'John Hamilton Mortimer: his life and works', Walpole Society, LII, 1986, no. R28.
1869,1224.604.295 and 1869,1224.604.409 have been removed from Anderdon’s volumes.
- Location
- Not on display
- Associated titles
-
Associated Title: Microcosm of London
-
Associated Title: The Musical Entertainer
- Acquisition date
- 1869
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1869,1224.604.1-591
