Sales catalogue: Quaritch

Date:
1874
Reference:
WA/HMM/CM/Sal/17/15
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sales catalogue: Quaritch. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    111/112 page 111
    PROFESSOR WESTWOOD’S MAGNIFICENT ART PUBLICATION ; ? published at £21., extra cloth—offered at £1'7. 17s. g¢- The Subscription List has absorbed nearly the entire edition of 200, and the Stones have been destroyed. Very few copies remain for sale. THE MINIATURES AND ORNAMENTS OF ANGLO-SAXON & IRISH MANUSCRIPTS; OnE VOLUME, IMPERIAL FOLIO, ILLUSTRATED IN A SERIES QF FIFTY-FOUR SUPERB PLATES, MOST. ELABORATELY EXECUTED IN EXACT FACSIMILE OF THE ORIGINALS IN GOLD AND COLOURS; With a descriptive text to each Plate, serving as a History of British Palzography and Pictorial Art, by J. O. WESTWOOD, M.A., F.L.S., &c., Oxrorp. ——— the same, royal folio, Af. bound morocco extra, gilt edges, by Bedford, £18. 18s 1868 ——--— the same, royal folio, superbly and elaborately whole bound in MOROCCO, Keltic ornaments on sides, gilt edges, a binding expressly designed for this work, a masterpiece of BEDFORD’S skill, £25. 1868 THE Work now announced as ready for publication may be regarded as constituting the First Chapter of a History of the Fine Arts in this Kingdom, extending from the. Roman occupation of Great Britain to the Norman Conquest. By most persons this “ dark age,” as it has been termed, will scarcely be supposed capable of affording materials for such a history ; and indeed, with the exception of a very few examples given by Strutt, Astle, and Shaw, no opportunity had been afforded to the public of judging of the marvellous beauty and excessive intricacy of the ornamentation and designs of Anglo-Saxon and Trish Manuscripts, until the publication of my ‘ Paleographia Sacra Pictoria,” in which I devoted many plates to these marvels of Art. The study of these Manuscripts has, indeed, brought out the singular fact, at a period when the Fine Arts may be said to have been almost extinct in Italy and other parts of the Continent— namely, from the fifth to the end of the eighth century—a style of art had been established, culti- vated, and brought to a wonderful state of perfection in these islands, absolutely distinct from that of all other parts of the civilized world, and which was adopted and imitated in the schools founded on the Continent by Charlemagne, as well as in the monastic establishments founded or visited by Anglo-Saxon and Irish Missionaries, many of which became famous seats of learning. On this subject M. Digby Wyatt, one of the most accomplished of living artists, observes, “In delicacy of handling, and minute, but faultless execution, the whole range of paleography offers nothing comparable to these carly Irish Manuscripts, and those produced in the same style in Tingland. When in Dublin some years ago, I had the opportunity. of studying very carefully the most marvellous of them all— The Book of Kells ;’ some of the ornaments of which I
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