Old Coloured Books

Excerpt

It is an unromantic fact, but one which cannot fail to be of interest at the present time, that the remarkable development of the graver's art in England during the latter part of the eighteenth century was due, in a measure at least, to—Protection. In the middle of the century our trade in engravings was still an import one, English print-sellers being obliged to pay hard cash for the prints they bought in France, since the French took none in exchange. But with the accession of George III. a better prospect dawned for the artist and engraver. The young King, unlike his immediate predecessors, desired to patronise native talent; no budding Hogarth should draw unflattering comparisons between himself and the King of Prussia as an "Encourager of the Arts." And in spite of the gibes of Peter Pindar, in spite of the royal preference for Ramsay over Reynolds, it is probable that George III. was sincere in his desire to stimulate the growth of British art. In 1769 the long-talked-of Royal Academy was founded; while, for the benefit of the rising school of English engravers, bounties were granted on the exportation of English prints, and heavy duties imposed on the importation of French prints. Politics and patriotism were not without their influence upon the trade, many a good courtier being willing to help the cause by the purchase of an inexpensive print, though he was not yet prepared to patronise a British painter. Immense sums were cleared by John Boydell over Woollett's engravings after West and Copley; illustrated books, more especially of travel, were eagerly bought up; illustrated magazines flooded the market; print-shops multiplied, their windows "glazed with libels" in the shape of coloured caricatures; and foreign artists, engravers, and miniaturists flocked to the English Eldorado. In 1790 it was stated in a trade pamphlet that the prints exported from England at that time, as compared with those imported from France, were in the proportion of five hundred to one!

Rudolf Ackermann

The French Revolution, and the wars that followed, temporarily ruined our foreign trade in prints, the great fortune that Boydell had made by his judicious speculation in the talents of his countrymen, melting away under these adverse influences, and leaving him a ruined man by 1802. But as Boydell's star sank, that of another art-publisher, presumably less dependent on foreign trade, rose above the horizon. Rudolf Ackermann (1764-1834), the son of a Saxon coachbuilder, came to London about 1775, and after ten years spent in making designs for coachbuilders, set up for himself in the Strand as an art-publisher and dealer in fancy goods. Ackermann proved himself a man of really remarkable energy and initiative, with a mind always open to the reception of new ideas, and a spirit of commercial enterprise that was based upon artistic taste and sound judgment. He was also one of the few men who have ever successfully combined business and philanthropy on a large scale. During the years that followed the Reign of Terror, he was the chief employer of the French emigrés in London, finding occupation for no fewer than fifty nobles, priests, and ladies, in the manufacture of screens, card-racks, and other articles for his "fancy department." Irrespective of his business as an art-publisher, this extraordinary man patented an invention for rendering cloth and paper waterproof, made experiments in air-balloons for the dissemination of news in war-time, designed Nelson's funeral-car, introduced lithography for the purposes of art-illustration into this country, raised and distributed a large sum for the relief of sufferers after the battle of Leipsic, undertook the same good offices for the Prussian soldiers after Waterloo, and was a generous employer to the Spanish exiles who took refuge in England in 1815. His Wednesday evening conversazione at the Repository of Arts, 101 Strand, became quite a feature in the literary and artistic world after 1813, while he played the part of protector and adviser to the more unpractical of the authors and illustrators who were employed upon his various undertakings.

Turning to Ackermann's numerous and valuable art-publications, we find that very early in his business career he was one of the chief employers of Rowlandson, the caricaturist, to whom he eventually became a kind of "foster-publisher," just as Humphrey was the foster-publisher of Gillray.

Thomas Rowlandson

Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) had received his artistic training partly in the Academy schools, and partly, thanks to French connections, in Parisian studios, where, in addition to a brilliant technique, he acquired a taste for gaming and all kinds of dissipation. A brief attempt to succeed as a portrait-painter was abandoned for caricature, as soon as he perceived the success that had been won in that field by his contemporaries Gillray and Bunbury, to say nothing of the easy triumphs of such minor workers in the grotesque as Collings and Woodward....