Prints for sale

 

I’ve added a couple of new items to the ‘for sale’ section of the site. Click on the link above, or just click HERE, and scroll to the bottom of the page to see what’s new.

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Untitled drawing by Isaac Cruikshank

Isaac Cruikshank was one of a number of noted late eighteenth-century caricaturists to supplement their income from engraving with sales of drawings and watercolours. However unlike his more celebrated contemporaries such as Thomas Rowlandson and James Gillray, who attempted to pursue careers in the comparatively elevated artistic fields of landscape and portraiture respectively, Cruikshank’s original works remained rooted in the comic humour of his caricatures. The only real difference between his output as a watercolourist and that as an engraver seems to have been his complete abandonment of political satire, with his paintings dealing solely with the humour derived from scenes of sociability, domestic life and the bawdier elements of romance.

His original watercolours seem to have been produced for a number of different reasons. Some were proofs for caricatures, songsheets and broadsides, which would be engraved by Cruikshank or someone else and published. Others appear to have been standalone pieces in their own right which were probably sold to collectors, with the printsellers Laurie & Whittle apparently enjoying a particularly favoured position as suppliers of Cruikshank originals during the 1790s.

This pencil sketch by Isaac Cruikshank is coming up for auction in the US in a few days time. It sadly appears to be rather faded but the principle characters are clearly discernible. The scene is set immediately outside a country inn, where a rustic on horseback is being offered a mug of ale by a buxom and slightly over-exposed young barmaid. The man is clearly delighted by the view he’s enjoying from on top of his horse and scratches his head and grins inanely.

The drawing is signed ‘IC’ in the lower right-hand corner and further evidence of Cruikshank’s hand can be found by comparing the figure of the rustic to that which appears in The Way to Stretchit, a late caricature by Cruikshank which was published by Thomas Tegg in May 1811. The faces of the two figures are almost identical and have the same long fringe and broad-brimmed hat. This indicates at the possibility of the drawing being a rare late composition by Cruikshank, which may indicate why it was never finished (Cruikshank died in April 1811).

Isaac Cruikshank’s ‘Small Print’ (1803)

Whilst I find the subject of eighteenth-century caricature to be an endlessly fascinating one, I have to confess that I don’t always find the prints themselves to be that funny. Admittedly this may say more about me than it does about the caricatures, but it’s not exactly surprising that the humor of many satirical prints has lost some of its impact over the course of the intervening two centuries. Tastes change and you only have to watch a re-run of an old comedy show to realise that what seemed funny 20 or 30 years ago, let along 200 years ago, can often seem passé to a contemporary viewer.

That’s why it’s always nice to come across a print which still has a genuine capacity to make me laugh. This image of Isaac Cruikshank’s Small Print definitely falls into that category. It was sent to me by a reader who, quite appropriately, has it hanging on his bathroom wall; prompting a slightly bizarre exchange of emails in which we compared our respective choice of lavatorial decoration (mine being a copy of John Bull caught at his Last Luxury).

The print was engraved by Isaac Cruikshank and published by Thomas Williamson of No. 20 Strand in 1803. Williamson is known to have published around 50 satirical plates between 1803 and 1805, almost all of which were the work of Isaac Cruikshank. Enjoy.

Prints for sale section updated

I’ve added a small collection of prints by Thomas Rowlandson, William Elmes, Isaac Cruikshank and G.M. Woodward to my ‘for sale’ section.

Click the lick at the top of the page or here if you can’t be bothered scrolling that far.

New shoes for Isaac Cruikshank

This pen, ink and watercolour caricature by Isaac Cruikshank will be going on sale in the UK in a couple of weeks time.

Cruikshank, along with notable contemporaries such as James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson and Richard Dighton, produced numerous watercolours during his lifetime. These paintings seem to have served two purposes: firstly, as a means of proofing designs for potential publications prior to the investment in copperplate and other materials required to translate them into print; and secondly, they served a small but lucrative market of wealthy collectors who were interested in buying original works by their favourite satirists.

Cruikshank’s originals usually offer a toned-down version of the themes that he frequently explored in his satirical prints – a love of London life, sociability, and a tendency to occasionally veer towards the saccharine and the sentimental, being apparent in many of his paintings.

The scene here is set somewhere on Grub Street, a locality made famous by its association with satirists and hack writers in the first half of the eighteenth-century, but which by Cruikshank’s time was also becoming a byword for the deprivation and the down-and-out in general. It shows a hearty cobbler, Nathan Saveall, touting for business in the street. He gestures over his shoulder to his ‘shop’ which is little more than a hole in the street with a jerrybuilt timber and glass shed thrown over the top of it. The man he is addressing looks nonplussed, his slightly battered appearance suggesting that he hasn’t the money to buy whatever Saveall is selling and the rolled-up manuscript sticking out of his pocket hinting at the possibility that he is an impoverished writer. In the background a small crowd has gathered around the window of a cookhouse. It includes a ragged ballad singer who bawls out one of the songs from the sheaf of broadsides in her hands while simultaneously tending to her three young children.

I must admit that if Cruikshank is making a joke here then its meaning is largely lost on me. I can only think that if humour was his intent then this image was conceived as a realistic counterpoint to the heavily idealised images of urban poverty presented in popular prints such as Francis Wheatley’s Cries of London series. It’s a nice picture nonetheless and something of a rarity to the collector.