Volume 1

An introduction to the study & collection of ancient prints / [William Hughes Willshire].

  • Willshire, W. Hughes (William Hughes), 1816-1899.
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An introduction to the study & collection of ancient prints / [William Hughes Willshire]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    378/406 page 352
    English School. Of the Old Englijh School there is not much to be faid. It is very unpretentious, numbering but few members of technical merit, if thofe engravers of foreign extraction, who are often claimed for it, be excepted. The true and creditable Englifh fchool commences with Hogarth, goes on with Sir Robert Strange, Woollett, Sharp, and Ryland, and is efpecially charaCterifed by that band of eminent men formed of Place, the younger Faithorne, R. and G. White, Smith, Faber, Houfton, Corbut, Dickinfon, Earlom, Valentine Green, MacArdell, and others, who devoted their abilities to that branch of work we have to confider after- wards as mezzo-tinto engraving. It is the opinion of fome, how- ever, that the De PalTes, the Hogenbergs, Hollar, Droefhout, Ravenet, Grignion, and Dorigny, fhould be reckoned of the Englifh fchool; but fince Hollar is the only one of thefe mafters of whom we fhall fpecifically treat, we may be fpared meddling with the litigated queftion as to the fchools which have the better right to claim them as members. The earlieft copper-plate engravings which England can claim as demonftrably her own may be found in a book entitled ‘ Compendiofa totius Anatomie delineatio aere exarata per Thomam Geminum, Londini, T545.’ In this treatife are forty illuftrations from copper-plates along with a frontifpiece which reprefent probably the earlieft efforts of rolling-prefs work in this country. A fecond edition* of ‘ Geminie’s Anatomie’ was pub- lifhed in 1559, which remarks Dibdin, ‘ prefents us in the engraved elaborate frontifpiece (upon copper) with the earlieft por- trait of Queen Elizabeth, who began to reign in the month of November, 1559.’ But before this time (1545), an engraved frontif- piece had appeared in an edition ‘ Caleni [for Galeni] Pergamenfis de Temperamentis—Impreflum apud prasclaram Cantabrigiam— M.D.xxi,’ and in the ‘ Byrth of Mankynde, newly tranllated out of Eaten into Englyfhe,’ etc., London, mcccccxl, and printed by Thomas Raynald, were engravings from metal-plates. But to * So termed in Ames-Dibdin (vol. iv. p. 527), but it was mere properly the third tdirion, as there was one—or a fre/h inTue .Tt leaft—in 1552.
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