Author’s Note

Clayton, Timothy

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Author’s Note

Timothy Clayton

The English Print: 1688–1802

~MEASUREMENTS CITED IN THE TEXT ARE in feet and inches in order to reflect contemporary usage. In the captions they are in millimetres in accordance with standard modern practice.

Author

Timothy Clayton

PublisherPaul Mellon Centre

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21086

Author’s Note

MEASUREMENTS CITED IN THE TEXT ARE in feet and inches in order to reflect contemporary usage. In the captions they are in millimetres in accordance with standard modern practice.

It will be noticed that I have often preferred ‘English’ to ‘British’. This is primarily the consequence of a viewpoint centred on London where nearly all British print publishing took place. It also reflects eighteenth-century practice. Foreign commentators almost invariably spoke of ‘peintres anglois’ and, late in the century, ‘l’école anglois’. I have used British intentionally where it seemed appropriate to convey a wider ‘imperial’ accumulation of Germans, Scots, Americans and Irishmen. The idea of national ‘schools’ was institutionalized, chiefly by Germans, during the second half of the century. For similar reasons, I have used anglicized forms of name for those individuals who settled in England. In some cases it has become conventional to use different forms of a name in different national contexts and it has been difficult to determine which to use here. It is hoped that readers will tolerate a degree of inconsistency.

In this book works of art will usually be found to be attributed according to the belief current in the eighteenth century even when this has subsequently been discredited. I have occasionally acknowledged developments in connoissseurship but have usually deemed it more important to emphasize the existing view of what was being achieved.

Most people who are not specialists in prints are confused by ‘states’. The term is used to distinguish impressions pulled before and after changes were made to the plate. These may have been alterations made by the artist during the creation of the image (‘progress proofs’), impressions taken before or during the process of adding lettering to the completed image (‘finished proofs’), or impressions taken after later repairs or alterations to the image or lettering. I have referred to all impressions in states before the completion of the lettering for the standard published state as proofs. Museums have tended to preserve proofs rather than lettered impressions and so a disproportionate number have been illustrated. Occasionally I have been obliged to illustrate prints in the worn condition in which they were reissued some years after their original publication. I have done this unwillingly where I could not locate (or afford to reproduce) an earlier example.

I consider all material, including lettering, within the plate to be part of an intaglio print. Wherever possible illustrations extend to just beyond the platemark – a style of presentation that matches eighteenth-century exhibition framing policy. Where prints have been trimmed within the platemark, as much of the sheet as possible will have been shown.

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Book details

BOOKThe English Print: 1688–1802

Timothy Clayton

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00242

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21083

Before the invention of photography, prints were the principal means for reproducing and disseminating visual information. The engraver did for the image what the printer did for the written word, and painters were compared and judged on the evidence of prints of their work. In this authoritative and innovative book, Timothy Clayton describes the growth of the print trade in England during the eighteenth century, a period during which Britain emerged from artistic obscurity to dominate the international print market.

This highly readable account offers a fascinating tour of the principal outlets for prints in London, the provinces, and the British colonies over a period of more than one hundred years. Clayton considers the variety of published material history prints, topography, portraiture, satire, propaganda—the channels of distribution, and the various audiences to which prints were addressed. He examines the effect of the sudden and dramatic influx of foreign prints in the second decade of the eighteenth century and traces the way in which English engravers and printsellers attempted to establish a national industry. Prints were used to promote English entertainments, luxury industries, landscapes, gardens, and paintings and to demonstrate the increasing wealth and sophistication of the English nation. Their influence over the commercialization of leisure and the development of luxury manufacturing was considerable. By the 1760s, British engravers and painters were winning recognition and establishing a new reputation on the Continent through the dissemination of their work. During the following decade, the enthusiasm for English prints developed into full-blown anglomania, and engraved scenes from English literature and national history were displayed on walls throughout Europe.

*This eBook is available exclusively on the A&AePortal.*

Author

Timothy Clayton

PublisherPaul Mellon Centre

Print publication date December 1997 (out of print)

Print ISBN 9780300066500

EISBN 9780300260564

Illustrations 304

Print Status out of print

Publisher (out of print)

WorldCat

Google Books

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