Eighteenth-Century Engravings and Visual History in Britain 1032153644, 9781032153643

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Picturing history
2. Reinventing the past
3. The historical genre
4. Visual history as a new language
Appendix
Select bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Eighteenth-Century Engravings and Visual History in Britain

Extending the scholarly discussion of visual history, this book examines eighteenth-­ century engraved book illustrations in order to outline the genealogy of the modern visualisation of the past in Britain. This study is based on a body of more than a hundred engraved historical plates designed in the second half of the eighteenth century in Britain and published in more than a dozen pictorial histories. Focusing on these previously unstudied engravings, this work contributes to the study of eighteenth-century visual culture and is informed by current interdisciplinary approaches at the intersection of visual and book studies. Eighteenth-Century Engravings and Visual History in Britain is about the urge to envision the past and about the establishment of the new relationship between visual media, visuality, and history in eighteenth-­century Britain. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, British history, book studies, and visual culture. Isabelle Baudino is Senior Lecturer at the École normale supérieure de Lyon, France.

British Art: Histories and Interpretations since 1700 Series Editors: Pamela Fletcher, Bowdoin College Andrew Stephenson, University of East London

This series exists to publish new and rigorous scholarship of the highest quality on British art after 1700. The British School of Sculpture, c.1760–1832 Edited by Jason Edwards and Sarah Burnage Visual Culture in the Northern British Archipelago Imagining Islands Edited by Ysanne Holt, David Martin-Jones, and Owain Jones Artangel and Financing British Art Adapting to Social and Economic Change Charlotte Gould Victorian Artists’ Autograph Replicas Auras, Aesthetics, Patronage and the Art Market Edited by Julie F. Codell British Art and the Environment Changes, Challenges and Responses Since the Industrial Revolution Edited by Charlotte Gould and Sophie Mesplède Illustration in Fin-de-Siècle Transatlantic Romance Fiction Kate Holterhoff Eighteenth-Century Engravings and Visual History in Britain Isabelle Baudino For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/British-Art-­ Histories-and-Interpretations-since-1700/book-series/ASHSER4020

Eighteenth-Century Engravings and Visual History in Britain

Isabelle Baudino

Designed cover image: Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library First published 2023 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Isabelle Baudino The right of Isabelle Baudino to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Baudino, Isabelle, author. Title: Engravings and visual history in eighteenth-century Britain / Isabelle Baudino. Description: New York, NY: Routledge, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2022042152 (print) | LCCN 2022042153 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032153643 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032162416 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003245445 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Prints, British--18th century--Themes, motives. | History in art. | Illustration of books--Great Britain--18th century. | Art and society--Great Britain--History--18th century. Classification: LCC NE628.2 .B38 2023 (print) | LCC NE628.2 (ebook) | DDC 769.94109/033--dc23/eng/20220922 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022042152 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022042153 ISBN: 9781032153643 (hbk) ISBN: 9781032162416 (pbk) ISBN: 9781003245445 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003245445 Typeset in Sabon by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

Contents

List of illustrationsvi Acknowledgementsix Introduction1 1 Picturing history

18

2 Reinventing the past

53

3 The historical genre

96

4 Visual history as a new language Appendix Select bibliography Index

139 171 176 187

List of illustrations

0.1 1.1 1.2 1.3

1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7

1.8 2.1

2.2 2.3 2.4

Samuel Wale, Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex, drawing in pen and ink 5 George Vertue, William II surnam’d Rufus, c. 1736, engraving 22 Samuel Wale, William Rufus Slain by Sr. William Tyrrel, illustration made for John Lockman’s New History of England (1747). 26 Samuel Wale, Charles II Concealed in the Oak, illustration originally designed for Thomas Mortimer’s New History of England (1764–1766), here its reversed reissue in William Augustus Russel’s New and Authentic History of England (1777) 29 Isaac Fuller, King Charles II and Colonel William Carlos (Careless) in the Royal Oak, c. 1660, oil on canvas, 212.7 × 315.6 cm 30 Samuel Wale, The Stationers Almanack, 1752 33 Simon-François Ravenet (after Nicholas Blakey), The Landing of Julius Caesar, c. 1751, etching and engraving 37 Samuel Wale, The Landing of William the Conqueror, originally designed for Thomas Mortimer’s New History of England (1764–1766); here its reversed reissue in William Augustus Russel’s New and Authentic History of England (1777) 40 Samuel Wale, St. Austin preaching to K. Ethelbert & Q. Bertha in the Isle of Thanet, illustration made for Thomas Mortimer’s New History of England (1764–1766) 43 Samuel Wale, The Act of Union presented to Queen Anne, by the Duke of Queensberry & Dover originally designed for William H. Mountague’s New and Universal History of England (1771–1772), here its reissue in William Augustus Russel’s New and Authentic History of England (1777) 59 Jean Raoux, King Charles Taking Leave of his Children, c. 1721, oil on canvas, 63.5 × 76.2 cm, private collection 60 Samuel Wale, King Henry 5th names the Battle of Agincourt, illustration made for Thomas Mortimer’s New History of England (1764–1766) 64 Samuel Wale, Guy Fawkes Seiz’d by order of Sr. Tho.s Knevet, illustration made for William H. Mountague’s New and Universal History of England, reissued in Temple Sydney’s New and Complete History of England (1773) 66

List of illustrations vii 2.5

Samuel Wale, Charles I Beheaded, illustration made for John Lockman’s New History of England (1747) 68 2.6 Samuel Wale, Death of Lady Jane Grey and L. Dudley, illustration made for John Lockman’s New History of England (1747) 69 2.7 Samuel Wale, Death of Lady Jane Gray, illustration made for William Henry Mountague’s New and Universal History of England (1771–1772) 70 2.8 Samuel Wale, The Black Prince waiting on ye King of France his Prisoner, illustration made for Thomas Mortimer’s New History of England (1764–1766) 84 2.9 Samuel Wale, Lady Elizabeth Grey at the Feet of Edward IV imploring a maintenance for herself and her Children, originally designed for Thomas Mortimer’s New History of England (1764– 1766), here its reversed reissue in William Augustus Russel’s New and Authentic History of England (1777) 88 3.1 Andrea Casali, The Assassination of Edward the Martyr, c.1760, oil on canvas, 254 × 208 cm, Burton Constable Hall, Yorkshire 103 3.2 Samuel Wale, Edward the Martyr Stabb’d by Order of his Mother in Law, illustration made for John Lockman’s New History of England (1747) 104 3.3 Samuel Wale, King Edward Stab’d at the Gate of Corfe by Order of his Mother, illustration made for Thomas Mortimer’s New History of England (1764–1766) 105 3.4 Samuel Wale, Oliver Cromwell Dissolves the Parliament, illustration made for Thomas Mortimer’s New History of England (1764–1766) 111 3.5 Benjamin West, Cromwell Dissolving the Long Parliament, 1782, oil on canvas, 153 × 214.6 cm, Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey, USA 112 3.6 Anker Smith (after Edward Francis Burney), The Landing of Julius Caesar, illustration made for Robert Bowyer’s edition of David Hume’s History of England (1793) 118 3.7 Samuel Wale, Landing of Julius Caesar, illustration made for William Henry Mountague’s New and Universal History of England (1771–1772) 119 3.8 John Opie, Lady Elizabeth Woodville Pleading for her Children before Edward IV, 1798, oil on canvas, 249 × 198 cm 120 3.9 James Fittler (after Henry Tresham), Edward IV Declaring his Attachment to Lady Elizabeth Gray, illustration made for Robert Bowyer’s edition of David Hume’s History of England (1795) 121 3.10 William Wynne Ryland (after Angelica Kauffmann), Elizabeth Woodville, later Queen, the Widow of Sir John Grey imploring King Edward IV to restore her Husband’s Lands, coloured engraving 123 3.11 Samuel Wale, Edward 5th and his Brother Smother’d, illustration made for John Lockman’s New History of England (1747) 126 3.12 Samuel Wale, The Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, sons of Edward IVth Murdered in the Tower, originally designed for William Henry Mountague’s New and Universal History of

viii  List of illustrations England (1771–1772), here its reversed reissue in William Augustus Russel’s A New and Authentic History of England (1777) 127 3.13 James Northcote, The Princes in the Tower, 1786, oil on canvas, 180.3 × 137.2 cm, private collection 129 3.14 James Parker (after Thomas Stothard), Murder of Edward V and the Duke of York, illustration made for Robert Bowyer’s edition of David Hume’s History of England (1795) 131 3.15 William Hamilton, King Edgar’s First Interview with Queen Elfrida (Ælfthryth), 1774, oil on canvas, 134.6 × 182.9 cm 134 4.1 The Illustrated London News for the week ending Saturday, July 8, 1843 (front page) 144 4.2 William Linnell (after Edward Armitage), Caesar’s First Invasion of Britain, The Prize Cartoons, 1847, lithograph on paper 145 4.3 James Thomas Linnell (after John Callcott Horsley, St Augustine Preaching to Ethelbert and Bertha, The Prize Cartoons, 1847, lithograph on paper 146 4.4 George Lillie Craik and Charles Mac Farlane, Pictorial History of England, A History of the People as well as a History of the Kingdom, 4 vols. (London: Knight, 1838–1841) and The Murder of Edward V and the Duke of York in the Tower (vol 2, 1839, 125) 153 4.5 Charles Knight, The Popular History of England, An Illustrated History (vol 1, 1856, 157) 155 4.6 James, William Edmund Doyle, Edward IV and Lady Elizabeth Grey from A Chronicle of England B.C 55–A.D 1485 (1863), colour lithograph, private collection. 158 4.7 Cromwell Dissolving the Rump Parliament, Wills cigarette card 160

Acknowledgements

This book has been (too) many years in the making. Over that long period of time and its myriad of memorable events, I wish to acknowledge here the formidable help and support which I received from many more people than these few pages allow me to mention. I wish to express my gratitude to the institutions that have simply given me the means to carry out this research: the ENS de Lyon where I have spent most of my academic career and which gave me a sabbatical in 2015–2016. This full year of research was spent in the ideal environment of the University of Cambridge, where I was warmly welcomed at Magdalene College as visiting fellow. As this sabbatical was drawing to a close, I felt honoured to be granted a generous mid-career fellowship from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London as well as a visiting fellowship from the Lewis Walpole Library in Farmington which allowed me to extend my period of research by nearly a year. I also wish to thank my research unit, the IHRIM, and its director Marina Mestre Zaragozá, for their unflinching support. Crucial as it has been, institutional support would not have been so life-changing without the many individuals who took an interest in my project. First among them was art historian Duncan Robinson CBE, former Master of Magdalene College to whom I am greatly indebted. His recent death is a source of sorrow to all who knew him. To historian James Raven for his unwavering encouragement throughout the project and beyond. I would also like to thank John Munns and Jane Hughes, in particular, for their kind help. My time and work at Cambridge would not have been so memorable without the friendly presence of Louise Foxcroft and Lydia Hamlett. I am also indebted to Brian Allen, who welcomed me at the Paul Mellon Centre when I was a PhD student, for continuing to share his expert advice on eighteenth-century art so generously. To Mark Hallett, Martin Postle, and Jessica Feather for welcoming me to the Paul Mellon Centre during my fellowship, and to Robin Simon for accepting to publish my first article on Samuel Wale. Across the Atlantic, becoming a member of the fantastic community of the Lewis Walpole Library fellows has been a real privilege, and I wish to express special thanks to Nicole Bouché, Sue Walker, and Cynthia Roman. As all researchers, I feel that my debt to curators and librarians is beyond measures. Over the days, weeks and months I have spent searching for texts and images in the most amazing rooms at the British Library, the National Art Library, the Royal Academy Library, at Cambridge University Library, the Old Library at Magdalene College Cambridge, Trinity College Library Cambridge, the Paul Mellon Centre Library, the Royal Society of Arts Library, the Museum of London, Lambeth Palace

x  Acknowledgements Library, Westminster Library, the Lewis Walpole Library and in the archives at the V&A, the Museum of London, Nottingham Castle Museum, and at the Norfolk Record Office in Norwich, I have accumulated debts and wish to express my particular gratitude to Catherine Sutherland at Magdalene, to Kristen McDonald at the Lewis Walpole Library, to Thomas Ardill at the Museum of London, to Louise Dunning (for showcasing Samuel Wale’s illustrations in a delightful exhibition at Nottingham Castle in 2017), and to Eve Watson (who helped me access documents from the Royal Society of Arts collection when the pandemic made it impossible for me to consult them). Very special thanks go to Mark Pomeroy at the Royal Academy Library for years of patient and expert help. To all my colleagues who have supported my research activities and especially to Isabelle Bour who invited me to present early, tentative results in her CREA seminar at the University of Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle and who patiently read the draft of this book; to Guyonne Leduc with whom I share heart-warming memories of her Lille colleague, my late PhD supervisor, Pr Paul Denizot; and to Aurélie Petiot for generously sharing her love of Cambridge and expert knowledge of British arts. To the great team who supported me at Routledge: special thanks to Pamela Fletcher, Andrew Stephenson, Isabelle Vitti, and my anonymous reviewers. Thanks and love to my friends and family.

This book has been published with to the support of the research unit UMR 5317 – IHRIM (Institut d’histoire des représentations et des idées dans les modernités), in association with the CNRS, the ENS de Lyon, and the universities Lumière-Lyon 2, Jean-Moulin-Lyon 3, Jean-Monnet-Saint-Etienne and Clermont Auvergne.

Introduction

Visual history in Britain My earliest acquaintance with history was thus, in a form issuing from my mother’s lips, inseparable from her other bedtime make-believe: how Alfred burnt the cakes, how Canute commanded the waves, how King Charles hid in an oak tree – as if history were a pleasing invention. But all the stories were once real. And all the events of history, the battles and costume-pieces, once really happened. All the stories were once a feeling in the guts. Graham Swift, Waterland (1983) In his novel addressing the dissolution of history into histories and stories, Swift hints at the part played by events in the production of historical understanding. These references, while taking back the narrator to bittersweet childhood memories of longlost motherly love, of Alfred burning the cakes, Canute commanding the waves, and prince Charles hiding in the oak tree also conjure up popular images which similarly take Swift’s postmodern readers back to more colourful, perhaps more comforting, forms of historiography. Those events would not have been transmitted over centuries without the images that materialised unascertained episodes involving past British rulers into memorable, singular and significant historical landmarks. The sources for such historical pictures are diverse and can be found in texts, iconography, or oral tradition, but their compilation into a chronological historiographical series and their circulation as illustrations of British history books date back to the eighteenth century. This book is about the making of such visual historical series and about the surprisingly enduring persistence of such illustrations in the collective imagination. It retraces the route by which historical figures have come down to us and addresses the ways in which Britons have configured their relation to the past through widely circulated historical images. If history is how the present sees the past, then this is a study of how the British national past came to be visualised in a sequence of images arranged in chronological order. The centrality of historical thinking to eighteenth-century Britain has long been observed and studied. In the wake of the so-called “glorious revolution,” and the political transformations entailed by the event, the development of what Herbert Butterfield termed the “Whig interpretation of history,” with its celebration of the present through the past, highlighting the stages leading to the triumph of Protestantism and liberties, and heralding the coming of an even more glorious future, led to the DOI: 10.4324/9781003245445-1

2  Introduction publication of thousands of volumes penned by more or less renowned historians. As Philip Hicks’s study has shown, the lack of an English neoclassical masterpiece constituted both a weakness and a strength for British historiography.1 While the failure to produce a historical compendium meeting the ars historica criteria was much lamented, it nonetheless prompted the development of history writing outside the canon. As history came to be one of Britons’ favourite readings, booksellers were keen to offer for sale historical narratives retracing the genealogy of the “newly invented” British nation, to quote from Linda Colley’s seminal study. 2 Wishing to increase the profitability of this popular subject, they sold voluminous historical works in weekly or monthly instalments, making them accessible to a broader public. There was, in the words of Karen O’Brien, a “history market”3 and, as the consumption of visual media was also on the rise, images formed part of marketing strategies aimed at enticing customers to buy history books sold in regular instalments.4 When inserted in between pages, according to the instructions to binders provided by publishers, plates made books more visually pleasing. For, in addition to having been used for didactic purposes for centuries, and to being defined as explanations in Bailey’s popular dictionary, 5 illustrations had an aesthetic function and were advertised primarily as desirable ornaments. They were so covetable that they were also sold in sets, separately from the texts they were supposed to illustrate, thereby fostering the creative practice of extra-illustration.6 The impact of the visual arts on the development of history since the Renaissance is the subject of Francis Haskell’s History and Its Images, a wide-ranging study that foregrounds the part played by portraits taken from ancient coins and medals in the interpretation of the past and in the visualisation of history.7 In keeping with Haskell’s findings, one cannot fail to see that metallic portraiture retained its appeal throughout the eighteenth century and that portrait series representing past kings and queens were regularly engraved and printed to adorn history books. Adapted from previous material, updated with embellishments in the Rococo or classical styles, such historical portraits, known as “heads,” even became highly sought-after collectibles. At the same time, however, historical illustrations became more diverse: sequences of narrative scenes dedicated to single events were few and far between and some interesting examples were found on playing cards where events from the reigns of kings and queens could be used as illustrations.8 The eighteenth century, however, marks a watershed for sequences of historical illustrations became so widespread that hardly any history book could be issued without some. The starting point of this study is the first series of this kind, over a hundred historical illustrations designed by one artist, Samuel Wale (1714–1786), between the mid-1740s and the mid-1770s for four London publishers: Thomas Astley, Jacob Wilson, and Isaac Fell, but most of all for John Cooke. This body of images was made over the course of 30 years, between two of the most remarkable endeavours in historical illustration, namely George Vertue’s Heads of the Kings of England (originally made for the first English edition of Paul Rapin de Thoyras’s History of England) and Robert Bowyer’s Historic Gallery (conceived in the 1790s to showcase paintings inspired by David Hume’s History of England). Wale’s illustrations were the first extensive visual sequence that materialised some of the images produced by British history, a remarkably unified – albeit discrete – corpus, dedicated to 117 events that made Britain, spanning more than 1800 years, from the Roman conquest to the Seven Years’ War.

Introduction 3 The artist who authored them had come from his native Norfolk to London and joined the St Martin’s Lane Academy soon after William Hogarth (1697–1764) reopened it in 1735. Wale was a versatile and prolific draughtsman who, despite being present every step of the way that led to the foundation of the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1768, has become quite an elusive figure in British art.9 His vanishing from art-historical studies is certainly not unrelated to his lifelong dedication to book illustration. Art academies were based upon the distinction between painting, drawing, sculpture, and architecture on the one hand and engraving as well as a whole variety of crafts on the other. In line with the movement that had started on the Continent, the academisation of the visual arts in Britain led, after 1768, to a more normative definition of genres and artistic practices related to the fine arts. Even though Wale’s drawing practice could fall into the category of applied arts, it failed to meet academic standards and did not fit into the art-historical discourse derived from this modern system of the arts. The present book, however, is not a monograph on a single artist, but rather a study of his contribution to the construction of a visual past. Samuel Wale therefore features in the first two chapters of this study as a key historic player, alongside the engravers he worked with and bookseller John Cooke who kept reprinting his designs. He is then succeeded by the many artists and publishers who elaborated on the historical visual sequence he put together, who appropriated his designs, reworked book plates, remediated them, or who were simply, more loosely, inspired by them. Wale’s career as an image maker is indicative of the distinctive versatility of eighteenth-century British artists. From antiquarian circles to cultural leisure to the book trade, his activities touched upon many fields and his career highlights how artists of his generation straddled many worlds. Retracing how his artistic practice developed at the intersection of the textual and the visual, of the arts, both high and low, has proven essential to understanding the new creative output around history and this distinct strand of visual culture. Given that the immense majority of Wale’s works were made for the book trade in the form of frontispieces, vignettes, and single-sheet plates, they have thus lain buried in eighteenth-century volumes, gradually disappearing from public view, unheeded by scholars whose research focus was primarily on texts. Even though many prominent eighteenth-century artists, from William Hogarth to William Blake (1757–1827), were involved in book illustration, these smaller, sometimes less sophisticated visual works, have, at best, been considered as a subgenre in eighteenth-century art and, at worst, fallen through the cracks of art-historical research. The development of interdisciplinary research fields, and their proliferation, over the past 30 years, under the general heading of “studies,” has opened new paths of reflection and methodological perspectives for the analysis of both texts and images.10 The growth of book studies, with the emphasis on the materiality of the portable volumes that fall under the definition of books, has drawn attention to a wide array of previously overlooked extra-textual features, from maps to printers’ ornaments. Examining illustrations at the intersection of book and visual studies, setting aside aesthetic prejudices regarding their low quality, or their uncomplicated nature, has led scholars to make impressive strides in the study of printed images. Furthering the cataloguing achievements carried out by T.S.R Boase and Hans Hammelmann, new investigations have examined book illustrations within a broader discussion of the British world of print, and of the rise of the novel.11 However, as Christina Ionescu underlined in her works, studies on illustrations remain in a no scholar’s land.12 While illustrations are still

4  Introduction marginally studied, the digitisation of museums and libraries collections has gained pace and given visibility to materials that used not to be readily available for consultation. Humble book plates can now be examined online where they may also serve as visual fodder to a wide array of contents. Largely underrated in fields where originality and uniqueness are guiding criteria, illustrations are again the victims of their inherent reproducibility. Less bound by copyrights than the works of single artists, they are easily appropriated by the new digital visual culture. In Samuel Wale’s case, his works have gained renewed visibility on institutional websites. For example, through the British Museum website alone, no fewer than 400 of his designs – the majority of which are illustrations for history books – can now be accessed. But many of his illustrations also crop up inadvertently - more often than not unidentified - as a result of a search engine query on a British historical character or event. Overall, Wale’s digital presence faithfully records his practise as a visual artist mainly employed in the book trade. In a book that aims at exploring the making and circulation of eighteenth-century historical illustrations, their lives, and afterlives over the course of many decades, it seems therefore fitting to outline, in this introduction, Wale’s personal role in the development of this new visual media and to retrace his involvement in what James Raven has called the “business of books”. Indeed, his designs for book illustrations outnumber by far his painted works. There are only seven surviving easel paintings by him: three roundels at the Foundling Museum, showing the hospitals of St Thomas, Christ, and Greenwich, a view of the Horse Guards at the National Army Museum and one of the Royal College of Physicians in the Wellcome Collection; outside London, at Norwich Castle Museum, there is a historical composition dedicated to a sixteenth-century outburst of agrarian discontent, known as Kett’s rebellion, and a descent from the cross at Bledlow Church in Buckinghamshire. There is a Judgement of Paris attributed to Wale at Felbrigg Hall and, in 2005, some of his decorative works were uncovered at Cusworth Hall in South Yorkshire but most of his murals have been lost with the destruction of the buildings they adorned. There is however strong evidence to suggest that Wale only worked on a handful of such commissions, assisting Francis Hayman (1708–1776), in the 1750s. Failing to secure encouragement for painted works, Wale thus shifted focus to drawing. But even though he had been apprenticed to a City goldsmith, hence trained as an engraver, he did not engrave his own drawings. Having ceased to handle the burin early on in his career, never to return to it, he produced drawings that were entrusted to engravers who transferred them onto copper plates, relying on the growing quality of English mezzotint and line engraving over the period. So, one characteristic of Wale’s draughtsmanship is that it was practised as an art in its own right. Far from being mere drafts, Wale’s highly finished pen and ink wash drawings were completed after a creative process involving several preparatory sketches in black lead pencil, as can be gathered from the collections where some of the artist’s original drawings are still held (see fig 0.1).13 Over 30 prolific years, he thus made upward of 400 wash drawings derived from many more pencil sketches. Chiming with his life-long commitment to raise the status of British artists, his refusal to engrave was consonant with the elevated idea he had of his profession and with the views expressed by his life-long friend, architect John Gwynn (1713–1786), in the Essay on Design they sold together.14 Indeed, the decision Wale made not to engrave his own drawings allowed him to be identified as an author of original designs, hence as a liberal artist who invented rather than copied, thus sharing in the intellectual dignity of painters enunciated a generation earlier by Jonathan

Introduction 5

Figure 0.1  Samuel Wale, Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex, drawing in pen and ink Source:  ©Victoria and Albert Museum, London

6  Introduction Richardson (1667–1745).15 No wonder his contemporaries consistently referred to him as a painter and designer or, as Horace Walpole (1717–1797) put it, as a “Painter who designed many Prints for Books.”16 But, even though Wale’s dedication to design earned him a place among the founding members of the Royal Academy of Arts – which barred engravers – he hardly ever managed to get above the poverty line. Tellingly, Wale’s only surviving likeness – featuring on the famous group portrait of the Royal Academicians by Johann Zoffany (1733–1810) – shows him with natural grey hair, wearing plain black clothes. In the midst of a colourful display of newly acquired academic elegance, Wale’s lacklustre portrait signalled his peculiar sobriety while betraying his precarious condition.17 Less successful than many of his fellow academicians at negotiating the tensions between art and commerce, Wale nonetheless belonged to that St Martin’s Lane’s generation, to a motley group of British and foreign visual artists who were unabashed about meeting the demands of growing cultural consumption. While upholding ideas of artistic dignity and elevated liberal status that dovetailed with his endeavours towards the creation of a royal academy, Wale relied for his livelihood on the commodification of visual productions. His career thus spans both the emergence of a national school of artists and that of an art market, epitomising in more ways than one the transformations of the British art world in the eighteenth century. Crucial to those transformations was the soaring trade in prints in which Wale partook. From the end of the 1740s, his name became widely known, featuring regularly in adverts in the London press, flaunted by commercially minded booksellers who mentioned “Mr. Wale” or “the celebrated Wale” on title pages as a synonym for elegant ornaments crafted for polite readers. Throughout his career, Wale kept being in demand for frontispieces as well as for vignettes that were placed as head- or tailpieces. His training to William Golbey – a goldsmith who had himself been apprenticed to leading heraldic artist John Pine (1690–1756) – gave him a solid grounding in heraldry as can be seen from his first vignette, designed around 1746, for John Rocque’s Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster.18 Wale then got off to a flying start, designing allegorical frontispieces for poems, for the London Magazine, the General Magazine of Arts and Sciences, the Imperial Magazine, the Lady’s Magazine, for history books, dictionaries, travel narratives, for Edward Ryland’s 1758 Book of Common Prayer as well as for the Tyburn Chronicle and Newgate Calendar. Wale became one of the most versatile book illustrators in London: his ornaments were found in some of the most popular publications of his day, in true best sellers such as Jonas Hanway’s 1753 Historical Account of the British Trade over the Caspian Sea, James Macpherson’s 1762 Fingal, and Thomas Percy’s 1765 Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. His allegorical designs were even more widely circulated when they ornamented both the Oxford and Stationers’ Almanacks.19 Besides, Wale’s designs were not confined to the first pages of books or chapters, for they were also to be found in the form of single-sheet illustrations that could be bound in between book pages. Expanding on the vignette format, Wale designed, in the mid-1740s, the plates for both John Lockman’s New Roman History and New History of England, i.e., for history books distinctively written in the form of questions and answers, thus intended for children.20 Even though Wale subsequently kept illustrating poetry and novels – Warburton’s Works of Alexander Pope, or the sixth edition of Richardson’s Clarissa for instance – his most remarkable output was for “pictorial histories” published before the terms were commonly used to refer to heavily illustrated history books in the nineteenth century.

Introduction 7 The pictorial histories in which Wale’s 117 plates were published are a testament to the early development of illustrated history books in eighteenth-century Britain. As such, they bear witness to the changing relationship between history, texts, and images while providing evidence of the impulse that spurred artists to visualise history. Since the early fifteenth century, when Leone Battista Alberti, in his De Pictura, had singled out historia as the very aim of painting, history had reputedly become the primary subject onto which any painterly window should open. The term historia, however, first encompassed history as well as stories for it was used by Alberti to refer to the narrative quality of images. With the emergence of art academies and the flourishing of art theoretical debates, the narrative abilities of painting were defined, discussed, and compared to textual narration. The comparison of the arts was anchored in the ut pictura poesis principle which urged painting to imitate her sister, poetry. Within continental academies, the agreeable feminine allegory, and its social underpinnings, provided grounds for the codification of painting and for the formalisation of a hierarchy of genres dominated by history painting. In line with the Alberti’s historia, history painting pictured the narrative rather than the factual matter of history, and the province of the history painter comprised episodes taken from the Bible, ancient mythology, or modern epic poetry with very few depictions of actual historical events. Meanwhile, outside art circles, historia lived a life of its own, and wider transformations in historiography led to the “establishing of the ‘historical’ as a major category of personal and collective knowledge” to quote Daniel Woolf.21 In England, in particular, where the religious and political upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reshaped perceptions of the past, the gradual rise of historical consciousness meant that historicity became a major stake in the definition of history painting. Wale shared with Hayman and other members of the St Martin’s Lane Academy the belief that they needed to establish a royal academy and thus needed to prove themselves as history painters if they wanted to achieve a more respectable social position. Throughout his career, Wale’s commitment to the hierarchy of genres, and to the liberal status of artists it buttressed, never wavered. In the myriad of images he designed, Wale consistently applied his talent to narrative subjects. In that respect, it is interesting to notice that whereas he designed frontispieces for dictionaries, he never drew plants, tools, or maps. Instead, his plates were allegorical, religious, literary, and historical and thus accurately spanned the whole spectrum of subgenres that had come to fall under the heading of history painting. With a drawing repertoire overlapping exactly that of a history painter, Wale managed to be considered as one of the specialists of the highest genre by his contemporaries: despite his limited painterly output, he is listed as “Wale, Samuel, Designer and History Painter” in Thomas Mortimer’s Universal Director. 22 Aimed at facilitating contacts between “liberal and polite” artists on the one hand, and “noblemen and gentlemen” on the other, hence at reinforcing the art trade, the Universal Director was written by an aspiring diplomat and member of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in Great Britain that helped London artists to set up their first public exhibition. Not only did Mortimer assign Wale a place among the best artists but, true to his word, he trusted him to illustrate his New History of England. This commission for the illustration of Mortimer’s New History of England proved a pivotal project, one that Wale kept reworking and that brought him considerable renown. 23 It came 17 years after his debut series, after the neat duodecimo plates

8  Introduction he had made for Lockman’s New History of England and led him to enlarge his designs to fit a folio format. Wale never reworked his Lockman set which kept on being reprinted, in its initial state, through the many editions of Lockman’s textbook, until the first decades of the nineteenth century. He was, however, able to revise his Mortimer set, adding new plates regularly over 20 years. Although Mortimer’s New History of England was originally published by Jacob Wilson and Isaac Fell, the popularity of its illustrations owes much to John Cooke, another Paternoster Row bookseller. After Wilson’s and Fell’s demise, Cooke presumably bought Wale’s designs and astutely capitalised on his investment. The bookseller first reused the set partially and reprinted some plates without the signatures of the visual artists, in Clarendon’s New and Authentic History published after 1767.24 Cooke reissued it and had it completed by Wale himself (and by new artists after the latter’s death), almost quadrupling the number of plates with the additions he commissioned for William Henry Mountague’s, Temple Sydney’s, and William Augustus Russel’s histories while employing an ever-growing team of artists to engrave the drawings. 25 Even though Cooke always credited Wale on the title pages of the books in which he published the artist’s plates, he sometimes omitted to have his name engraved at the bottom of the illustration, or even had engravers hastily copying previous illustrations and reversing them. Cooke also unbundled sets to release them in a piecemeal manner, recycling episodes from London history in Henry Chamberlain’s New and Compleat History and Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster and Walter Harrison’s New and Universal History, Description and Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster. 26 Other isolated plates were reused as pictures of local history in Nathaniel Spencer’s Complete English Traveller and in Charles Burlington’s Modern Universal British Traveller. 27 Even after Wale became incapacitated by a stroke in 1778, and after his death in 1786, historical illustrations engraved from his designs, and bearing his signature, kept being reissued by Cooke, as well as by his successors, appearing in George Frederick Raymond’s New, Universal and Impartial History of England, Edward Barnard’s New, Impartial and Complete History of England, and Richard Johnson’s New History of England.28 All in all, Wale’s designs kept being engraved and sold, for over 30 years, to illustrate a dozen titles and their various reprints; this number mushrooms if works including pirated, unsigned copies of Wale’s illustrations are also taken into account. 29 Regular recycling sustained the currency of Wale’s plates, but it can make research tricky especially when his illustrations were reissued with amended titles. It is thus necessary to explain here how the corpus of this study was compiled and to present the books in which those images were found. The present study focuses on historical illustrations created by Samuel Wale for serialised history books published during his lifetime, i.e., 28 plates printed in Lockman’s, 33 in Mortimer’s, 71 in Mountague’s, 62 in Sydney’s, and 55 in Russel’s. Even though the total number of engravings bearing Wale’s signature is close to 250, several were made from the same original drawings, identically reproduced, albeit with different titles, reducing the total number of different subjects illustrated by Wale to 117 (see Appendix 1). Wale’s sequence of historical scenes was therefore developed over many years and several publications, with new subjects being added regularly. His designs were widely disseminated as plates bound with texts, or as sets, that could sometimes be purchased separately and enjoyed on their own. Despite the high quality of the copper plates made from Wale’s designs, they were not made to embellish books penned by the most famous historians of the

Introduction 9 day, but mostly for second-rate works aimed at popularising historiography. As such, the history books featuring Wale’s illustrations followed the pattern of British history established by Paul Rapin de Thoyras. From its first translation into English, in 1725, through to its subsequent editions and its many thousand copies sold, Rapin’s History of England set the historiographical tone of the first half of the eighteenth century. 30 His volumes remained an unrivalled font of historical knowledge until the rise to prominence of Tobias Smollet and David Hume. Chiming with the political transformations of Great Britain, Rapin’s Whig account of the origins of English liberty achieved a broad consensus, while his wide-ranging, event-driven narrative proved an unending source of inspiration for visual artists. Rapin’s event-filled pages focused on individuals as the causes of historical change. His volumes therefore provided a store of figures and actions deemed significant and crucial, worth being pictured, commented, and imagined. Among the authors illustrated by Wale, John Lockman, the then famed translator of Voltaire and Bayle, was the only writer to acknowledge his particular debt to Rapin de Thoyras both in the title and the preface of his book. Less outspoken about his sources, Thomas Mortimer nonetheless revealed his indebtedness to Rapin, as well as to Tobias Smollett, and to earlier historians, in the thousands of footnotes he added to his text. Whereas Lockman did not conceal the fact that he wanted to make Rapin’s narrative accessible to the younger public, fully endorsing the French historian’s views and method, decades later, Mortimer, like Smollett, addressed Rapin’s legacy with the intent of replacing the French historian by a trueborn British author. Published in the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War in order to “popularise national history,”31 Mortimer’s New History of England still drew on Rapin’s template while reflecting the emergence of the new philosophical trend in historiography. Being himself a well-known writer of trade and finance, as well the English vice-consul for the Austrian Netherlands, and aspiring to a consulship that he eventually failed to obtain, Mortimer stated his intention to “reflect philosophically on the changes” that had affected the “manners, laws and customs” of Britain.32 In keeping with this approach, he laid out the foundations of his method in a two-page “Preliminary Discourse” in which he set himself the task of producing a reliable narrative, with the many footnotes displaying the wide array of sources he had consulted in order to ascertain his facts. Subsequent authors were neither men of letters nor diplomats, but rather obscure writers seemingly hired by Cooke to give lightly updated versions of Mortimer’s New History of England to the public. Dispensing with notes altogether, they nonetheless maintained their commitment to the general principle of philosophical history, emphatically claiming that they rejected myths, fables, or bias, and presenting their allegiance to truth as their guiding principle: The business of an historian is to be faithful – impartial – perspicuous – instructive – amusing – and exact. These relative duties we have endeavoured to perform by giving a faithful narrative of events; an impartial account of actions; a perspicuous detail of occurrences; an instructive display of characters; an amusing relation of things; and an exact recital of facts. To be faithful, we have compared authorities; to be impartial, we have divested ourselves of prejudice; to be perspicuous, we have aimed at conciseness; to be instructive, we have omitted nothing essential; to be amusing, we have inserted nothing unnecessary; and to be exact, we have strictly attended to dates. In fine, our end is improvement; our means entertainment; and our guide, Truth.33

10  Introduction The optimistic belief in the transforming power of rational history is central to all histories examined here, and it is made more blatant when one considers the target readers that authors and publishers had in mind for these publications. Indeed, all authors are quite candid about their intended readership: Lockman’s textbook, originally aimed at a youthful population, was subsequently addressed to “grown persons” as well, while Mortimer, Mountague, Sydney, and Russel all reached for a broad audience. Temple Sydney’s dedication “to the public,” Mountague’s “to all sincere lovers of their country” could hardly be more inclusive. Even Mortimer, who dedicated his work to Queen Charlotte, stated his belief that the history he had written could be useful to “every man.” Subscribers’ lists help flesh out those statements of comprehensiveness, revealing that the history books illustrated by Wale appealed to a large cross section of the educated classes. These books that marketed history to the middle classes were quite widely disseminated both geographically and socially. Sold primarily in the capital and in England, they nonetheless attracted support from subscribers as far as Nova Scotia and Jamaica, from members of the gentry and middle classes, from clergymen, lawyers, army or navy officers, surgeons and doctors, merchants and craftsmen, as well as from women.34 Dwelling on their predecessors’ scholarship, Lockman, Mortimer, Mountague, Sydney, and Russel wrote histories for their fellow countrymen and women who did not read the classics, for professionals rather than for political players, for readers seeking, or promoting, self-improvement.35 Whereas individual acts of reception are difficult to recover, or even reconstruct, extensive lists of subscribers bring us closer to some actual readers of illustrated histories. While the books illustrated by Wale are difficult to read today, and even though details on print runs are unknown, the commercial success of Cooke’s subscriptions, or the 25 editions of Lockman’s textbook between 1729 and 1811, seem to tell a story of sustained interest and wide-ranging appeal among Georgian readers. Going through the pages of these identically titled histories “of England,” readers did not learn solely about the English kingdom. As made clear in the long subtitles and prefaces, the authors of those hackneyed histories pursued their historiographical objectives within a broader British scope. All highlight in their opening statements that their true focus is national history, i.e., the history of the British Isles. They accordingly report actions and narrate events taking place in England, Wales, Scotland, and to a lesser extent, in Ireland. Britain is therefore the geographical entity bounded by their narratives and it also provides the general historical framework when – usually qualified as “Ancient” – it is referred to as the homeland of “Ancient Britons.” The eighteenth-century extension of the British shores to overseas territories is also considered, especially in the later publications that strike an even more patriotic note with accounts of British imperial developments. While the idea of Britishness was taking substance, “Britain” was mostly used to refer to the nation in external contexts, in relation to foreign invasions and expeditions, or to the instrumental foreign other, as demonstrated by Linda Colley.36 Meanwhile “England” was predicated upon domestic agendas; in the dominant discourse, it stood for the modern political entity, for the country whose identity allegedly rested on Protestantism and liberty, and the authors of the history books examined here thus used “England” in their title as a shorthand for that “happy region of liberty.”37 The sense of national pride definitely looms large in those illustrated histories, and all authors rely on the same rationale, claiming that Britons should become acquainted with their past in order to understand that they are “the happiest people on earth.”38 Shared by all authors was the underpinning

Introduction 11 assumption that history was a transformative reading, one that could turn informed readers into proud citizens. Depending upon the evolution of their historiographical milieu, they either championed the superior interest, and variety, of British history (in comparison with the Greek and Roman histories) or explained that knowing one’s national history was mandatory for polite readers, but whatever the terms, they all fostered cultural patriotism. Writing in the first half of the eighteenth century, when the cosmopolitanism of the elites was still perceived as a threat to the assertion of British identity, or in the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War, when a renewed sense of national purpose and confidence pervaded discourses and representations, at a time characterised as “uniquely consensual” by Douglas Fordham, 39 they all celebrated the deep historical roots of British modern achievements. In this context, Wale’s images came in handy: in addition to embellishing books, and to elucidating texts, his illustrations also reiterated the textual message. Each plate designed by Wale offered a visual translation of an event recounted on the opposite page, a representation which literally presented the episode again, duplicating it, therefore highlighting it. This disclosure of history in a series of visual scenes thus modified the reader’s experience of the textual narrative interrupted by visual breaks zooming in on certain actions. It coloured the reader’s view of the text by throwing light on particular events or characters. In keeping with the ut pictura poesis tradition that had guided the production and appreciation of painting since the Renaissance, the kind of book illustration practised by Wale involved using texts as sources for the creation of narrative images. Abiding by the rule drawn from the reversal of Horace’s analogy between painting and poetry, Wale provided visualisations of history books, i.e., visual documents that were second, made in a sequence subsequent to textual documents, but not necessarily secondary. As transmedial adaptations that transformed words into visual signs, his plates were connected to texts – not least by their captions – but also differed from them. Although they predate by nearly a century the visual material examined by Stephen Bann, they do fit his linguistic-based terminology, for the 117 plates designed by Wale can be deemed metaphoric, rather than metonymic, because “each plate is, by metaphorical substitution, an action related in the narrative.”40 Dealing with the visual apparatus of both Prosper de Barante’s Histoire des Ducs de Bourgogne and Augustin Thierry’s Histoire de la conquête de l’Angleterre par les Normands, Bann distinguishes metonymic illustrations (such as busts or maps) from metaphoric ones that came in the form of lively “portrayal[s] of actual moments in the narration.”41 Interestingly, Wale designed both kinds of illustrations since he initially created, for Mortimer’s New History of England, a set of 32 portraits of English rulers which was reproduced and sold alongside his set of 33 single-sheet historical illustrations while, incidentally, being also pirated and reproduced on playing cards.42 Both sets of historical scenes and portraits were supposed to be arranged chronologically in order to punctuate the text: portraits, on the one hand, are metonymic as they present the imagined likenesses of key historical players that are nonetheless withdrawn from the action, and thus contiguous to the narrative; historical scenes, on the other hand, function as metaphoric substitutes to the text. Wale’s historical plates are visual recreations of the past. Through the process of displacement involved in their design, the artist had to leave out certain elements (progressions and arguments) and add others (expressions, dress, and scenery). The resulting illustrations did not portray every single historical player involved but summarised events in a limited number of characters and expressions. Likewise,

12  Introduction Wale’s plates did not record every single historical event of note, but the dotted line connecting the 117 events he illustrated allowed him to sketch the contours of a long historical progression that literally illuminated the past. This set, reused by Cooke in different books, formed a visual synopsis of British history that became the backbone of the Georgian approach to the past. This book examines the ways in which history was mediated to a wider public through this collection of rather unglamorous historical illustrations designed by Wale and printed by Cooke in the second half of the eighteenth century. It deals with a body of visual material that has never been catalogued nor studied, understandably both because it was created by an artist who was not one of the leading talents of the London artistic community, and also because the 117 plates analysed here were scattered in books aimed at the popularisation of historical knowledge. The publications for which Wale made historical plates were thus highly compatible with the polite pursuit of a general historical culture, an accomplishment acquired throughout life and regularly supplemented through personal readings.43 To this aim, the rehashed versions of Rapin de Thoyras’s History of England provided useful digests for readers of British history who could consult them to check dates and facts. Although they have long ceased to be relevant, even for scholars of early British historiography, these histories appealed to a broad section of the educated public as reflected in the subscribers’ lists mentioned above. Illustrations played no small part in the general purpose of those books for, in addition to making them more entertaining, they also facilitated the study of history. There were obvious commercial grounds to justify the use of images in such history books and these historical illustrations, in turn, came to consolidate the cultural bases of patriotism, particularly in the wake of the Seven Years’ War, as has been much explored over the past 25 years, since the publication of David Solkin’s masterly analysis on that subject.44 But this corpus of illustrations also raises questions regarding the capacity of visual media to build knowledge. What did those 117 plates do to inscribe historical knowledge differently from thousands of pages of text? My study draws upon the interdisciplinary approach to British art history developed by David Solkin alongside John Barrell, Ann Bermingham, or John Brewer. It is also indebted to Peter de Bolla’s exploration of the origins of visual culture in eighteenth-­ century Britain,45 especially as it focuses on what I consider to be new modalities of the visualisation of history. Aimed at characterising the changes brought by Samuel Wale to the depiction of the past, the following chapters seek to recapture the novelty of the historical series in order to assess its long-lasting impact on British visual culture. In Georgian Britain, Wale’s historical designs cut across the search for new domestic subjects and styles in the visual arts, and part of their contemporary appeal undoubtedly stemmed from the fact that they pictured subjects that had hardly ever been visualised before. Even though illustrations could already claim a century-old tradition, plates had not been used to accompany history texts as systematically as they had in the case of anatomy treatises, for instance. Our series of historical plates can thus be viewed as a new device aimed at making history observable, and the first chapter explores the context in which publishers commissioned visual artists to pick new subjects and establish a new visual formula for historical illustrations. It covers how Wale and the engravers he worked with expanded on previous book illustrations, both in format and style, in order to produce new visual narratives of historical events. Following the ancient rule, according to which artworks were designed to instruct and delight, they produced just over a hundred representations of historical

Introduction 13 events that were packaged in the latest fashion. This unprecedented attempt at visualising national history is set against contemporary changes in visuality. Drawing on de Bolla’s analysis of the emergence of a culture of visuality in eighteenth-century Britain,46 I situate Wale’s illustrations in dialogue with new notions of leisurely pursuits reliant on visual displays. As a member of the St Martin’s Lane Academy, Wale was involved in the early promotion of the pleasure gardens at Vauxhall. There, he represented that fashionable metropolitan venue as a series of sights where visitors came to see and to be seen. Less than a decade later, Wale became a founding member of the committee appointed to organise the first public exhibition of contemporary paintings,47 an event that grew to become nothing short of a defining feature of British art.48 Wale emerges from this study as a major player in the creation of a visual environment that helped in promoting novel forms of consumption of images in Britain. Approaching history like a fashionable visual display led him to stage a selection of events that animated the past on pages and brought it closer to viewers who were to be moved and edified. The book explores how a sequence of historical illustrations changed the way the British past was pictured, imagined and memorised, remembered, and commemorated. While there is no shortage of studies focusing on the illustrations of eighteenth-century literary works, fewer have been dedicated to illustrations of historical works published over the same period. Focusing on a visual corpus made specifically for history books, my study further draws from recent works scrutinising the visual in history writing and considering it in terms of visual culture.49 Working on the premise that the engraved plates originally made from Wale’s designs were portable images that could transport new visions of history across the British Isles and beyond, chapter 2 examines how eighteenth-century viewers were encouraged to engage with their national past through this new media. Their engagement was predicated upon the invention of plausible images of the past. Most of the actions depicted in Wale’s illustrations were related to actual events that did happen but which could not be studied empirically in the present. Contrary to anatomy plates, his images were not visual records of observations; they were the works of a painter-historian seeking to reconstruct past events in pictures that were all the more necessary since the objects they imaged were impossible to observe. Informed by antiquarianism, this process of reinvention revolved around the fabrication of images that could be looked at as factual and authentic traces of past events. My analysis focuses on reconstruction processes that led the artist to draw on the general antiquarian knowledge available to him in order to make up objects, costumes, furniture, and buildings that could be convincingly ascribed to certain periods. His fabricated scenes were localised in space and time so as to be enjoyed as true pictures of the past, repositories of a certain amount of knowledge considered valid at the time. Like all history, Wale’s representations of the past began in the present, and this study dwells on the past-present dynamics at work in his illustrations and their reception, contending that his was a pioneering attempt at fashioning the British past. As imaginative responses aimed at helping viewers to access and understand history, his book plates entailed showing historical characters performing their commitment to the foundation values of the polite nation the artist and his contemporaries lived in, inviting them to engage visually and emotionally with their national past. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the many afterlives of Wale’s illustrations. My aim is to follow their travels from book to book, but also in and out of books, on the

14  Introduction walls of commercial galleries and public buildings, as well as inside the homes of an ever-growing number of viewers. The part played by historical illustrations in mediating the national past is arguably best exemplified in their afterlives, for some of the most iconic historical paintings of the nineteenth century can be traced back to those earlier designs. Chapter 3 specifically examines the development of historical illustration in a wider artistic context and presents British painters’ engagement with the historical subjects visualised in book plates against the backdrop of the appropriation of history painting in Britain and the burgeoning of an art exhibition culture. Through comparisons between book plates and subsequent painted versions, the scope of my study broadens out to encompass discussions of narrative and historical painterly genres. As an inquiry into visual history, this book suggests that the visualisation of past events and characters, selectively brought to the attention of viewers, did not only modernise the visual material printed in books but also played an important part in the establishment of the “historical” as a new aesthetic category. Chapter 4 analyses how British institutions were keen to heighten historical awareness with such pictures in the first half of the nineteenth century, at a time of wider European development of historical painting. Far from being cut short by the demise of the historical genre in Britain, my exploration deals with the many reinventions of historical illustrations over the Victorian and Edwardian ages through to the mid-twentieth century. It follows how they shuffled from one publication to another, their visibility greatly enhanced by technological advances in printing. Not only did they persist but they coalesced into a potent imagery, a visual space where meaning has continuously been produced and contested. Adopting a visual culture approach allows eschewing discussions about the quality of book plates while focusing on their agency instead. Whereas plates printed on paper should have had a short-term circulation, their remarkable persistence raises questions about the ways in which images of history entered books, travelled within and without volumes, not only as decorative, or derivative illustrations, but as powerful devices capable of shaping British history.

Notes 1 Philip Hicks, Neoclassical History and English Culture. From Clarendon to Hume (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1996). 2 Linda Colley, Britons. Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 2005 [1992]) xvi. 3 Karen O’Brien, “The History Market in Eighteenth-century England”, in Isabel Rivers, ed., Books and Their Readers in Eighteenth-century England: New Essays (2001; London and New York, NY: Continuum, 2003) 105–33. 4 On serial enticement, see James Raven, The Business of Books (New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 2007) 279–82. 5 See Nathan Bailey, An Universal Etymological English Dictionary etc. (London: Osborne et al., 1763) 6 On the development of extra-illustration, see Lucy Peltz, Facing the text: Extra-­ illustration, Print Culture and Society in Britain 1769–1840 (San Marino: Huntington Library Press, 2017). 7 Francis Haskell, History and Its Images. Art and the Interpretation of the Past (New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 1993). 8 See, for instance, the incomplete pack of playing cards depicting events in the reign of James II in the collection of the British Museum (1840,1114.36–63). 9 For details on Samuel Wale’s life and career, see Isabelle Baudino, “Samuel Wale (1714–1786), A Foundation Member of the Royal Academy,” The British Art Journal, vol. XVIII, n 3 (2017) 60–72.

Introduction 15 10 On the impact of book studies on research on illustrations, see James A. Knapp, Illustrating the Past in Early Modern England: The Representation of History in Printed Books (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003) 9. 11 See Thomas Sherrer Ross Boase and Hans Hammelmann, Book Illustrators in Eighteenth-­ century England (New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 1975); Timothy Clayton, The English Print 1688–1802 (New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 1997) and “Book illustration and the world of print,” in Michael Suarez S.J. and Michael L. Turner, The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, 6 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009) 5: 230–47; Antony Griffiths, Prints for book: book illustration in France: 1760–1800 (London: The British Library, 2004). For studies on illustrative images for eighteenthcentury novels, see Janine Barchas, Graphic Design, Print Culture and the EighteenthCentury Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003) and Christopher Flint, The Appearance of Print in Eighteenth-Century Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011). 12 Christina Ionescu, Book Illustration in the Long Eighteenth Century. Reconfiguring the Visual Periphery of the Text (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011) 10. 13 Samuel Wale’s original drawings can be found in the collections of the V&A, the British Museum, and Nottingham Castle Museum. 14 See [John Gwynn], An Essay on Design: Including Proposals for Erecting a Public Academy to be Supported by Voluntary Subscription (till a Royal Foundation Can be Obtain’d) for Educating the British Youth in Drawing and the Several Arts Depending Thereon (London: Brindley, Harding, Payne 1749) Preface, i. Gwynn accounts for his choice of the word “design” over “drawing” explaining that although drawing is the foundation of all artistic practises taught in academies, it is associated with copying. He contrasts it with design, the attribute of true artists, of “designers” who are endowed with “supreme inventive” powers. 15 Richardson famously posited: “A Painter ought to be a Title of Dignity” and he insisted on describing the activities of painters as a “profession,” hammering home the “liberal” nature of his art, see Jonathan Richardson, Essay on the Theory of Painting (London: Bowyer, 1715) 19 and 27–35. 16 See Horace Walpole’s note on the death of Samuel Wale in the Book of Materials kept in the collection of the Lewis Walpole Library, 49 2615, vol. II, 112. 17 The painting, entitled The Academicians of the Royal Academy, is in the Royal Collections. For a comprehensive analysis of this painting, see Martin Postle, ed., Johan Zoffany RA. Society Observed (New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 2011) 218–20. 18 John Rocque, A New and Accurate Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, etc. (London: Rocque, 1746). This small allegorical plate, engraved by Louis Truchy, shows Concord, characteristically crowned by a wreath made of leaves and pomegranates. With her back to a London skyline, she is presenting pomegranates on a plate in her right hand and holding a bundle of coats of arms with her left hand. 19 Ralph Hyde stresses that almanacs were a big business in the eighteenth century for they were cheap to produce and needed replacement every year; he estimates that between 350,000 and 400,000 were published every year, see Ralph Hyde, London Displayed. Headpieces from the Stationers’ Almanacks (London: London Topographical Society, 2010) 2. 20 [John Lockman], A New Roman History, by Question and Answer. In a Method much more Comprehensive than any of the Kind extant. Extracted from Ancient Authors, and the Most celebrated among the Modern. And Interspers’d with such Customs as serve to Illustrate the History. With a Complete Index. Designed principally for Schools. By the Author of the History of England by Question and Answer. And adorned with sixteen Copper-Plates representing the most remarkable Occurrences (London: Astley and Baldwin, 1747); [John Lockman], A New History of England, by Question and Answer. Extracted from the Most Celebrated English Historians, Particularly Mr Rapin de Thoyras, For the Entertainment of our Youth of both Sexes. The Sixth Edition, Corrected and Improved. Adorned with thirty-two Copper-Plates, representing the most remarkable Occurrences, and the Heads of all the Kings and Queens (London: Astley and Baldwin, 1747). 21 Daniel R. Woolf, “From Hystories to the Historical: Five Transitions in Thinking about the Past, 1500–1700,” Huntington Library Quarterly, 68: 1–2 (2005) 35.

16  Introduction 22 See Mr. [Thomas] Mortimer, The Universal Director; or, the Nobleman and Gentleman’s True Guide to the Masters and Professors of the Liberal and Polite Arts and Sciences; and of the Mechanic Arts, Manufactures, and Trades, Established in London and Westminster, and their Environs. In three parts. To which is added, a Distinct List of the Booksellers, Distinguishing the particular Branches of their Trade (London: Coote, 1763) 29. 23 [Thomas] Mortimer, A New History of England, from the Earliest Accounts of Britain, to the Ratification of the Peace of Versailles, 1763. Humbly Inscribed to the Queen, 3 vols. (London: Wilson and Fell, 1764–1766). 24 Hugh Clarendon, New and Authentic History of England, from the remotest period of intelligence to the close of the year 1767, 2 vols. (London: Cooke, 1770?). 25 William Henry Mountague, A New and Universal History of England, from the Earliest Authentic Accounts, to the End of the Year 1770. Embellished and illustrated with a great Number of curious Copper-plates, from original Drawings made on Purpose for this Work, by the celebrated Wale, and engraved by those eminent Artists, Grignion and Walker, 2 vols. (London: Cooke, 1771–1772), Temple Sydney, A New and Complete History of England, from the Earliest Period of Authentic Intelligence to the Present Time (London: Cooke, 1773), William Augustus Russel, A New and Authentic History of England, from the most remote period of genuine historical evidence, to the present important crisis (London: Cooke, 1777). 26 See Henry Chamberlain, A New and Compleat History and Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, and Parts adjacent; from the Earliest Accounts, to the Begining of the year 1770 (London: Cooke, [1770]) and Walter Harrison, A New and Universal History, Description and Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, And their Adjacent Parts (London: Cooke, 1775). 27 Nathaniel Spencer [aka Robert Sanders], The Complete English Traveller, or A New Survey of England and Wales (London: Cooke, 1771) and Charles Burlington, David Llewellyn Rees and Alexander Murray, The Modern Universal British Traveller; or, A New, Complete, and Accurate Tour through England, Wales, Scotland, and the Neighbouring Islands. Comprising all that is worthy of observation in Great Britain (London: Cooke, 1779). 28 See George Frederick Raymond, A New, Universal and Impartial History of England, from the Earliest Authentic Records, and Most Genuine Historical Evidence, to the end of the present year (London: Cooke, n.d. [1785?]), Edward Barnard, New, Impartial and Complete History of England from the very earliest period of Authentic Information, and most Genuine Records of Historical Evidence to the End of the Present Year (London: Hogg, 1789), and Richard Johnson, A New History of England from the Earliest Period to the Present Time. On a Plan recommended by the Earl of Chesterfield (London: Newbery, 1785), the latter was republished in 1791 under the pseudonym of Rev. J. Cooper. 29 See, for instance, Mr [Thomas] Lloyd, The General History of England: From the Earliest Accounts, to the Summer of the Year 1764 (London: Pottinger, 1764), Charlotte Cowley, The Ladies History of England; from the Descent of Julius Cæsar, to the summer of 1780. Calculated for the Use of the Ladies of Great-Britain and Ireland; and Likewise Adapted to General Use, Entertainment, and Instruction (London: Bladon, 1780), Charles Alfred Ashburton, A New and Complete History of England; from the first settlement of Brutus, upwards of one thousand years before Julius Cæsar to the Year 1793 (London: Stratford, 1793–1794) and George Courtney Lyttleton, The History of England from the Earliest Dawn of Authentic Record, to the Ultimate Ratification of the General Peace of Amiens in 1802, 3 vols. (London: Stratford, 1803) where some of the “beautiful engravings,” alluded to on the title page, are copies of Wale’s illustrations by former Royal Academy student, William Hamilton. 30 The Knapton bookseller family published three editions of Paul Rapin de Thoyras’s History of England. The father, James, and the eldest son, John, published Nicholas Tindal’s first translation of Rapin in English in 15 octavo volumes between 1725 and 1731: [Paul] Rapin de Thoyras, The History of England as well Ecclesiastical as Civil. Done into English from the French with large and useful notes mark’d with an * by Tindal A.M. Vicar of Great Waltham in Essex, 15 vols. (London: James and John Knapton, 1725–1731). James Knapton’s younger son joined the venture for the second edition

Introduction 17







issued in two volumes in 1732 and 1733: [Paul Rapin de Thoyras], The History of England Written in French by Mr. Rapin de Thoyras. Translated into English with Additional Notes by N. Tindal M. A. Vicar of Great Waltham in Essex. The Second Edition, 2 vols. (London: James, John and Paul Knapton, 1732–1733). After their father’s death, the two brothers issued a third edition augmented by Nicholas Tindal’s continuation: [Paul Rapin de Thoyras], The History of England. Written in French by Mr de Rapin Thoyas. Translated into English, with Additional Notes, by N. Tindal M.A. Rector of Alverstoke in Hampshire, and Chaplain to the Royal Hospital at Greenwich. The Third Edition. Illustrated with Maps, Genealogical Tables, and the Heads and Monuments of the Kings, Engraven on Seventy-Seven Copper Plates, 2 vols. (London: John and Paul Knapton, 1743) and The History of England by Mr Rapin de Thoyras continued from the Revolution to the Accession of King George II by Mr Tindal, M.A. Rector of Alverstoke in Hampshire and Chaplain to the Royal Hospital Greenwich. Illustrated with the Heads of the Queens and Kings, and several Eminent Persons; also with Maps, Medals and other Copper Plates, 2 vols. (London: John and Paul Knapton, 1744–1747). 31 Mortimer, New History of England, vol. 1, 1. 32 Mortimer, New History of England, vol. 1, 2. 33 Russel, unpaginated Preface. See also Mountague, vol. 1, 2, where he underlines his dedication to truth and regrets that historical events have been “disfigured by fable”; Sydney, unpaginated “Address to the public”, in which he states his aim to give a “faithful picture of former times.” 34 Women formed 2.4% of Mortimer’s subscribers, 6.2% of Mountague’s, 3.7% of Sydney’s, and 4.7% of Russel’s; many of them are described as headmistresses. 35 See James Raven, “The book as a commodity,” in Michael F. Suarez, S.J. and Michael L. Turner, The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, vol. V, 1695–1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010) 86. 36 Colley xiii, xvi. 37 Mortimer, New History of England, vol. 1, 1. 38 Mortimer, New History of England, vol. 1, 1. 39 Douglas Fordham, British Art, and the Seven Years’ War. Allegiance and Autonomy (Philadelphia and Oxford: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). 40 Stephen Bann, The Clothing of Clio. A study of the representation of history in nineteenth-­century Britain and France (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984) 43–5. 41 Bann, Clothing of Clio, 54. 42 See the incomplete pack of playing cards depicting the kings and queens of England in the British Museum collection (1903,1221.21.1) in which the likenesses of the monarchs are copied and reduced from Wale’s portraits of British rulers for Mortimer. 43 On the acquisition of historical knowledge in the eighteenth century, see Mark Towsey, Reading History in Britain and America, c. 1750–c. 1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2019). 44 David Solkin, Painting for Money: The Visual Arts and the Public Sphere in 18th-­C entury England (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1993). 45 Peter de Bolla, The Education of the Eye. Painting Landscape and Architecture in Eighteenth-­century Britain (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003). 46 De Bolla 4–6. 47 See Society of Artists Papers, vol. I [650 SA/1]. The other members of the painters’ committee were Richard Dalton, Francis Hayman, Francis Milner Newton (replaced two days later by Nathaniel Hone), Joshua Reynolds, and Richard Wilson. 48 The true watershed in public art display introduced by the London artists who mounted this first annual exhibition of their work has been frequently underlined, see for instance C.S. Matheson’s chapter “‘A Shilling Well Laid Out’: The Royal Academy’s Early Public”, in David Solkin, ed., Art on the Line. The Royal Academy Exhibitions at Somerset House 1780–1836 (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2001) 39–54. 49 Ludmilla Jordanova, The Look of the Past. Visual and Material Evidence in Historical Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2012) and Florence Grant and Ludmilla Jordanova, eds., Writing Visual Histories (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020).

1

Picturing history

A new topic Providing a unique glimpse of Samuel Wale’s career, George Vertue (1684–1756) recorded in his notebooks that the aspiring young artist did not finish his apprenticeship, joined the St Martin’s Lane Academy instead, and made rapid progress in drawing there.1 Upon payment of one-and-a-half to two guineas, Wale could attend life classes and take part in discussions and sociable activities that revolved around the definition and promotion of British art. As a member of the academy that William Hogarth had reopened in 1735, Wale congregated with practitioners of visual arts of diverse skills and backgrounds striving to improve their condition as well as Britain’s artistic status. The role of St Martin’s Lane’s Academy within the growing currency of ideas of artistic identity in eighteenth-century Britain cannot be overstated. As Ilaria Bignamini demonstrated in her ground-breaking study, nearly 40 years ago, the academy was the birthplace of London’s exhibition culture, with St Martin’s Lane artists arranging public displays of their works at Vauxhall Gardens and within the premises of the Foundling Hospital. 2 Wale was familiar with both locations and lent his support to those projects both directly and indirectly. Together with Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788), Edward Haytley (1713–1764), and Richard Wilson (1714–1782), he contributed roundels with views of London’s major hospitals to the Foundling Hospital’s Court Room; he further supported Thomas Coram’s institution with three programmatic prints detailing how abandoned children would be cared for and educated in the hospital. In addition to this, he was the author of four views of Vauxhall that recorded the gardens as a great venue for cultural leisure and that remained popular for decades, still shaping the way we imagine the Georgian fashionable pleasure gardens today. In addition to being associated with such landmark projects, Wale embraced the search for vernacular artistic expression that led him and his fellow members of St Martin’s Lane to adapt, translate, and transpose aesthetic conventions and tastes imported from the Continent. Experimenting with genres in Britain led to the adoption of new subjects and to the development of innovative and idiosyncratic formats such as the conversation piece, comic history painting, or estate portraiture. Likewise, representing the past in the 1750s was innovative, not least because the past itself was new; it was quite a recent invention stemming from the growing need to differentiate the moderns from the ancients. Since the early decades of the eighteenth century, such a differentiation was more acutely needed because that was when an array of political, economic, institutional, and dynastic transformations affecting DOI: 10.4324/9781003245445-2

Picturing history 19 England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland had led to the advent of Britain, the land of modern Britons. The representation of the past, in both words and images, was a pressing cultural concern in Britain, with both history writing and history painting being topical issues directly related to the “glorious revolution,” the creation of the new British nation and its foreign policy. Indeed, when applied to cultural domains, the political and military opposition to France prompted systematic comparisons between the arts on both sides of the Channel. Because Louis XIV’s realisations had dazzled Europe, and since the Bourbon king had supported the institutionalisation of standards and norms in the arts as in other fields, British culture was often measured against French criteria. These assessments resulted in discourses lamenting Britain’s alleged weaknesses and shortcomings. In history writing, the lack of an English neoclassical masterpiece was the first commonplace disparagement of English history. In history painting, the absence of history painters, together with the paucity of murals or grand style paintings, was a very vexed topic. In both history writing and painting, observations or comments from French authors applying French standards to British creations resulted in the idea of British cultural backwardness. Working in a much less institutionalised environment and being much less dependent upon Church and Crown, British writers and painters of history relied upon the market and on the public’s sustained interest in history to address these supposed deficiencies. Illustrated histories were undoubtedly new in the mid-eighteenth century and booksellers were only too keen to advertise them as such. In addition to being similarly titled “History of England,” all the histories featuring Wale’s illustrations were notably described as “new,” sharing this adjective in their titles. Technically, each History of England written by a different author was new, and novelty was, of course, the bedrock of the eighteenth-century book trade. A closer look at the texts of those hackneyed histories reveals, however, that the adjective was used less to emphasise the comparative newness of one with respect to its predecessor than to set them in the context of the “new history” from which they were all derived. All were rewritten from Rapin’s template and likewise serialised. In keeping with the innovations brought about by Rapin, their novelty lay in their remarkable chronological scope, in the references to a wide array of ancient sources and in the search for a worldly tone. Rapin had indeed woven together previous chronicles, annals, as well as the treaties and other official documents compiled in Thomas Rymer’s Foedera, into a readable history that was not the work of a cleric and that was very much intended for laymen. Whereas the historiographical field was dominated by reactions to Clarendon’s royalist account of the civil wars, and by the discussions of his disputatious History of the Rebellion by Gilbert Burnet, Laurence Echard, by their partisans and opponents, Rapin’s History captured the Whig spirit of the times in a seemingly non-polemical tone. For all its political perspective, it did not simply boil down to presentations of various governments and institutions but included accounts of the life stories of the people who had established them. Rapin’s History was thus woven through with stories. It was an anecdote-filled narrative, punctuated by sentimental and dramatic events, that captivated the British public for decades. More lively than any other history previously published, Rapin’s History of England featured a new pictorial quality that, although not acknowledged in those terms, nonetheless led Sir Christopher Wren’s grandson, Stephen Wren, to compile a 960-page compendium listing the hundreds of images that were, according to him, inspired by it.3

20  Picturing history Wren’s catalogue highlights how Rapin’s ability to inspire readers to view pictures in history led to the development of a great variety of historical illustrations. In this respect, the most innovative feature of the histories examined here was by far their illustrated nature. Indeed, previous historical publications included frontispieces, head-, and tailpieces, even vignettes inserted in the text as well as sets of heads, but the volumes illustrated by Wale were the first histories of England featuring complete sets of single-sheet narrative illustrations. As publishing projects, they were clearly developed in the context of the birth of the visual culture analysed by Peter de Bolla,4 for they offered new modalities of visualising history. These new sequences of historical scenes offered a broad overview of English history, comparable to that of chronological tables and sets of heads. Yet they encouraged readers to see the past not as a list of dates, nor even as a gallery of portraits but as a series of narrative scenes or tableaus. Wale’s images threw light upon a few dozen events that were singled out among the thousands reported over hundreds of pages. They formed an overall visual framework made up of memorable landmarks that could be contemplated, displayed, or even discussed, thereby promoting new modes of visual consumption of history. This chapter examines how Wale pictured history, how he conveyed the presence of the past in pictures printed on book pages, and how he used the page format as a new visualization device. It stresses the novelty of his historical designs against the backdrop of the pivotal role all things new had come to play in British arts, especially since the publication of the series of essays, entitled “The Pleasures of the Imagination,” in Joseph Addison’s and Richard Steele’s Spectator. Placing novelty on equal par with the sublime and the beautiful, Addison had outlined how it could be a source of cultural enrichment, aesthetic pleasure, and fulfilment: Every thing that is new or uncommon raises a Pleasure in the Imagination, because it fills the Soul with an agreeable Surprize, gratifies its Curiosity, and gives it an Idea of which it was not before possest. We are indeed so often conversant with one Set of Objects, and tired out with so many repeated Shows of the same Things, that whatever is new or uncommon contributes a little to vary human Life, and to divert our Minds, for a while, with the Strangeness of its Appearance: It serves us for a kind of Refreshment, and takes off from that Satiety we are apt to complain of in our usual and ordinary Entertainments.5 Seen from a mid-eighteenth-century perspective, Wale’s historical illustrations presented exactly the kind of refreshing novelty that could gratify the public’s curiosity. Evidence of their appreciation along those lines can be gathered from the way they were advertised. Throughout his career, Wale persistently catered for “those curious in Matters relating to English History,”6 designing hundreds of “curious” prints and copper plates.7 As “one of the buzzwords of the period,”8 curiosity was thus ubiquitous, and used to signal the surprisingly new features introduced by Wale in historical illustration, as well as the Georgian public’s inquisitive desire to learn about history through visual media. Prior to Wale, no draughtsmen and engravers had ever published any series of narrative historical illustrations that could compare, either in scope or format, to his illustrations. In terms of scale, Wale’s historical series could bear comparison with the ambitious sets of Biblical illustrations that had been published in Britain since the end of the seventeenth century,9 but in terms of content, the primary source of inspiration was to be found once again in Rapin de Thoyras.

Picturing history 21 Indeed, while Wale was learning to draw, and at the time when he started designing his first plates, the most lavishly illustrated history book he could consult was Rapin de Thoyras’s History of England. Both the French and English editions of Rapin de Thoyras had been illustrated with the same kinds of ornaments, i.e., small vignettes, mostly headpieces, as well as heads in varying proportions, but never with any single-sheet narrative plate. The visual material for the original French edition was the work of François Morellon de La Cave (1696–1768), a French engraver who, like Rapin, was a Huguenot who had sought refuge in the United Provinces. In the 1730s, following the footsteps of his master Bernard Picart (1673–1733), La Cave travelled to London where he established close and lasting working relationships with St Martin’s Lane artists, as evidenced in his engraving William Hogarth’s The Foundlings and the third plate of Four Prints of an Election. For Rapin’s History, La Cave designed one allegorical frontispiece, 3 heads (William the Conqueror, Edward III, and Rapin de Thoyras) and 22 small historiated headpieces (representing events from before the Roman conquest to the execution of Charles I). These were placed irregularly at the beginning of chapters and were called “vignettes” in the lists provided in each volume.10 None of La Cave’s historiated headpieces were initially reproduced in the Knaptons’ first edition of cleric Nicholas Tindal’s English translation of Rapin, which included stereotypical printers’ ornaments, such as heraldic lions, friezes, or garlands of flowers.11 To further embellish the 15 volumes and sustain buyers’ interest over a period of six years, James and John Knapton added 30 heads, securing the cooperation of none other than George Vertue, the official engraver to the Society of Antiquaries and specialist in historical portraiture, in order to design and engrave them. The outstanding success of the Knaptons’ edition of Rapin attracted the attention of readers and competitors alike. Among the latter, James Mechell issued a rival translation between 1732 and 1736. As further proof that pictures had become requisite, Mechell spared no expense and employed a team of five engravers to create a rival set of heads.12 Among these engravers were Vertue’s former pupil, Giles King (active c.1732– 1740), and his former fellow member of the Academy of Great Queen Street, Robert Sheppard (active c.1712–1740). Sharing the heavy workload involved in such a highly engraved series, Mechell’s visual team churned out 30 beautifully decorated heads for his publication in record time. Stung into reaction, the Knaptons reissued Tindal’s translation in weekly numbers to assert their rights over Rapin’s History and entered into a new agreement with Vertue for the production of a new set of heads. Despite its high finish and unified single-sheet layout, Vertue’s first set of heads was not as decorative as the rival set commissioned by Mechell. Vertue thus completely reworked his set, drawing on new historical sources, such as coins, medals, or limnings, to change the likeness of some monarchs and to design 40 different heads – many embellished with narrative vignettes – featuring bespoke ornaments in the latest fashion. Vertue’s improved set completely cast his previous heads into shade, as well as those of his rivals, and the Knaptons capitalised on their cooperation, releasing in 1736 the Heads of the Kings of England, proper for Mr. Rapin’s History, either to be bound with their translation or in luxury albums (see fig 1.1).13 Between 1743 and 1747, they adjoined further ornaments to their third edition of Rapin’s History, that was extended to the reign of George II by Nicholas Tindal. To complement Vertue’s heads, they borrowed La Cave’s historiated headpieces and had them reproduced, unsigned, at the beginning of chapters; the publishers also added decorative tailpieces, maps, and more heads engraved by a new team of artists supervised by Jacob Houbraken

22  Picturing history

Figure 1.1  George Vertue, William II surnam’d Rufus, c. 1736, engraving Source:  Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University 

(1698–1780). The ever-lengthening inserts for Tindal’s translation, and extension, of Rapin’s History of England are a testament to the Knaptons’ commitment to visual ornaments.14 One of these was designed by Wale, for the young draughtsman contributed an allegorical tailpiece to this sumptuous edition, a tiny, but nonetheless elegant, composition, engraved by Charles Grignion (1717–1810), and showing Britannia, History, and Time mourning the death of George I.15

Picturing history 23 Wale was thus employed, albeit briefly, by the Knaptons and was undoubtedly well aware of all the creative energy that had been put into the graphic packaging of Rapin’s History. He certainly studied the visual material commissioned by the Knaptons, for he was inspired by the historiated vignettes found in both La Cave’s headpieces and in some of Vertue’s heads from which he drew ideas on how to invent and embellish subjects. Among the episodes later illustrated by Wale, 11 were thus already present in La Cave’s headpieces (i.e., the encounter between Augustine and King Æthelberht, the massacre of the Danes, King John’s surrender to the Pope, Balliol’s submission to King Edward I, the death of Richard III at the battle of Bosworth, Lambert Simnel employed in the kitchen of Henry VII, the burning of Archbishop Cranmer, the defeat of the Invincible Armada, the Gunpowder plot, the assassination of the Duke of Buckingham, and Charles hiding in the oak tree after the battle of Worcester) and three had appeared in the vignettes included in Vertue’s second set of heads (i.e., Canute commanding the waves and the death of King William II as well as King John’s surrender to the Pope). Readily available from the Knaptons by whom he was employed, Rapin’s illustrations were thus prototypes from which Wale could derive new historical designs. Following in Vertue’s footsteps, Wale further developed the visualisation of history; whereas his senior had made portraits magnified from coins, medals, or limnings, he, in turn, magnified the historiated vignettes that had traditionally accompanied heads.

Expanding on previous book illustrations Both his direct predecessors’ vignettes and heads were at Wale’s disposal when he started designing historical illustrations. They were primary resources he could draw upon and which could direct him towards a tradition of illustrations that had much earlier origins. For historical pictures had, of course, been produced for books before the eighteenth century: engravings derived from the paintings dedicated to the defeat of the Spanish Armada, or broadsides telling the story of the plotters who had tried to blow up the House of Lords in 1605, had been in circulation for decades. Wale’s illustrations, as well as those of his predecessors thus conjured up the memory of popular images as well as that of earlier book ornaments such as the French fourteenth-century illuminated manuscript representing Balliol’s submission to King Edward I,16 or popular woodcuts published in John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (widely known as the Book of Martyrs). Indeed, La Cave’s, Vertue’s, and Wale’s similar representations of King John surrendering his crown to the pope all drew the figure of the humbled English king, prostrating before the mighty pontiff, from Foxe’s King Johns Supplication to the Pope.17 Similarly, both La Cave and Wale borrowed from Foxe’s graphic depictions of Queen Mary’s persecutions of Protestants to design their representations of the burning of Archbishop Cranmer. A comparison between the illustrations designed by the two artists, however, brings to light Wale’s novelty and reveals how he expanded on previous book illustrations, making the most of his full-page format in order to produce more complex visual narratives. Whereas La Cave portrays Cranmer, wearing a mitre, being executed in front of the queen, wearing a crown, both protagonists pointing accusing fingers at each other, Wale increases the number of characters, playing on a greater variety of expressions to enliven his visual rendition of the episode. Wale expanded upon La Cave’s headpiece, which over-simplified the confrontation between the monarch and the archbishop, in two

24  Picturing history phases: first with a plate for Lockman, and then, almost 20 years later, with a second version designed for Mortimer. In both compositions, the queen is nowhere to be seen and Cranmer alone (whose name does not appear on Lockman’s plate titled Bishops Burnt in Smithfield) occupies centre stage; he is at the stake, in the middle of a square, surrounded by a crowd of onlookers and the man who lighting the pyre crouching at his feet. The bearded archbishop, with his left hand near his heart, and his right hand stretched out, recalls one of Foxe’s best-known passages, which tells how Cranmer put into the fire the hand that had betrayed his heart when he had signed his recantations. Wale’s design clearly echoes Foxe’s woodcut The burnying of the Archbishop of Caunterbury Doctor Thomas Cranmer, in the Towneditch at Oxforde, with his hand first thrust into the fire, wherewith he subscribed before.18 For both Lockman and Mortimer, Wale portrayed Cranmer along similar lines, even though the episode is not detailed in Lockman’s text which briefly mentions that there were “three hundred martyrs,” among whom Cranmer.19 The generic title of the Lockman plate, Bishops Burnt in Smithfield, which inaccurately situates the burning in London, seems an erroneous caption for Wale’s design showing only one (arch)bishop known to have died in Oxford. The wording of that caption may have been wrongly and partially copied from another woodcut from the Acts and Monuments, entitled Seven godly and constant Martyrs, suffering at one fire together in Smithfield, 20 but, even though these words do not match the visual signs on Wale’s plate, they do link his illustration to the Marian persecutions that are broadly referred to by Lockman. His second plate was a more literal illustration of Mortimer’s text where the details of Cranmer’s downfall and execution could be read. 21 Here again, Wale summons Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, placing to Cranmer’s right the recognisable figure of John de Villagarcia, the Spanish friar who had witnessed the archbishop’s recantations. The fat-faced, round-bellied Dominican, directly taken from Foxe’s woodcut where he similarly holds out his left hand, acts as a reminder of Cranmer’s previous imprisonment and trials by Catholics. In addition to this visual allusion to the events leading up to the execution, Wale further increases the narrative contents of his design through the depiction of different expressions among the attendants. Transforming the dozen of characters included in the Lockman plate into a crowd of more than 30 on the Mortimer one, he arranged them into a circle around the pyre where they register a wide range of attitudes. In the background, facing the viewer, some, like the woman standing behind and to the right of the friar, look transfixed by Cranmer’s final renouncing of his former statements; a man, to the left of the Spanish Dominican, seems rather horrified, covering his eyes with his hands. Showing the stern face of the halberdier standing by the pyre, who had his back to the viewer on the Lockman plate, Wale portrays several characters gesturing towards one another, reacting to the scene, all of them in stark contrast with the hieratic stillness of the armed soldier. Nearer to the viewer, in the left- and right-hand corners, are two pairs of characters; their backs turned but their hands arrested in mid-air. City and university officials personify the discussion of theological whys and wherefores on the right, while a woman and a child, on the left, bring the debate closer to home. Pointing her index finger at Cranmer, the woman lectures a fearful boy who is clinging to her skirt. Staging a diverse crowd and the people’s mixed reactions to Cranmer’s final words, Wale’s book illustration echoed a much grander composition, one that had been a constant source of inspiration among London painters for half a century. Indeed the much revered Raphael cartoon, Paul Preaching at Athens, admired by Jonathan

Picturing history 25 Richardson, and emulated by James Thornhill (1675–1734) in his decoration for the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, was celebrated as a masterly lesson in expression precisely because it told the Biblical episode through the “faces, airs and actions” of the listeners gathered around the apostle. 22 Nearer to Wale, William Hogarth had revisited Raphael’s portrait of Paul’s eloquence and had challenged himself – while testing British amateurs – “to create a work directly comparable to Raphael’s St. Paul Cartoons.”23 In 1748, just after the publication of Wale’s set for Lockman, Hogarth completed his variation on Paul’s show of eloquence, and his monumental Paul before Felix was hung at Lincoln’s Inn, soon to be reproduced, disseminated, and burlesqued, in prints. Already a member of the academy in St Martin’s Lane at that time, Wale was undoubtedly introduced to the Raphael cartoons and to theoretical debates on expression. From a practical point of view, as a book illustrator, he was very interested in drawing on what we would call kinesics, using body language to make his pictures speak. 24 Likewise, on his historical illustrations, faces and gestures conveying reactions and feelings are used to heighten the narrative content of compositions. Wale’s focus on historical characters’ countenance and bearing led him to depart from Vertue’s heads when he composed his own gallery of portraits of British rulers for Mortimer. His 32 portraits (from William I to George III) visualised monarchy through a succession of similarly styled portraits of kings and queens and made the continuity of the institution more apparent than its disruptions, crises, and challenges. The seemingly unbroken line of rulers was an integral part of the visual material sold to ornament histories, and the sequence of portraits was consequently reproduced unchanged alongside Mountague’s, Sydney’s, and Russel’s historical plates. Showing full-length representations of the men and women who had succeeded one another on the throne since the Norman Conquest, Wale may have departed from Vertue’s iconic heads out of respect for the latter, who had died in 1756. Strategically, as a draughtsman keen to assert his authorship rights over his designs, Wale could not limit himself to copying Vertue’s archetypes. Opting for a full-length format was a means to express his originality while suggesting alternate paths for historical portraiture. Undeterred by the modest scale on which he worked, Wale expanded on heads and gave each king or queen an individual likeness as well as a distinctive posture (face, profile, contrapposto). Focusing on the rulers’ poise, he pictured them striding forward, or standing self-assured, hand on the hip, brandishing the sceptre, or holding the orb in a variety of impersonations that further animated Vertue’s heads. 25 Conversely, Wale’s intent to produce lively historical accounts led him to compose close-up views of episodes that were merely outlined in the background of Vertue’s heads. This is the case with his reworking of Vertue’s head of King William II, “surnamed Rufus” (see fig 1.1). This head is set against a hunting scene that opens up the space behind the oak tree, to which the medallic portrait of the monarch is hung, showing a hilly, wooded landscape inhabited by dogs and mounted huntsmen chasing a deer. Again, Wale designed his own composition in two steps, with a first version for Lockman and a subsequent one for Mortimer. The Lockman version was literally conceived as a close-up on Vertue’s background: Wale focuses on the two horsemen seen approaching the stag. They gallop on either side of a tree towards the edge of Vertue’s plate. Before disappearing, the figures are magnified by Wale in order to reveal the dramatic hunting accident that supposedly claimed the king’s life. The bow, displayed prominently in the foreground of Vertue’s head, hinting at the king’s death, is used on Wale’s plate by one huntsman, with his arrow seen landing

26  Picturing history

Figure 1.2  Samuel Wale, William Rufus Slain by Sr. William Tyrrel, illustration made for John Lockman’s New History of England (1747) Source:  ©The Trustees of the British Museum

in the other huntsman’s chest while the stag escapes unhurt. The plate’s title William Rufus Slain by Sr Walter Tyrrel (see fig 1.2) summarises Lockman’s text which briefly explains that the king died from a wound inflicted unintentionally by his attendant. 26 Mortimer’s plate drives the story forward: in the foreground lays a dead man, an arrow in his heart. From his anachronistically feathered hat and ermine-lined cape, viewers can easily identify him as a king, as confirmed by the plate’s title The Death

Picturing history 27 of William Rufus. A character on horseback gestures towards a man bringing a horse cart, while another character makes the sign of the cross. Here, Wale precisely images Mortimer’s words, showing the countrymen who, we are told, found the dead king lying in the New Forest, put him into their cart, and carried him to Winchester Cathedral. 27 To improve the narrative contents of his illustrations, and emphasise their metaphorical quality, Wale did not hesitate to experiment further and to compose them as fruitful moments. When picturing the massacre of the Danes, Wale borrowed from La Cave the idea of staging the execution of Gunhilde, the princess who was said to be amongst the Danish victims killed on November 13, 1002.28 The larger format, on which he worked, allowed Wale to allude to the unfolding of the St Brice’s Day massacre, its causes and consequences. The La Cave vignette he elaborated on is a static juxtaposition of four elements: Both Gunhilde with her executioner, and the king and a cleric, are placed in front of two groups of soldiers, some clumsily gathered in the middle ground, on the right, while others are actively slaughtering Danes on the left; the background is an undefined hilly landscape. In contradistinction, Wale’s background is a seascape with men loading a ship which, though completely lacking any Viking character, is nonetheless causally related to the action, alluding to the relentless Danish raids that provide the context for this outbreak of English violence. Consequently, a slaughtering scene, not totally dissimilar to La Cave’s, can be seen in the middle ground, but it is associated with a sense of English resistance with a hand-to-hand fight shown in the immediate foreground. Behind this close-up, Wale stages the execution of Gunhilde like a Christian martyrdom – literally displaying it on a kind of podium. Whereas La Cave had shown her as a modern-day woman, kneeling blindfolded, waiting for the sword to fall on the nape of her neck, Wale shows her bare-breasted, stabbed in a situation that recalls images of the massacre of the innocents, as befits an innocent Danish victim who had converted to Christianity. The man who can be seen ordering the brutal murdering of Gunhilde, as well as that of her husband and children already lying dead at her feet, is to be identified as Eadric Streona, King Æthelred’s henchman. In the text, Mortimer dwells on Æthelred II’s nickname “the unready” to present the massacre as the consequence of the king’s weakness, and of his being ill-advised by the execrable Eadric. 29 Accordingly, Wale emphasises Eadric’s ferocious facial expression with bold strokes and shows him turning his back to a woman appealing for mercy. Wale’s design is a sophisticated narrative composition in which the central scene is only one piece of a bigger picture. Gunhilde’s murder recalls the Viking invasions that had led Æthelred II to order to put all the Danes living in England to death and announces the revenge of Gunhilde’s brother, Sweyn Forkbeard, who overthrew Æthelred and became King of England in 1013. Wale is thus depicting Gunhilde’s death as a pregnant moment, calling to mind the past and anticipating the future, as defined in the instructions given by the third Earl of Shaftesbury to painters in his essay “A Notion of the Historical Draught or Tablature of the Judgment of Hercules”.30 In this virtuoso performance, Shaftesbury drew on Xenophon’s Memorabilia to single out an episode from Hercules’s youth in order to set out the characteristics of the most elevated form of painting. His detailed argument was most literally followed by Paolo de’ Matteis (1662–1728) and resulted in a canvas, The Choice of Hercules, which came to be seen as a paragon of history painting.31 In addition to presenting an interesting mythological subject that

28  Picturing history condensed past and future into one fruitful scene, thereby challenging the temporal limits of painting, it was also a moral allegory that embodied the decision-making problem underlying moral dilemma. In Shaftesbury’s perspective, this painting was an expression of the artistic authority aristocratic patrons should exert over artists and, in Georgian Britain, this image became the emblem of the much sought-after conflation of ethics and aesthetics. But as the mechanisms of patronage were undergoing a commercial reformation, “Hercules at the Crossroads” was copied, imitated, parodied, and became a topos that was appropriated by the high and low arts alike, as can be seen from Wale’s illustration. In addition to spatialising time, Wale also dwells on the motif to emphasise the moral contents of the historical episode he illustrates. Not unlike Hercules, Eadric Streona is standing between two women: Gunhilde, whose killing he is ordering and watching, and an anonymous beseeching female he completely ignores. Eadric is therefore portrayed endorsing remorselessly the callous murder of an innocent victim, while he could have spared her life and made a more magnanimous choice. The reference to the choice of Hercules thereby allows Wale to give a compelling visual translation of the unreserved condemnation of the massacre expressed by Mortimer in the text.

Pictures of history Wale’s use of the “choice of Hercules” trope underscores his willingness to expand on previous book illustrations, and this is further demonstrated in his play on interpictorial references. Not only did he share devices with history painters, but he also established direct visual correlations with actual grand style canvases. From the onset, he made it apparent that he did not accept the limitations of the modest format he operated on. Even his rudimentary Battle of Blenheim, designed for Lockman’s textbook, calls to mind grander pictures. With minimal signs such as commander-in-chief in contemporary garb, mounted on his horse, surveying a battle from a high ground by a tree, and with the anchoring of the words in the plate’s caption, Wale conveys a most noble representation of the battle. His portrait of Marlborough, gesturing towards the battlefield below, with his head against billowing smoke, together with the tree framing the view, is taken and reversed from the engraving Louis Duguernier (1658/59–1716) had made of the famous mural painted by Louis Laguerre (1663– 1721) at Marlborough House around 1713–1714.32 Overcoming the difficulty of depicting such a complex action on so small a format, Wale shrinks the grand mural, and the large engraved reproduction of it, to a tiny vignette providing no more than a glimpse into the action, thereby calling for the viewers’ active participation to complete the picture. He rests his truncated view of the battle against a tree that provides the left border of the image, hinting at the action unfolding to the right, in the direction of reading. Printed in a book intended for children, the plate invites adults to provide additional information in order to allow children to get a fuller picture of the battle that altered the course of the War of Spanish Succession. Similarly, the study of the two versions Wale made of Charles II’s escape after the battle of Worcester shows how the artist reworked his earlier designs in order to add interpictorial references. In line with the printed material widely available on this popular subject, Wale’s earlier version for Lockman shows a male character sitting in the branches of an oak tree and two horsemen passing by underneath him. The caption, reading “Charles II in Disguise in the Oak, sees his Pursuers under him,”

Picturing history 29 builds up some dramatic tension that is singularly lacking in the drawing. The pursuers and the oak tree are similarly arranged on the Mortimer version, only reversed from the Lockman plate. Two additional characters have been brought into the picture however: a peasant greeting the pursuers, and a second man sheltering in the oak tree, identified in the Mortimer caption as “Col.l Carlis” (Careless). The Colonel is depicted in a posture recalling that of the monarch on Lockman’s plate, while Charles II, instead of being similarly seated on a branch, is, in this second version, portrayed asleep on his loyal supporter’s lap (see fig 1.3). The differences between the

Figure 1.3  Samuel Wale, Charles II Concealed in the Oak, illustration originally designed for Thomas Mortimer’s New History of England (1764–1766), here its reversed reissue in William Augustus Russel’s New and Authentic History of England (1777) Source:  Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

30  Picturing history

Figure 1.4  Isaac Fuller, King Charles II and Colonel William Carlos (Careless) in the Royal Oak, c. 1660, oil on canvas, 212.7 × 315.6 cm Source:  ©National Portrait Gallery, London

two images can be first related to the varying details given in the texts they illustrate, with the character of Colonel Careless, absent from both Lockman’s text and its illustration, 33 being introduced in the plate for Mortimer whose text explicitly refers to the support the officer lent to the fugitive Stuart king.34 But neither author alludes to the king having slept in the oak, let alone on Careless’s lap. This peculiar motif was borrowed by Wale from one of the rare examples of British history painting. It comes from a painting by Isaac Fuller (1606–1672) who had represented the flight of Charles II after the royalist defeat, in five enormous canvases, on an exceptionally grand scale, in the 1660s. Offering a striking image of Careless’s help and assistance, Fuller’s King Charles II and Colonel William Carlos (Careless) in the Royal Oak (see fig 1.4) shows precisely that scene of the king being physically supported by Careless while resting in the oak tree. Despite detailed studies by leading art historians, the conditions under which Fuller made his narrative cycle remain unclear, and so do the paintings’ initial whereabouts.35 But we have reasons to suspect that Wale did not have to travel far to see Fuller’s historical paintings, and that he may well have heard about them when they appeared at a London auction in February 1744.36 George Vertue took great interest in the sale of the Fuller cycle, 37 and there are good grounds to believe that other members of the London artistic community, such as Wale, visited Ford’s auction room in Haymarket and examined those impressive examples of British history painting. Whether at auctions or in private collections, prolific book illustrators soaked up a diverse visual culture in order to quench viewers’ appetite for “curious” visual materials. The public’s craving was matched only by draughtsmen’s creative ability to play with visual references and to promote new visual encounters cutting across

Picturing history 31 aesthetic lines, as well as religious or political divides. Going through Wale’s series of plates, one could thus spot borrowings from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs as well as from the depictions of the sufferings of English martyrs in the Catholic church of San Tommaso degli Inglesi, nowadays part of the Venerable English College in Rome. This medieval church, which welcomed English pilgrims and, after the Henrician reformation, recusants, was decorated by Niccolò Circignani, also called il Pomarancio (c.1530-c.1590), with a series of frescoes showing English martyrdoms across time. These works, engraved by Giovanni Battista de’Cavalieri (c.1525-1601), started circulating in the mid-1580s and were well-known among British art collectors. 38 For instance, the group of nuns on Wale’s plate The Abbess of Coldingham Monastery and her Nuns cutting of [sic] their Noses and upper Lips to prevent being Ravished by the Danes recalls the scene which can be seen on de’Cavalieri’s reproduction of the fresco showing the same story. A preparatory drawing for the fresco, by Circignani himself, focusing on the group of nuns disfiguring themselves, was present in England in the early eighteenth century, first in the possession of one of the most prominent Whig politicians of William III’s reign, John Somers, first Baron Somers, and then in the collection of Jonathan Richardson.39 The interest demonstrated by respected art collectors, together with the novelty of the subject, might have accounted for the inclusion of such a gruesome scene in the series. It might also have given viewers who had heard about the frescoes from travellers, the opportunity to discuss the Roman masterpieces. Many among the readers of illustrated history books would have enjoyed this play on pictorial correspondences, which had become part and parcel of the reception of painting in eighteenth-century Britain. Quoting from monumental narrative painting – the pivotal canvas in Fuller’s cycle, or from treasured pieces in possession of renowned art collectors – Wale sought to open new avenues for the appreciation of book illustrations, beyond from humble broadsheets or simple engraved plates.

Framing history References to narrative paintings ennobled Wale’s drawings and put his book illustrations in a new artistic class of their own. Visual connections with paintings were made even more apparent through the addition of decorative frames around Wale’s designs. These frames were another element of total novelty, for no historical book illustration had been presented in that fashion before. They did not appear around the less polished designs Wale had made for Lockman in the mid-1740s. They were first introduced for the Mortimer set in the mid-1760s. In Thomas Mortimer’s History, these embellishments were further enhanced by the exuberant lettering of the dedications inscribed below the framed images. Following from the frontispiece, whose dedicatee was George III, each historical scene was titled and dedicated to a different peer, to some of the most powerful men in the kingdom, holding prestigious offices, and to prominent Whigs whose patronage Mortimer was seeking.40 The graceful swirling letters in which the names and titles of those desired patrons were inscribed may have been penned by William Chinnery, one of the leading writing masters in London, and with whom Wale had recently worked on the illustration of the Book of Common Prayer.41 Such elegant displays of dedications were dropped, however, when Wale’s illustrations were reissued with histories written by authors who did not aim at connecting with political parties. Notably, the frames were retained, and they

32  Picturing history even became a defining feature of historical illustrations. This formulaic historical plate, composed of a prominently displayed framed narrative scene, was established by Wale together with a fellow member of the St Martin’s Lane Academy, Charles Grignion, who was the earliest interpreter of Wale’s designs on copper. As can be gathered from the collections at the V&A in London and at the Castle Museum in Nottingham, where some of Wale’s drawings are still kept, his original designs in pen and ink were made to the page size unframed, then copied onto copper plates by engravers who added captions and decorative frames. The first engraver to make such ornaments for Wale’s designs was Grignion but, as Wale was, over the years, commissioned to supplement his initial set of historical illustrations, other graphic artists – such as William Walker (1729–1793), Isaac Taylor (1730–1807), Martin Rennoldson (c.1740–1793) or Francis Chescham (1749–1806), to quote only the wellknown names – were enrolled by publishers committed to give ever more visually attractive illustrated histories to the British public. The lure of those embellishments owed much to Grignion’s fluency in the Rococo idiom: having been a pupil of Hubert-François Bourguignon, known as Gravelot (1699–1773), one of the directors of St Martin’s Lane and the artist who introduced Rococo in Britain, Grignion was able to adorn borders with winding foliage and undulating plants arranged in a series of distinctive scrolling raffle leaves and flowers. Not only had Gravelot introduced those flowing forms in Britain, but he also had pioneered the idea of adorning images of British history with Rococo motifs. Indeed, in 1736, Gravelot, who was employed by the Knaptons, alongside George Vertue, had provided illustrations for their second edition of Rapin de Thoyras’s History of England. He had then designed the plates showing the medieval monuments of the kings of England and embellished them with frilly scrolls and whimsical shell works.42 In 1739, the same Gravelot added more swirling acanthus garlands on the ornamental borders he designed for John Pine’s Tapestry hangings of the House of Lords, a series of ten engravings reproducing the tapestries depicting the defeat of the Spanish armada, then hanging in the House of Lords at the Palace of Westminster. Both Wale and Grignion were thus exposed to the influence of Gravelot and witnessed the increasing popularity of Rococo decorative patterns with the London print trade, especially as the French artist became the acclaimed illustrator of fashionable novels. Packaging Wale’s historical plates in elegant Rococo style was aimed at improving their appeal among consumers. Tellingly, the style of those ornaments changed dramatically over time: keeping up with the latest decorative trends, the artists who engraved the plates for Russel, in the late 1770s, presented them in a classical fashion, framed by restrained rectangular borders seemingly carved in relief, adorned with classical urns and vases, eagles’ or lions’ heads, and with laurel garlands, or palms, instead of acanthus. The stylistic evolution of those ornamental frames further highlights their function as marketing devices in the business of book illustrations. No matter how alluring, embellished borders were nevertheless also rhetorical devices. They underlined the edges of the scenes represented on the pages of history books and, redoubling borders autonomised images, bringing together the elements that composed them into a meaningful and memorable figurative whole. As Louis Marin underlines, a frame displays. It is, in his own words, a deictic, an “iconic demonstrative”.43 As such, frames were especially instrumental in singling out particular events shown as self-contained scenes. They also had a major transformative effect, beautifully showcasing Wale’s single-page historical illustrations as virtual easel paintings. Emphasising the plates’

Picturing history 33 decorative potential, frames hinted at their being pictures rather than pages. The disappearance of page numbers, present on Lockman’s plates but removed from Mortimer’s and subsequent sets, encouraged readers to unbind them, file them in albums, use them to grangerise other books, or even hang them on walls.44 Wale himself witnessed the emergence of new viewing practices and was keen to advertise some of his designs for display on walls, specifying that individual prints could be “framed and glazed.”45 Moreover, throughout the 1750s, he was repeatedly employed in the design of both the Stationers’ and Oxford almanacks that came in the form of posters with decorative borders, and that were intended to be pinned on walls (see fig 1.5). Frames stressed the portability of Wale’s plates which, like almanacs, could travel autonomously, thereby

Figure 1.5  Samuel Wale, The Stationers Almanack, 1752 Source:  ©Museum of London

34  Picturing history circulating a new and, quite literally, a picturesque vision of British history. Framing the British past and turning it into a series of pictures was neither just a matter of commercial efficiency nor of fashionable cultural consumption. There were broader aesthetic underpinnings to the production of historical pictures, for the whole process implied a renewal of the traditional textual sources painters had relied upon since the Renaissance. Instead of being drawn from the Bible, mythological narratives, Greek or Roman history, Wale’s subjects were taken from modern British history books, and within their frames, were nonetheless presented as suitable for pictures.

Delineating history The making of this picturesque history relied on Wale’s ability to cut out scenes from a textual continuum and to freeze them and transform them into so many self-­contained visual episodes that could be enjoyed as individual images or incorporated into a series providing an overview of British history. Whereas the succession of rulers to be portrayed was given to him, the events to be illustrated had to be chosen carefully among the plethora of episodes narrated in the books. Since Wale’s plates were well distributed between ancient, medieval, and modern eras, they were obviously not picked randomly, but rather selected to give an extensive visual account of the past. The imaging of key milestones taken within a given plot was a skill many London artists had developed through their employment in the book trade. Wale was one of them, having illustrated novels, fables, and poetry throughout his career. However, with histories spreading over nearly a thousand pages, the painstaking selection of meaningful events was an altogether more complex task. In the absence of sources on the decision process, the reasons that led Wale to single out certain events and to image them as he did can only be surmised. But the even distribution of his illustrative plates over 1700 years of English history, from the Roman invasion to the taking of Quebec, could only be achieved with a general framework in mind. Clearly, his purpose was to arrange regular milestones in a chronological sequence, in order to allow British viewers to picture national history as a whole, from the remotest ages to the more recent events. His sequence was put together between 1747 and 1777, in step with the different publications: the Lockman set started with the reign of King Alfred, the Mortimer set went back to that of King Æthelberht, and the leap back to the Roman conquest was initiated with the Mountague set which also included the first Hanoverian subjects. From Lockman to Russel, over five publications, Anglo-Saxon subjects increased fivefold, Plantagenet and Tudor fourfold, Norman and Stuart doubled, thus constantly filling out blanks and fleshing out Wale’s overview of British history. Chiming with widespread efforts to organise knowledge systematically through compilations, these illustrations suggested a way to master history through the classification of a relatively small number of events regularly distributed over eighteen centuries. The selection process is likely to have been the outcome of discussions between authors, publishers, and designer. But a valuable reference framework was also found in a project that was aimed precisely at delineating British history, and conceived by the Knaptons as yet another by-product of their editions of Rapin de Thoyras. This was the chronological list of 50 subjects drawn up by brothers John and Paul Knapton, together with Robert Dodsley, when they launched the subscription for the English History Delineated in 1749:

Picturing history 35 1. The Landing of Julius Caesar. 2. The noble Behaviour of Caractacus before the Emperor Claudius. 3. The Saxons obtaining a Settlement in England. The Subject Vortigen falling in Love with Rowena the Daughter of Hengist at a Feast to which her Father had purposely invited him. 4. The Conversion of the Saxons to Christianity by St. Austin the Monk. 5. Alfred the Great laying the Foundation of the Naval Power of England. 6. The Battle of Hastings. 7. The Behaviour of William Rufus to the Count de la Flesche, after raising the Siege of Harfleur. 8. The Escape of Maud the Empress from Oxford. 9. Becket’s haughty Entrance into the Presence of King Henry II with his Cross, etc. 10. The Murder of Becket at the Altar. 11. The Conquest of Ireland. The Subject, the several Kings of Ireland swearing Allegiance to Henry II. 12. The Battle near Ascalon, in the first Crusade, where Saladin Emperor of the Saracens is unhorsed by King Richard I. 13. King John resigning his Crown to the Pope’s Legate. 14. The Signing of Magna Charta in Runne Mede. On the Back Ground a View of Cooper’s Hill. 15. The Death of Lewellyn, and the conquest of Wales. 16. Earl Warren’s Answer to the Quo Warranto. 17. The Princess Eleonora drawing the poisoned Arrow out of her Husband’s Wound. 18. Baliol resigning the Kingdom of Scotland to Edward I 19. The Resignation of Edward the Second. 20. King Edward the Third surprises Mortimer and Queen Isabel his Mother in Nottingham Castle. 21. The Bravery of Edward III in passing the Some, when leaping into the River, he cried out, Let those that love me follow me. 22. The Black Prince in his Tent, waiting on the King of France his prisoner. 23. The Deposing of Richard II, which was the Foundation of the Disputes between the Houses of York and Lancaster. 24. The Prince of Wales striking the Judge on the Bench, who commits him to Prison. 25. The Battle of Agincourt. 26. Elizabeth Woodville, at the Feet of Edward IV. 27. The Rescue of Edward IV from Middleham Castle. 28. The Murder of the Prince of Wales, Son of Henry VI after the Battle of Tewsksbury, in the Presence of his Mother Queen Margaret. 29. The Queen Dowager of Edward IV delivers up the Duke of York to his Uncle Richard the Protector. 30. The Battle of Bosworth Field 31. The first Translation of the Bible into English presented to Henry VIII. On the Back Ground, the demolishing of Monasteries, burning of Relicks, etc. 32. The Proceedings in the Divorce of Queen Catharine, before Cardinal Wolsey, and Cardinal Campejo. 33. The Death of Lady Jane Grey. 34. The burning of Ridley and Latimer at Oxford.

36  Picturing history 35. Queen Elizabeth’s Reception of the Dutch Commissioners, who came to offer her the Sovereignty of the Low Countries. 36. The Defeat of the Spanish Armada. 37. The Taking of the Conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot. 38. Prince Henry at his Exercises, taking Leave of the French Ambassadors, and bidding them tell their Master how they left him employed. 39. King James’s Interview with the Earl of Somerset before his Trial. 40. The Assassination of the Duke of Buckingham, by Felton. 41. King Charles the First in the Speaker’s Chair, demanding the five Members. 42. Taking Leave of his Children before his Death. 43. Oliver Cromwell turning the Members of Parliament out of the House. 44. His Behaviour in Thurloe’s Office, upon finding a Person asleep. 45. King Charles II. Escape after the Battle of Worcester. 46. King Charles II receiving the Messengers from the Parliament at Breda. 47. A remarkable instance of the Cruelty of Judge Jefferies in the West. 48. The Behaviour of King James at Magdalen College 49. The Earl of Bedford’s Answer to the King at the Council Table. 50. The Convention presenting the Bill of Rights to the Prince and Princess of Orange, in the Banquesting House at Whitehall.46 The English History Delineated (EHD from now on) was an ambitious project that was supposed to materialise into the publication of 50 plates to be designed by Francis Hayman and Nicholas Blakey (?–1758), and engraved by Charles Grignion, Simon Francis Ravenet (1706–1764), and Gérard Jean-Baptiste Scotin (1698–c.1755). However, despite bringing together, around the capital’s most prominent booksellers, one of its leading painters, and some of its most renowned engravers, it did not meet with the support expected, had to be revised, and whittled down to a subscription for six prints only, with the seventh gratis.47 It never went further than that, and the project was abandoned after the publication of the first six engravings: Hayman’s Noble Behaviour of Caractacus, The Druids or the Conversion of the Saxons to Christianity, The Norman Conquest or the Battle of Hastings, Blakey’s Landing of Julius Cæsar (see fig 1.6), Vortigen and Rowena, and Alfred the Great in the Island of Athelny, receiving News of a Victory over the Danes. Tellingly, Wale never copied the plates designed by Hayman or Blakey but relied on the list. Launched after the publication of the first historical set he made for Lockman, the EHD was the main source of inspiration for his Mortimer set: more than half of the captions on the Mortimer plates are identical to entries in the EHD list, but since Wale had already illustrated four of those subjects for Lockman, there remained 14 new subjects in common between his Mortimer set and the EHD (i.e., numbers 4, 6, 9, 14, 19, 22, 24, 26, 29, 31, 35, 41, 43, and 50 in the above list); four additional subjects found in the EHD list (i.e., 1, 15, 18, and 20) were later illustrated by Wale and inserted in the Mountague and Russel sets. With its 50 subjects spanning more than 1600 years of history in the British Isles, this list was an invaluable aid for anybody willing to illustrate British history. Publicised by three of the most eminent London booksellers, the EHD list emerged from the long acquaintance the Knaptons had had with Rapin’s History of England. It was the most condensed version of the book ever given to the public, one that was released in the wake of an abridged edition (in three volumes) and of a summary (of nearly 300 pages).48 Sifting through the few hundreds

Picturing history 37

Figure 1.6  Simon-François Ravenet (after Nicholas Blakey), The Landing of Julius Caesar, c. 1751, etching and engraving Source:  Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

of pages remaining, the Knaptons had boiled Rapin’s saga down to a mere list of 50 subjects that nonetheless offered a complete survey, or delineation, of British history. The adjective “delineated” was then used in the London press to describe illustrated publications, and, more specifically, to emphasise the accuracy of images that were the result of careful observation, being “delineated from the life.” The Knaptons used it to advertise anatomical figures, and Dodsley for plates representing moths and butterflies, while others employed it to sell maps.49 With this vocabulary, they stressed the shift from a textual to a graphical representation of history. Delineating history implied the use of drawing in order to provide a survey in which each scene corresponded to a chronological mark. Their aim was to help viewers associate events with images so as to locate those marks along a timeline or, as they had it, to “fix[ing] the principal points of our History in the Mind.”50 Chronology loomed large in the development of projects such as the EHD or Cooke’s illustrated histories. More than a selling point, chronological accuracy had become a topical concern among educated Georgians as can be gathered from the countless publications of chronological tables throughout the century. According to Thomas Salmon, chronology defined modern history.51 It was indeed thought that

38  Picturing history arranging events in the exact order of time was the major improvement brought about by modern historians, for ascertaining facts with their exact dates helped differentiating history from fable.52 Assigning events to their correct dates was indeed Lockman’s primary aim since his books, written in the form of questions and answers, were intended to help the young learn history.53 As self-avowed proponents of rational history, Mortimer, Sydney, and the other authors illustrated by Wale punctuated their narratives with footnotes in which they exposed their predecessors’ chronological deficiencies, while Russel pledged to provide “an accurate chronological account” in his title.54 The part ascribed to engraved plates in the illustration of chronological landmarks situates those histories within a very ancient didactic tradition in which visual material paired with words was employed as learning aid. Since the fifteenth century, new modes of knowledge dissemination through print had confirmed and reinforced the functional role of images as cognitive tools, stressing the importance of visual cognition.55 Just as other plates showing plants, human anatomy, or costumes, historical illustrations could be deployed as a system of visual pedagogy, in order to ascertain chronologies and structure the understanding of British history. Highlighting at least one event within each reign, Wale’s images came in support of the whole chronological intent. This was further reinforced by the fact that he put together a set of images in which almost every king and queen since William the Conqueror could be associated with one of the scenes he drew (earlier reigns are more sparsely illustrated). Within the period covering the eleventh to eighteenth centuries, only the reigns of Henry I, Stephen, and Edward VI were left unrelated to any event. But this did not mean that those kings were visually absent, for they featured among the 32 portraits that accompanied his historical plates. Alongside historical scenes, Wale’s meticulous portrayal of rulers came in handy to help viewers gain a sense of chronological progression. Their use to ascertain chronologies was further enhanced when the portraits were reissued in Raymond with the dates of each ruler inscribed below. What’s more, when publishing Mountague’s, Sydney’s, Russel’s as well as Raymond’s histories, Cooke ensured that the arrangement of Wale’s plates was not left to chance and he systematically issued “Directions to Binders” specifying the page numbers corresponding to the plates to help viewers place them in the right order.56 The result was a sequence of historical illustrations beyond the scope of any previous publication. In the wake of the EHD project, Cooke’s series provided a new and unrivalled visual overview of British history, from Roman Britain to the victories of the Seven Years’ war with accounts of Anglo-Saxon England as well as the Norman, Plantagenet, Tudor, Stuart, and Hanoverian dynasties. Yet turning words into images, so as to produce a visual historical survey, required a methodology which had to be clarified, and on this topic too Wale could rely on the promoters of the EHD project. In their first adverts, they promised that they would choose subjects with care, thereby ensuring that these would be “First, Important, or Interesting; Secondly Striking, or such as will make good Pictures; Thirdly so different from each other as to afford an agreeable Variety.”57 Once they decided to spell out the list of subjects, they logically specified further the criteria for their choice: Whoever considers the Task of selecting from History a Series of Subjects proper for such a Design as the present, will easily perceive that many Difficulties must attend it. There are some important Events and remarkable Periods of History, which will not afford any Subject for the Painter: As on the other Hand, some

Picturing history 39 Actions and Occurrences, that would make very agreeable Pictures, are not of Importance enough in the History to merit a Place in such a Series of Prints. Some Subjects must likewise be avoided, because of their Similitude in Painting to others. All Battles, for Instance, are very much alike, except such as afford some striking Object for a principal Figure; as Harold in the Battle of Hastings, pierced through the Head with an Arrow, and falling from his Horse. The frequent Beheadings also of great and eminent Men which occur in our History, can very few of them be taken, for the same Reason. However, in so large a Tract of Time, there is no Doubt but that the History of England will afford to the Painter a sufficient Number of Subjects, various in their Nature, striking in their Circumstances, and important to the History.58 Explaining that they had sought to combine historical as well as artistic significance, and that they had put themselves under the double constraint of finding important events that could be transformed into interesting pictures, they provided a detailed guideline for historical illustration. A decade later, Thomas Mortimer gave other London publishers the opportunity to materialise, at least partly, the Knaptons’ failed project. As the sole illustrator of Mortimer’s New History, Wale was in a position to draw useful lessons from the EHD and to commit himself to finding subjects fit to be pictured or, to quote from the advert for the first number issue of Mortimer’s History, to illustrate “the most interesting and entertaining Events recorded in the British Annals.”59 In keeping with the Knaptons’ guideline and with their modern take on Horace, Wale was keen to select novel subjects that could simultaneously delight and instruct. He thus picked important events, or rather stories involving Britons of importance (kings, queens, princes, princesses, rulers, courtiers, officers). In order to spark the audience’s interest, he did not show those important characters in actions that could have been easily anticipated, placing particular focus on unusual deaths (such as Edward the Martyr’s, William II’s, Richard I’s, Richard III’s, or Jane Grey’s for instance). Likewise, to avoid producing images that would be too similar or too repetitive, he left aside coronations, royal weddings, and ruled out most battles. He only portrayed Edward, prince of Wales, in the heat of the battle at Cressy, produced an unimpressive view of the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and otherwise opted for scenes alluding to the aftermath of armed conflicts, imaging the conclusion of Agincourt or the outcome of Bosworth, and finally adding references to victories that consolidated British imperial claims during the Seven Years’ War. In his search for variety, Wale produced an almost equal mix of indoor and outdoor scenes, alternating country and city locations (forests, valleys, seashores, gardens, palaces, churches, tents, taverns, and inns) inhabited by male characters, as well as women and children, all involved in events related to religious, dynastic, military, legal as well as cultural history. All in all, the selection process which consisted in extracting individual stories from the continuum of history and turning them into romantic, tragic, or comic subjects highlighted the narrative dimension of historical sources. Their visualisation as a sequence further emphasised their potential for emplotment. The search for striking events led Wale to show many of his characters in situations seldom represented before. Distancing himself from Francis Hayman, who had illustrated the remarkable death of “Harold in the Battle of Hastings, pierced through the Head with an Arrow, and falling from his Horse,” Wale moved viewers away from the heat of the battle and took them back a couple of weeks to where it had all begun. For

40  Picturing history

Figure 1.7  Samuel Wale, The Landing of William the Conqueror, originally designed for Thomas Mortimer’s New History of England (1764–1766); here its reversed reissue in William Augustus Russel’s New and Authentic History of England (1777) Source:  Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

Mortimer, he represented the landing of the Norman fleet at the foot of distinctively English cliffs and focused on William the Conqueror (see fig 1.7), whose likeness he borrows from the head published to illustrate Mechell’s Rapin. Wale however does not portray the Norman leader on horseback, rallying his troops, as Nicolas-Bernard Lépicié (1735–1784) had done at exactly the same time,60 but showed him sprawled

Picturing history 41 on the shore. Lying down flat in full armour, with his (anachronistic) baton in his right hand, and his left foot apparently caught on the edge of the boat in which he was rowed ashore, the duke of Normandy has lost some of his haughtiness. The mock-­heroic portrait of a conqueror stumbling when setting foot on the land he intended to take by force could have put smiles on the faces of eighteenth-century viewers, but the serious expressions of the Norman soldiers portrayed on the plate – a mix of concern and relief – was there to remind them, as Mortimer explained in the passage relating the incident, that his supposed stumble was in fact taken by the Normans as a good omen.61 In his search for uncommon portraits of rulers, Wale likewise departed from images of monarchs of solemn or ceremonious character and pictured their reckless or impulsive sides instead. For Mountague, he showed William the Conqueror again, when, as William I, he arrested his half-brother Odo, Earl of Kent and Bishop of Bayeux. There is horror among clergymen as the king grabs the man he formerly trusted by the collar. The expression of shock on the bishop’s face could not but catch the viewers’ eyes. Similarly, in the Mountague set, Wale depicted Elizabeth I literally striking, punching the Earl of Essex in the nose with the full force of her extended arm (see fig 0.1). The chair toppled over in the foreground; the two men containing the tempestuous young man, and stopping him from drawing his sword, add to the violence of a scene that announces the downfall of the former favourite, seen here turning his back to his queen.

Animating history Wale’s intent to leave vivid impressions on viewers’ minds appears in his borrowings from grand style history paintings, in his choice of remarkable subjects and unusual events, as well as in his endeavour to suggest movement in his compositions. Being a practitioner of a reputedly still and silent art, Wale was keen to arrest actions, suspend gestures, and freeze expressions. In all the forms of the visual narrative he practiced, from history paintings to book illustrations, the characteristic stillness of characters, stopped in their tracks, was the most common way to show movement in unmoving images. A study of the black lead preparatory drawings for illustrations in the V&A collection shows that Wale first arranged the characters, their poses, and expressions, staging the action before adding the setting. With postures emphatically underlined by folds and draperies in order to maximise effect, the stopped movements paradoxically hinted at countless possibilities of motion and progression. In certain cases, supplementing movements became a necessity if viewers were to make sense of the picture they had before their eyes. Remarkably, the two versions of the assassination of Buckingham that Wale drew for Lockman and Mortimer, both entitled The Duke of Buckingham Stabb’d by Felton, do not show a stabbing as such. George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham, is nowhere near collapsing under John Felton’s assault. Adopting a confident courtier pose, his left hand on the hip, on the Lockman plate Buckingham stares at his knife-wielding attacker. Less arrogant in the Mortimer version, he is shown with Felton sneaking behind him, a knife in hand. The blade got closer in to Buckingham, but the viewer still had to push it if it was to cut deep into the favourite’s flesh. By suspending the action, the draughtsman did not leave the issue undecided, for the end was well known and explicitly set out in the plate’s title. But whereas the text called Felton an assassin,62 the image delayed the crime indefinitely, leaving Georgian viewers the possibility to imagine the lieutenant as a reluctant murderer at a time when he was widely considered a patriot.

42  Picturing history As can also be seen on the plate dedicated to Charles II hiding in the oak tree (see fig 1.3), Wale interrupts actions so as to stress the fruitful and decisive nature of the moments selected. Arresting the future Charles II in this unusual and precarious position was an efficient way of visualising suspense, with a portrayal of the prince in danger, actively hunted, his life literally hanging in the branches of the oak tree. Similarly, objects held in mid-air, although inanimate, could also become focal points in compositions where their handling summarised the action. This is the case on Mortimer’s Edward II resigns the Ensigns of Royalty where the sceptre held by the “unkinged” Edward is about to be taken by the commissioner.63 On Mortimer’s St Austin Preaching to K. Ethelbert and Q. Bertha in the Isle of Thanet (see fig 1.8), a cross, placed at the intersection of the diagonals, occupies a similarly central position. Departing from La Cave’s prototype – itself a copy from an illustration found in Richard Verstegan’s Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in 160564 – Wale chose to stage the action very differently. Instead of showing the confrontation between the pagan king and Christian missionaries, Wale sums up the Christianisation of England in one gesture, the king’s outstretched arm willingly reaching for the cross held out by Augustine. Departing from La Cave’s static display of symbols of power (crown, throne, canopy, sceptre vs. cross, processional banner, monks), Wale heightened the narrative dynamic of the scene, here contained in the handing over of the cross, hanging in the middle of the composition as an emblem of the upcoming Christianisation of England. Elsewhere, the search for heightened drama led the artist to depict movements at the top of their swing, showing, for example on Lockman’s Wat Tyler kill’d by the Lord Mayor in Smithfield, the Lord Mayor looking intently at Wat Tyler, holding his sword above his head with both hands, ready to strike. In Mortimer’s Becket’s haughty Entrance into the Presence of Henry 2nd with the Cross &c., Wale captures the archbishop’s motion in between strides, advancing towards the king, brandishing his tall crosier against the king’s extended arm and pointed sceptre. Whereas Becket’s power is reinforced by the column that fortifies his posture, the monarch seems nearly off balance, legs crossed as if bent under the force of the bishop’s assault, while shock is painted on the surrounding faces. When appropriate, dramatic tension is enhanced through raised hands and arms, wide eyes, furrowed brows, and open mouths. There is much frowning in the Mortimer plate entitled The Insolent Behaviour of Dunstan to K. Edwy on the Day of his Coronation. A tall clergyman has grabbed the young king by the collar; his leaning posture indicates that he is dragging the monarch who is pulling in the opposite direction, his body language expressing resistance. Behind him, a young woman standing and an older one seated, both looking alarmed at Dunstan’s irruption. Both seem suitably respectable and their modesty resonates with Mortimer’s text which explains that the young king was enjoying the company of his future bride, Elgiva, in the presence of the latter’s mother, when Dunstan “dragged him forcibly back to the great hall”… where his coronation ceremony was taking place.65 The young king does not seem to hesitate between duty and sentiments and Wale stages the fruitful moment in this tale of youthful carelessness, one that illustrates the clergyman’s abuse of authority while announcing the ensuing enmity between the two men. On Wale’s plates, small groups of characters shown interacting with one another, and displaying a wide range of strong emotions, convey a distinct feel of theatre. The very theatricality of the silent performances he depicts is visually emphasised by the frequent inclusion of curtains lifted on to actions. When such props have not been added, the folds of brocaded canopies, hanging over thrones and beds, or even

Picturing history 43

Figure 1.8  Samuel Wale, St. Austin preaching to K. Ethelbert & Q. Bertha in the Isle of Thanet, illustration made for Thomas Mortimer’s New History of England (1764–1766) Source:  Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library

44  Picturing history draped tent canvas, equally contribute to the staging of history. Such devices recall the theatrum mundi metaphor which was prevalent in eighteenth-century literature as well as in the visual arts, and most particularly in conversation pieces.66 Furthermore, the analogy between the world and a stage drew the viewers of Wale’s illustrations into chains of associations between what was represented on plates and what could be seen onstage. In some instances, the episodes he illustrated could conjure up the memories of actual plays, and probably performances, even if this kind of transmediation remains difficult to document. For instance, the plate Wale designed for Lockman entitled Jane Shore does Penance in St Paul’s Church was inspired by one of Nicholas Rowe’s masterpieces, The Tragedy of Jane Shore, first performed at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane in February 1714. The performance so captivated the imagination of the Augustan public that Rowe published a pamphlet, dedicated to actress Anne Oldfield, who had triumphed in the title role, in order to vindicate the historical accuracy of his play and to trace it back to the best historians, more particularly to Thomas More. In this pamphlet, the playwright describes Jane Shore’s penance in detail: Mrs Shore being stript of all her Ornaments, and cloath’d in a white Sheet, was brought by way of Procession, with the Cross carry’d before her, and a WaxTaper in her Hand, to St Paul’s Church from the Bishop’s Palace adjoyning, thro’ great Crowds of People who came to gaze on her: And there standing before the Preacher, she acknowledg’d, in a Set Form of Words, her notorious Uncleanness, and declared her Repentance of it.67 The third edition of this pamphlet, held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, contains a frontispiece by Louis Duguernier imaging those words precisely.68 Focusing on the major alteration Rowe brought to the life story of Edward IV’s mistress – her pathetic repentance – the plate situates the event in a crowded church. The penitent is shown in profile, draped in white, holding a taper in front of a clergyman holding a cross. Whether Duguernier was inspired by an actual performance is unknown, but Wale’s plate for Lockman, set in identical surroundings and arranged in a similar fashion, was clearly derived from this earlier illustration. In his reworking of Duguernier’s prototype, Wale turned Jane Shore towards viewers who can see the soft lines and meek expression on her face enveloped by a white sheet. Forty years before Sarah Siddons’s impersonation of Rowe’s tragic heroine would move the public to tears, Wale dedicates this small plate to the sinful woman’s final amends, thereby stressing the tragedy’s moral turn. Whereas The Tragedy of Jane Shore was written “in Imitation of Shakespeare’s Style,”69 Wale’s inspiration from domestic tragedy extended to actual Shakespeare plays. His Henry, Prince of Wales, taking the Crown from off the Pillow of his Father Henry IV is a typical bedchamber scene that could have been seen on the London stage, in a performance of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part II. As an accurate pictorial representation of Act IV, scene 3, the Mountague’s plate shows the Prince of Wales exiting holding the crown (lines 194–195). Behind him, King Henry IV is waking up; Warwick, Gloucester, and Clarence, alarmed, are re-entering, rushing in to tend to the monarch after he has called them (line 196). The close-up view of this moment of intense dramatic tension allows Wale to portray the characters’ contrasting emotions. Staging events carefully, Wale brings the past back to life. The visual parallels he establishes with live performances, and with a flourishing

Picturing history 45 national pastime, allow him to animate history as further exemplified in Henry, Prince of Wales, Striking the Judge on the Bench which dramatises the episode of “the box in the ear,” repeatedly referred to and discussed in Henry IV, parts I and II. In this plate created for Mortimer, Wale stages the youthful prince’s attack on the venerable Lord Chief Justice and focuses on the reactions of the assembled members who witnessed the scene. Similarly, in King Edward the 4th striking Edward Prince of Wales with his Gauntlet, he focuses on a theatrical gesture that addresses the inner theatregoer in each viewer. As staged in Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 3, Act V, scene 5, after defeating Edward of Lancaster’s troops at the battle of Tewkesbury, and having crushed hopes of a Lancastrian restoration, King Edward IV asked his young adversary why he had taken arms against him. The defiant reply of the young man, who denounced the treachery of the Yorkist king instead of making amends, triggered a violent reply from Edward IV and his followers who stabbed him. Departing from Shakespeare’s text, Mortimer vindicates the king and shifts the responsibility of the murder onto his followers, explaining that the monarch punched Edward of Lancaster in the face, and that the blow was taken as a signal by his friends who executed the prince.70 Wale’s dramatisation of the mighty blow of the king’s gauntleted hand (drawn from earlier chronicles) brings the action within an imagined performance of the Shakespeare play while sticking to Mortimer’s text. Portraying three men, whose murderous intentions are painted on their faces, he stages their seizing an unflinching young Edward, standing upright, barely affected by the king’s assault.

The spectacle of history Beyond the London stage and Shakespeare’s plays, I would like to argue that the dramatisation of historical events and characters on book plates allowed viewers to associate this new medium with a new form of spectacle. References to Shakespeare’s history plays enhanced the dramatic intensity of Wale’s illustrations while throwing light on how his visualisation of history negotiated between text, image, and new cultural leisure. His plates were targeted at a growing public of cultural consumers who had to be supplied with visual entertainment. From that perspective, it is quite telling to notice that one of Wale’s earliest plates, Marriage of Anne Bullen to Henry VIII, called to mind an oil on canvas (currently in a private collection) that hung at the New Spring Gardens at Vauxhall. Whereas the painting may have been the result of collaborative work between Hogarth, Hayman, and his assistants, the subject was widely circulated in the form of an engraved version made by Hogarth.71 Interestingly, it was probably inspired by a performance of Colley Cibber’s version of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, but Wale’s static interpretation is only a weak allusion to Hogarth’s dramatically conceived scene.72 Designed for Lockman, Wale’s representation of Henry VIII’s second marriage borrows the royal couple from Hogarth’s 1728 engraving. Contrary to Robert Sheppard, who had copied Hogarth’s composition onto a historiated vignette below the head of Henry VIII that he had designed for Mechell’s translation of Rapin de Thoyras,73 Wale merely quoted it. Set in a historicised church interior, and lacking any of the Hogarthian satirical elements or political undertones, his basic plate stages the royal couple in a position which is reminiscent of Hogarth’s engraving. This compositional choice may have been motivated by Wale’s familiarity with the gardens opened by Jonathan Tyers at Vauxhall. Indeed, such borrowings

46  Picturing history were no doubt facilitated by Wale’s acquaintance with Hogarth and Hayman, who were both involved in the decoration of the fashionable venue. Wale may also have been encouraged to quote Hogarth’s engraving by John Lockman, who was a friend of Tyers’s and the publicist of the pleasure gardens.74 The interpictoriality examined here brings to the fore the overlapping between new forms of public entertainment that relied on visual displays. Despite the lack of sources on the public’s response to and uses of historical illustrations, I wish to purport that Wale’s illustrations were precisely to be experienced and appreciated like a visual spectacle. It may seem debatable today to describe such small, black and white, unsophisticated images as a spectacle but, this is exactly how they were described by Maria Edgeworth, who advised parents to use historical illustrations with caution to avoid children being dazzled and distracted.75 For all their simplicity and stillness, the book plates in our series encompassed lively movements that had to be carried forth and completed by viewers imaginatively. As seen in the examples above, Wale consistently sought to imply movement in still illustrations: encompassing a sense of temporality and causality with his variations on the choice of Hercules motif, using interpictorial references to juxtapose his small plates with much larger painted formats where action was detailed and developed. Frozen expressions and theatrical arrangements invited viewers to see arrested actions as single moments caught on the page, waiting to be activated mentally. In support of this argument, Wale cropped most of his designs: as confirmed by his surviving original drawings, he deliberately left objects, secondary characters, or even protagonists, partly outside representations, thereby hinting at a continuation of forms and movements beyond frames and borders. Stopped motions bestow upon Wale’s illustrations a remarkable expressivity which is reinforced by the fact that all the situations he depicts involve verbal interactions. With their parted lips, his characters are seen speaking, murmuring, shouting, expressing civilities, and delivering speeches. Falling within William Hogarth’s famous definition of paintings as “dumb shows,”76 these compositions denote communication and vindicate the eloquence of images. Muted conversations and paused actions offer tantalizing glimpses of historical episodes just waiting to be discovered. Faced with unfinished business, viewers had to imagine movements, words, and colours, continue actions, and animate characters mentally. Implied movements thus diverted viewers’ attention from the actual forms outlined on the plate and elicited a more creative response.

Foreshadowing historical panoramas Our series of historical illustrations is examined here in light of the growing desire to transform visual materials into illusionistic spectacles over the course of the eighteenth century. From murals or “walls animated with pictures”77 to Philippe de Loutherbourg’s extraordinary eidophusikon78 or Thomas Gainsborough’s show boxes (which presented his landscapes painted on glass slides in candle-lit boxes to make them glow), viewers who lived before the existence of motion pictures were nonetheless attracted by the enjoyments, or pleasures, of the imagination, and their eyes were continuously educated to animate still pictures. Throughout the period, aesthetic theories and practices revolving around experience flourished. With them, the active participation of viewers was envisaged and encouraged in order to construct visual narratives from still images of all sizes, genres, and styles, be they magnificent murals or humble engravings.79 It is therefore very likely that, when viewing

Picturing history 47 the historical illustrations in our corpus, Wale and his contemporaries imagined the words, movements, and actions of the characters depicted. The popularity of spectacles, such as street theatre, relying on the animation of still images testifies to the ease with which such visual materials were put into motion. From the 1730s to the 1750s, for instance, Thomas Yeates senior, junior, and their relatives, who had a theatrical booth at Bartholomew’s Fair, staged Hogarth’s series (Harlot’s Progress and Industry and Idleness) as well as “historical dramas” showing the siege of Troy or the enmity between the King of Sweden and the Russian Czar.80 In the same way as the spectators of Hogarth’s progresses were expected to animate each image and to fill the blanks in between them in order to navigate his series, viewers had to add the missing bits along the dotted line that connected illustrated events to get an overview of British history. Images beget images, and the visual survey could only become more and more comprehensive through viewing, but also through conversation or teaching. Before the advent of phantasmagoria shows, historical illustrations brought back to life long-dead Britons and, as a sequence of images susceptible to create a mental overview of British history, our series could fall under the definition of panorama, even if the word had yet to gain currency.81 These lively historical tableaus could more precisely be likened to moving panoramas, those itinerant, popular entertainments that were inspired by circular panoramas.82 Even though there is no surviving evidence of Wale’s historical illustrations being used in touring panoramas, their distinctive portability could have allowed it. They could have been used to form the basis of picture rolls, put together for home use or by travelling showmen.83 Historical narrative and panoramic vision had been closely related for centuries, as exemplified in Trajan’s column or in the Bayeux tapestry. In an age captivated by artists’ ability to mimic ways of experiencing the world, Wale’s series could be enjoyed as portable historical panoramas. I would thus like to suggest that Wale’s historical illustrations should be considered within the broader discursive formation of the notion of panorama, all the more so as Wale was actively involved in the development of immersive visual practices. After he had composed his first historical set for Lockman, he authored five of the perspective views that were published in a set of six and advertised in the London press in summer 1751.84 Apart from one signed by architect John Gwynn, the remaining five bear Wale’s initials. All six were one-point perspective views: two interior and four exterior scenes portraying impressive monuments with decorous figures scattered on the different planes. They recall the manner of Jacques Rigaud (1680–1754) who had stayed in England and worked in London, in the mid-1730s, at the time when Wale began attending St Martin’s Lane’s classes. The specification contained in the plates’ title and in the advert, that these views were for consultation with a “concave mirror,” indicates that they were specially designed to be viewed with zograscopes. These were the latest addition to a range of optical devices designed to augment the reality effect of engraved plates, thereby making the contemplation of urban topography a fashionable entertainment for the technologically savvy. Thanks to the sense of depth they created, these devices gave viewers the impression that they were immersed in the scenes they contemplated. The six views designed by Wale and Gwynn take viewers to a variety of different locations, and even points in time: under an ancient porticoed walkway peopled with characters dressed à l’antique, alongside elegant modern couples admiring a fountain in a villa of Florentine style, entering stately palaces, visiting a distinctively baroque Roman church, or a gallery reminiscent of the Hall of

48  Picturing history Mirrors at Versailles. The variety of styles, many arches, domed ceilings, porticoes, and countless decorative features, must have made the six perspective prints particularly entertaining when viewed with zograscopes. Less wealthy viewers, nonetheless “fitted for the tasks of ‘spectacular’ consumption,”85 could rely on magnifying glasses, show-boxes or peepholes to take part in those earlier forms of virtual reality experiences. These often relied on topography, leading viewers around the world through a handful of views, hence called “mondo nuovo” in Italian.86 But nothing precluded amateurs from placing any other engraving behind lenses: Wale’s four views of Vauxhall, although not specifically marketed for zograscopes, could well have been enjoyed with such optical machines. Showing a general prospect of the gardens, as well as one of the grand and south walks and a view of the so-called Chinese pavilion, they were sold by John Bowles, a specialised publisher who was one of the first to commercialise views for zograscopes in London in the early 1750s.87 Wale’s 117 historical plates presented many characteristics in common with such perspective views: modelled as perspective boxes; they absorbed the viewer’s gaze and directed it inside what seemed to be a three-dimensional space. They appeared as multiple-plane structures with characters (often seen from behind), or objects, placed against the border in the immediate foreground, the main action in the middle-ground, additional characters and settings in the background, and an opening onto a distant view. Looking at them through one of those optical devices would enhance the illusion of three-dimensional space in the manner of a pop-up effect. Many peephole shows operated this way and revolved around the lure of the unknown. By contrast, instead of merely offering a visual stroll of distant cities or faraway lands few had actually visited, historical plates could take viewers to a foreign country no one alive had ever seen. Hovering between leisure and knowledge, Wale’s historical panorama took viewers on a journey through time and offered them the possibility to imagine they stood as eyewitnesses to past events. His attempt at visualizing history led him to frame actions that were to be grasped as scenes and to give a visual form to events neither he nor any of his contemporaries had seen. In addition to picturing the past in a new fashion, Wale drew on the modern devices he was familiar with to embark viewers on a time-­travelling voyage. He thus proved to be a major player in the modernisation of visual history.

Notes 1 George Vertue notebooks, British Library Add. MS. 23,074, f.16. According to the Goldsmiths’ Company Index, Samuel Wale did not complete his apprenticeship and the archives therefore substantiate Vertue’s claim. 2 Ilaria Bignamini, “Art Institutions in London 1689–1768: A Study of Clubs and Academies,” Walpole Society 54 (1988) 104–5. 3 This unique manuscript can be consulted at the Yale Center for British Art (Reference Library and Archives) in New Haven (CT), see Stephen Wren, Catalogue of the Prints in Mr Rapin’s History of England and Mr Tindal’s Continuation with the Ornaments & c. Explained (1759). This extraordinary catalogue lists all the illustrations found in all the editions of Rapin’s History in Wren’s possession. 4 De Bolla 4. 5 The Spectator, issue 412, June 23, 1712 in The Spectator, ed. Donald Bond, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965) 3: 541. 6 See the advert for Wale’s views of the monuments in Tewkesbury Abbey, then thought by antiquarians to be that of George, first Duke of Clarence, and his wife, Isabel, in The Daily Advertiser, issue 4456, April 27, 1745.

Picturing history 49 7 See for instance the adverts for “A new set of Fifty-four curious historical Scripture Prints,” “Designed and Drawn by Mr S. Wale” in The Public Advertiser, issue 6375, April 4, 1755, for “a curious historical Head-Piece designed by Mr S. Wale” in The Public Advertiser, issue 14078, November 12, 1774 or, the title page of Mountague’s New and Universal History of England (1771–1772) with the mention “Embellished and illustrated with a great Number of curious Copper-plates, from original Drawings made on Purpose for this Work, by the celebrated Wale.” 8 See Clayton, The English Print 129–30. 9 See G.E. Bentley Jr, “Images of the Word: Separately Published English Bible Illustrations 1539–1830”, Studies in Bibliography 47 (1994): 103–28. 10 See [Paul] Rapin de Thoyras, Histoire d’Angleterre, 8 vols. (La Haye: Alexandre de Rogissart, 1724–1725). 11 See Rapin de Thoyras, The History of England (1725–1731). 12 See my chapter “The movement of images between Britain and Europe in the early eighteenth century: Exchanging, adapting, appropriating illustrations for Rapin de Thoyras’s History of England”, in James Raven, ed., Exchanging Knowledge Globally: Ideas and Materialities (Boydell & Brewer, forthcoming). 13 The Heads of the Kings of England, proper for Mr. Rapin’s History, Translated by N. Tindal M. Viz. Egbert first monarch of England, Alfred the Great, Canute the Dane, William the Conqueror, first of the Norman Line, and all the succeeding kings and sovereign Queens, to the revolution; with some of the most illustrious princes of the Royal family. Collected, Drawn, and Engraven, with ornaments and decorations, by George Vertue. To which are added, the heads of Mr. Rapin and N. Tindal, M.A. and an account of the several heads, of the Antiquities that have been followed, and of the Pictures copied for Engraving them. Also, twenty-two plates of the monuments of the Kings of England, with their Epitaphs and Inscriptions, and a brief Historical Account of Them (London: James, John and Paul Knapton, 1736). 14 See, for example, The Stamford Mercury, November 24, 1743, issue 595 or The London Daily Post and General Advertiser, December 14, 1743, issue 2833, in which detailed lists of the several ornaments were published. 15 See The History of England by Mr Rapin de Thoyras continued, vol. IV part 2 (1747) 706. 16 See Chroniques de France ou de Saint Denis, British Library Manuscripts Collection: Royal 20 C VII f. 28. 17 See the woodcut on the Acts and Monuments online website: https://www.johnfoxe. org/woodcuts/f0817w.gif, The Unabridged Acts and Monuments Online or TAMO (HRI Online Publications, Sheffield, 2011). Available from: http//www.johnfoxe.org [Accessed: July 15, 2018]. Foxe’s visualisation evokes earlier medieval representation of the supplication of King John at the feet of Innocent III. 18 See the woodcut on the Acts and Monuments online website: https://www.johnfoxe. org/woodcuts/f1924w.gif, The Unabridged Acts and Monuments Online or TAMO (HRI Online Publications, Sheffield, 2011). Available from: http//www.johnfoxe.org [Accessed: June 11, 2017]. 19 [John Lockman], A New History of England, by Question and Answer. Extracted from the most celebrated English historians, particularly Mr Rapin de Thoyras, for the entertainment of our youth of both sexes. By the author of the Roman history by Question and Answer. The Eighth edition, corrected. Adorned with thirty-two Copper Plates, representing the most remarkable occurrences, and the heads of all the Kings and Queens (London: Astley, 1752) 160. Although the first illustrated edition of Lockman’s New History of England was published in 1747, I have been unable to locate an original copy of that edition with all its illustrations and have based my research on the 1752 edition, held at the British Library, which features all the illustrations dated from 1747. All subsequent references to Lockman’s New History of England refer to that copy of the 1752 edition. 20 See the woodcut on the Acts and Monuments online website: https://www.johnfoxe. org/woodcuts/f1894w.gif, The Unabridged Acts and Monuments Online or TAMO (HRI Online Publications, Sheffield, 2011). Available from: http//www.johnfoxe.org [Accessed: June 11, 2017]. 21 Mortimer, New History of England, vol. 2, 333.

50  Picturing history 22 See Richardson’s ekphrasis of the cartoon, in his Essay on the Theory of Painting, 93–4. 23 Ronald Paulson, Hogarth Volume 2, High Art and Low, 1732–1750 (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1992) 343. 24 For a much broader context to kinesics, see Ray L. Birdwhistell’s pioneering works and particularly his Introduction to Kinesics: An annotation system for analysis of body motion and gesture (Louisville: University of Louisville, 1952). 25 See my chapter “Travelling images: Exchanging, adapting, appropriating illustrations for a History of England”, which analyses the processes used by Vertue to animate his heads of past rulers, in James Raven, ed., Exchanging Knowledge Globally (to be published by Boydell & Brewer). 26 Lockman, New History of England, 61–2. 27 Mortimer, New History of England, vol. 1, 203. 28 This is one of the very few unsigned plates in my corpus, and although it looks as though it has been engraved by a different hand, we have no reason to believe that it was not designed by Samuel Wale. 29 See Mortimer, New History of England, vol. 1, 94. 30 Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times. The Second Edition Corrected, vol. 3, (London: Darby, 1714) 346–91. The essay had first been published separately in 1713. 31 See the Paolo de’ Matteis, The Choice of Hercules at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, A1116. 32 See Louis Laguerre, The Battle of Blenheim, Royal Collection, RCIN 408442. 33 Lockman, New History of England, 181. 34 Mortimer, New History of England, vol. 2, 585. 35 See Edward Croft-Murray, “Isaac Fuller’s Paintings of Charles II’s Escape after the Battle of Worcester,” Archæologia 103 (1971): 199–212 and David H. Solkin, “Isaac Fuller’s Escape of Charles II: A Restoration Tragicomedy”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 62 (1999): 199–240. 36 Croft-Murray 208. 37 Croft-Murray 208 and Solkin, “Isaac Fuller’s Escape of Charles II: A Restoration Tragicomedy”, 203–4. 38 See Ecclesiae Anglicanae Trophaea (Rome: Bartholomæi Grassi, 1584). 39 See the drawing 1956,0512.2 in the British Museum collection. 40 As indicated in the title page of the second volume of his New History of England, Thomas Mortimer was English vice-consul for the Austrian Netherlands when he wrote his volumes, and he was hoping for a consulship, which he eventually failed to obtain. He had been sent to Ostend to hold this diplomatic position on the recommendation of John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich, who had himself become Secretary of State for the Northern Department when George Grenville had replaced the Earl of Bute in 1763. See Christabel Osborne, “Mortimer, Thomas (1730–1810)”, rev. Anne Pimlott Baker, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004) http://www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/19357 [Accessed July 29, 2016]. The dedications inscribed below Wale’s illustrations bear witness to Mortimer’s search for support among the Rockingham Whigs, and the author’s alignment with those hostile to Bute also sheds light upon his History being published by Isaac Fell who was a “zealous anti-Ministry bookseller and editor” according to Michael F. Suarez, S.J., ‘“This necessary knowledge’: Thomas Chatterton and the ways of the London book trade”, in Nick Groom, ed., Thomas Chatterton and Romantic culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999) 98. 41 See The Book of Common Prayer: The Liturgy of the Church of England; illustrated in fifty-nine historical and explanatory sculptures, engraved by Messrs. Ravenet, Grignion, Scotin, Canott, Walker, and W. Ryland. Published according to Act of Parliament May, first 1755 by Edwd. Ryland (London: Ryland, 1758). My suggestion that Chinnery was employed for writing the dedications of Mortimer’s plates can also be supported by a comparison with his calligraphy in William Chinnery, Writing and Drawing Made Easy, Amusing and Instructive (Kingston-upon-Thames, Bellamy, 1750?). 42 See unpaginated monuments in The Heads of the Kings of England, proper for Mr. Rapin’s History. 43 Louis Marin, On Representation. Translated by Catherine Porter (1994; Stanford: University of California Press, 2001) 357.

Picturing history 51 44 For details on the display of prints, see Clayton, “Book illustration and the world of prints”, 230. 45 See, for instance, his advert for the section of St. Paul’s Cathedral that he jointly published with John Gwynn in the London Evening Post, issue 4241, January 14–16, 1755. 46 See General Advertiser, issue 4460, February 9, 1748–1749. The project was first advertised without the list, see General Advertiser 4436, January 19, 1748–1749. 47 In April 1750, the publishers explained that due to the lack of subscribers, the project had to be amended, and subsequently launched a subscription for the first six plates only, See General Advertiser, issue 4842, April 28, 1750 and General Advertiser, issue 5122, March 22, 1750–1751. 48 See An Abridgement of the History of England. Being a Summary of Mr. Rapin’s History and Mr. Tindal’s Continuation, 3 vols. (London: John and Paul Knapton, 1747) and A Summary of the History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Death of King George Ist in The History of England by Mr Rapin de Thoyras continued from the Revolution to the Accession of King George II by Mr Tindal, M.A. Rector of Alverstoke in Hampshire and Chaplain to the Royal Hospital Greenwich. Illustrated with the Heads of the Queens and Kings, and several Eminent Persons; also with Maps, Medals and other Copper Plates, vol. IV part 2 (London: John and Paul Knapton, 1747) 274 pages paginated separately. 49 For the Knaptons’ and Dodsley’s adverts, see for instance The London Evening Post, issue 2990, January 1, 1747 and The General Advertiser, issue 4055, October 23, 1747. 50 See The General Advertiser, issue 5122, March 22, 1750–1751. 51 See Thomas Salmon, The Chronological Historian (London: Mears, 1723) unpaginated preface. 52 Nicolas Lenglet du Fresnoy, Chronological Tables of Universal History, sacred and profane, ecclesiastical and civil; from the creation of the world, to the year one thousand seven hundred and forty-three, 2 vols. (London: Millar et al., 1762) vol. 1, vii: “History is little more than romance to him who has no knowledge of the succession of events, the periods of dominion, and the distance between one great action and another.” 53 Lockman, New History of England, 1. As a useful summary of each reign, Lockman provides a list of dates at the beginning of each chapter. 54 See, for instance, Mortimer’s criticism of Rapin, New History of England, vol. 1, 49, and Sydney’s criticism of Bolingbroke, 548. 55 See Sam Smiles, Eye Witness. Artists and Visual Documentation in Britain, 1770–1830 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000) 21. Smiles argues that visual cognition was in itself the aim of those involved in the production of lavishly illustrated and reasonably priced volumes. 56 See for instance such directions in Mountague, vol. 1, 734, Sydney 810, and Russel 981. 57 See The General Advertiser, issue 4436, January 19, 1748–1749. 58 See General Advertiser, issue 4460, February 9, 1748–1749. 59 The Public Advertiser, issue 9100, January 3, 1764. 60 See the heroic depiction of the arrival of the conqueror on horseback, in a reversed setting by Nicolas-Bernard Lépicié, La descente de Guillaume le conquérant sur les côtes d’Angleterre, huile sur toile, 1764, Caen, Hôtel de ville (formerly Abbaye-aux-Hommes). 61 Mortimer, New History of England, vol. 1, 130. 62 Mortimer, New History of England, vol. 2, 525. 63 Mortimer, New History of England, vol. 1, 516. 64 [Richard Verstegan], A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence: In Antiquities. Concerning the most noble and renowned English Nation (Antwerp: Bruney, 1605) 144. 65 Mortimer, New History of England, vol. 1, 84. 66 See Kate Retford, The Conversation Piece: Making Modern Art in Eighteenth-century Britain (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2017) 65. 67 [Nicholas] Rowe, The Life and Character of Jane Shore. Collected from our Best Historians, chiefly from the writings of Sir Thomas More; Who was Her Contemporary and Personally knew Her. Humbly offer’d to the Readers and Spectators of Her Tragedy written by Mr. Rowe. Inscrib’d to Mrs Oldfield (London: Morphew and Dodd, 1714) 16. 68 [Nicholas] Rowe, The Life and Character of Jane Shore. Collected from our Best Historians, chiefly from the writings of Sir Thomas More; Who was Her Contemporary

52  Picturing history











and Personally knew Her. Humbly offer’d to the Readers and Spectators of Her Tragedy written by Mr. Rowe. Inscrib’d to Mrs Oldfield, the third edition (London: Lewis et al., 1714). 69 See the full title of the play: N[icholas] Rowe, The Tragedy of Jane Shore. Written in Imitation of Shakespear’s Style (London: Lintott, 1714). 70 Mortimer, New History of England, vol. 2, 110. 71 See Elizabeth Einberg, William Hogarth. A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2016) 24–6. 72 On the links between Hogarth’s engraving and Colley Cibber’s play, see Stuart Sillars, Painting Shakespeare. The Artist as Critic 1720–1820 (Cambridge and New York, NY: Cambridge UP, 2006) 41–6. 73 The History of England. Written originally in French by M. Rapin de Thoyras. Translated into English by Joseph Morgan, Gent. to which are added, Critical and Explanatory Notes; also Chronological and Genealogical tables (London: Mechell 1733); the head is placed at the beginning of the volume, before the opening chapter dedicated to Henry VIII’s reign. 74 See John Lockman, A Sketch of Spring Gardens in a Letter to a Noble Lord (London: Woodfall, 1750). 75 Maria Edgeworth and Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Practical Education, 2 vols. (London: Johnson, 1798) vol. 1, 349. 76 See William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, edited by Joseph Burke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955) 209. This definition of his art is found in his “Autobiographical Notes”. 77 This is how John Gay described the pictures he saw at Burlington House, see [John] Gay, Trivia: or the Art of Walking the Streets of London (London: Lintott, 1716) 44. 78 On the taste for such visual effects, see Ann Bermingham’s works, especially “Introduction: Gainsborough’s Show Box: Illusion and Special Effects in Eighteenth-Century Britain”, Huntington Library Quarterly, 70: 2 (June 2007) 203–8, and “Technologies of Illusion: De Loutherbourg’s Eidophusikon in Eighteenth-Century London”, Art History 39: 2 (2016) 376–99. 79 On how murals were experienced, see Lydia Hamlett, Mural Painting in Britain 1630–1730: Experiencing Histories (London: Taylor and Francis, 2020). 80 Some adverts for these shows can be found in the Scrapbook of Advertisements, Broadsides, Poetry, Newspaper Clippings, etc. 1745–1838 at the Lewis Walpole Library, Folio 66 748 Sc43, 54. 81 Erkki Huhtamo has traced the first occurrence of the word in an article about the spectacle offered by Robert Barker, with whom the emergence of panoramas is usually related, published in The Oracle, issue 624, dated May 18, 1791, but has documented the word as being coined between 1787 and 1791. See Erkki Huhtamo, Illusions in Motion. Media Archaeology of the Moving Panorama and Related Spectacles (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 2013) notes 2, 21. 82 Huhtamo 8–14. 83 See Huhtamo, who mentions a ten-meter-long picture roll, produced in Augsburg by a printer called Albrecht Schmidt, and consisting of 56 Biblical engravings, 15 and 56. 84 See London Evening Post, issue 3702, July 9–11, 1751 and the six views in the Yale Center for British Art Collections (B1978.43.1105–10). The title on one of the prints is “Six Perspective Designs for the Concave Mirrour” with the mention that they were published according to an Act of Parliament on April 16, 1751, and that they were sold for three shillings. The wording of the advert reading “Six new perspective Designs, for the Concave Mirror or Camera”, its publication date, and price are consistent with the information on the print. 85 Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer. On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (1990; Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 1992) 19. 86 See Carlo Alberto Minici Zotti, Il mondo nuovo: le meraviglie della visione dall’ 700 alla nascita del cinema (Milano: Mazzotta, 1988). 87 Clayton, The English Print 140.

2

Reinventing the past

Showing history like a spectacle and staging historical scenes where characters gesture expressively at one another assumed the existence of a public able to interpret and discuss the actions represented. The constant reworking of Samuel Wale’s list of illustrations over two decades and the plates’ numerous reissues together with the names of hundreds of subscribers spreading over dozens of pages confirm sustained interest among diverse viewers. Part of the appeal of Wale’s historical illustrations certainly lay in the novelty of a device that offered an unprecedented visualisation of national history. But their lasting success tends to prove that generations of viewers kept looking at these historical images long after their novelty wore off. This chapter questions the perceived relevance of those historical illustrations, exploring how they were constructed as factual traces of the past. For these prints were supposed to illustrate facts – deeds and feats involving real historical persons – and their very factuality primarily stemmed from the textual passages they were supposed to illustrate. Barbara Shapiro has shown that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, “Statements of the historian’s own impartiality and lack of bias were rhetorical commonplaces that accompanied most historical productions.”1 Unsurprisingly, the writers who produced the historical narratives illustrated by Wale put themselves forward as impartial and trustworthy writers, hence as reliable spokesmen for history in the books’ titles, dedications, addresses to the public and prefaces. 2 These paratextual elements, whereby Thomas Mortimer, William Henry Mountague, Temple Sydney, or William Augustus Russel engaged more directly with readers, forcefully argued in favour of the faithfulness of their historical accounts. Moreover, the recurrence of the adjective “authentic,” under their pen, signalled that their narratives could be trusted. As in every other period of history, the authors of those texts complied with culturally informed and socially conditioned notions of historical truth, and so did the designers of illustrative plates who were employed to reinforce the authority of historical texts. As iconotextual documents, composed of framed and captioned iconographic representations, Wale’s illustrations also featured words of their own. Tellingly the very wording of those captions and their grammatical structure underscores the impartiality of the discourse and reinforces the impression of neutrality. Indeed, most captions are simple subject-verb structures; apart from the objective mention of nationalities (Roman, Norman, British, etc.), they very seldom include adjectives that could denote a narrator’s subjective appreciation or judgement.3 Those seemingly anonymous captions, giving the names and actions of the characters presented on the images, thus sound like purely factual depictions of the events shown on the images. But how was DOI: 10.4324/9781003245445-3

54  Reinventing the past the factuality of those representations fabricated visually? How did the artist manage to introduce visual features that could be seen as visual tokens of historical truth? This chapter dwells on Wale’s visual construction of factuality and authenticity, on its cultural foundations and social implications. The historians he illustrated all situated the authenticity of their narratives in their careful selection of sources, justifying the trust of their readers through the use of authentic records. Evidence of this use was to be found in the abundant footnotes crammed at the bottom of their pages, where sources were identified and presented as reliable. There, details of former histories and accounts were jumbled together with references to oaths, speeches, coins, medals, or monuments. These exposed, in small characters, the very matter of history, textual and material sources, documents, and artefacts long studied by scholars. In the eighteenth century, the interest in material traces of the past was shared by historians and antiquarians, who both assiduously sought to establish historical trust through facts. It was also increasingly shared by artists and Wale was able to dwell on this “culture of fact,” studied by Barbara Shapiro, to try and visualise the material life of the past. This chapter argues that Wale’s reinvention of the past was built upon new representations of monuments, costumes, and objects. Used as powerfully evocative elements of context, they helped to show characters in very different settings. Each plate offered a different view including houses, churches, castles, or palaces in a wide range of styles, as well as furnishings and dresses of varying fashion. In an age characterised by the proliferation of things and by the paramount importance given to how those things defined individual and collective identities, the recreation of a past material environment was not done haphazardly but with the intent to describe that which could be deemed appropriate to the time, place, action, and characters depicted. The skill with which Wale meticulously distinguished each individual setting through its material characteristics aimed at a form of visual factuality much sought after by painters. Indeed, decorum, an ancient rhetorical category that had been transposed into aesthetics since the Renaissance, precisely drew artists’ attention to the necessary concordance between the specific figures or objects represented and their context. In eighteenth-century Britain, this harmonious selection of features, dress, and expressions was presented to the public – alongside other traditional art-historical tenets – by Jonathan Richardson who set out to articulate continental artistic theories for British connoisseurs, art collectors, and, most importantly, for fellow painters. Explaining that painters “must moreover know the Forms of the Arms, the Habits, Customs, Buildings &c. of the Age, and Countrey, in which the thing was transacted,”4 Richardson proposed that decorum should be understood in historical terms. In keeping with his notion of the liberal dignity of painters, informed by the parallel between painters and historians developed throughout his Essay, he thus interpreted decorum in a historicist manner, as a means to achieve chronological congruity in visual media. In his perspective, the painter was to share the historian’s commitment to truth and express it in his accurate rendering of factual details: History must not be corrupted, and turn’d into Fable, or Romance: Every Person, and Thing must be made to sustain its proper Character; and not only the Story, but the Circumstances must be observ’d, the Scene of Action, the Countrey, or Place, the Habits, Arms, Manners, Proportions, and the like, must correspond. This is call’d the observing the Costûme.5

Reinventing the past 55 As Richardson’s wording reminds us, etymologically both “habit” and “costume” implied clothing worn traditionally or regularly, and as such were used by painters to show elements of “customs.” Specific garments were a compelling expression of gender, status, place, or character and, from Jonathan Richardson to Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), the respect of decorum, or “costume,” was deemed by the British artistic community to be of overriding importance. It is central in the Treatise on Ancient Painting written by Scottish teacher George Turnbull who, like his contemporary Richardson, finds in Raphael’s cartoons prime examples of how to choose the most adequate expressions, settings, or ornaments. Like Richardson, Turnbull continued to advocate scrupulous historicist alignment: “[…] the Action painted ought to be told with such a strict regard to the accidental costume that the Subject and Scene may be easily distinguished by those who are versed in History.”6 Impelled by the widespread interest for history and by the liberal aspirations of British artists, rules on decorum became a practical concern among the next generation of British artists who, like William Hogarth and Francis Hayman at the Foundling Hospital or Vauxhall Gardens, laid great emphasis on the historical features specific to the actual period represented on their canvases. As Hayman’s assistant and fellow member of St Martin’s Lane Academy, Wale was undoubtedly cognisant of discussions on, and experiments in, the reconstructive qualities of painted representations of events. He had seen both Hogarth’s and Hayman’s biblical canvases representing the finding of the infant Moses, as well as Hayman’s pictorial celebration of British heroes of the Seven Years’ War. In addition to quoting from much larger history paintings, Wale applied to his small historical drawings the compositional guidelines followed by painters who had endorsed Richardson’s theories. Aiming at giving an accurate visual representation of facts, one that was believable, not a complete fancy, he invented a whole material past that presented the semblance of authenticity. In this way, viewers of Wale’s historical designs were therefore granted access to a past they could reclaim in images for the present. As this chapter further explores the events selected for reconstruction in our corpus of plates – and particularly the notable emphasis on what we would call today “medieval” subjects – it dwells on the visual production of a past aimed at validating the Georgian present. In keeping with the distinctively Whig approach underpinning pictorial histories, the plates under study staged a dialogue between past and present. Drawing on Anthony D. Smith, I situate the creative process at play in the reconstruction of past events within the “modern desire to authenticate the past” in order to share it.7 For obvious commercial reasons, but also because history had become the primary vehicle through which the very idea of national identity was advanced, these plates had to achieve consensus in order to be widely shared. The final part of this chapter is thus dedicated to the various ways of sharing the past visualised in these book illustrations.

Authenticating the visual past Early antiquarians undoubtedly pioneered the reconstruction of the past. From the seventeenth century, scholars and collectors started amassing objects, recording, and describing monuments that could yield precious historical details. As the practice of history became more scientific over the following centuries, antiquarian achievements were belittled and antiquarians became figures of ridicule.8 This negative view

56  Reinventing the past of antiquarianism, predicated upon the opposition between amateur and professional pursuits of history,9 has however been addressed by scholars who, from Arnaldo Momigliano’s groundbreaking essay in the 1950s to Peter N. Miller’s recent volume, through to Francis Haskell’s and Rosemary Sweet’s works,10 have consistently been concerned with redeeming the legacy of antiquarianism in archaeology and history, as well as in other disciplines such as art history or even the social sciences.11 Antiquarians’ distinctive engagement with material sources brought them into disrepute in the nineteenth century, only to help rescue their contribution to historical research in the twentieth. Indeed, since the 1980s, the development of cultural history has brought to the fore the study of practices, of the physical environment, of objects, of things even, and has challenged traditional disciplinary boundaries. The gradual tendency to include a wider variety of sources and methodologies together with a more experimental approach to historical research has thus proved more congenial to the antiquarian legacy and has, in the words of Stephen Bann, helped “to see phenomenon of antiquarianism with fresh eyes”.12 Wale lived at a time of intense antiquarian activity in Britain, at the very moment highlighted by Arnaldo Momigliano’s research and explored by Rosemary Sweet. In the first decades of the eighteenth century, it became widely accepted that history could be approached not only through texts but through physical remains of the past. One of the leading authorities on education, French historian Charles Rollin, did state that antiquities “contribute[d] very much to the perfect understanding of history.”13 In London, antiquarians and artists gathered in each other’s vicinity, in coffee houses and taverns on both sides of Lincoln’s Inns Fields. Furthermore, members of the Society of Antiquaries and those of the early London academies shared a common interest in the development of visual media. Studies of antiquarianism show that artists and draughtsmen played a crucial part in the dissemination of antiquarian knowledge through images, for illustrations were considered as “evidence in their own right.”14 George Vertue gained prominence in this field following his appointment as official engraver to the newly revived Society of Antiquaries in 1717. As a founding member, he was the only artist to enjoy the status of fellow as well. From 1747 until his death, he produced all the illustrative material for the Vetusta Monumenta, the first series of papers published by the Society of Antiquaries. He was succeeded by James Basire (1730–1802) who also went on to illustrate Archaeologia, the Society’s journal from 1770. Wale was familiar with Vertue, a leading figure of the artistic community he belonged to, and was likewise well acquainted with Basire, a fellow member of the St Martin’s Lane Academy. The three artists were employed one after the other to design, or engrave, plates of archaeological interest for the hugely popular Oxford Almanack.15 Even though Wale was not himself employed by the Society of Antiquaries, his earliest known works are plates of antiquarian interest: in 1745, a dozen illustrations drawn by him, showing Greek and Roman antiquities, were published for traveller Richard Pococke’s acclaimed Description of the East.16 That same year, Wale published two additional plates aimed at the antiquarian market: they represented the monument of Hugh le Despencer and his wife, Elizabeth Montague, at Tewkesbury Abbey – then believed to be the tomb and effigies of George Plantagenet, the first Duke of Clarence and his wife Isabel Neville.17 These plates are a testimony to Wale’s readiness to endorse the role of visualiser of antiquarian finds from his debut. He was moreover employed in this capacity by Horace Walpole who commissioned him to

Reinventing the past 57 draw the marble eagle in his collection – found near the Baths of Caracalla in 1742 – in order to distribute the plate among his friends. Wale was thus aware that antiquarians considered things as evidence and that their endeavours informed engagements with the past in eighteenth-century Britain. Being himself involved in the development of visual cognition, he knew that images showing faithful depictions of antiquities could be looked at as factual representations of the past and thus convey different historical atmospheres. The historical illustrations he designed, often advertised as “curious” plates, promoted a new way to visualise the past, one that resonated with current trends in antiquarianism but one that should not be confused with it. Indeed, his decorative designs included careful reconstructions of monuments, furniture, weapons, or dress that were associated with single events. However, even though they demonstrated Wale’s familiarity with the matter of history, they could not be mistaken for proper antiquarian plates; the material environment shown was invented by an artist often celebrated as “ingenious.”18 His inventions presented a suitable image of the past, adapted to the eye of the Georgian public. Actualising the past in such an antiquarian fashion led him to build an imaginative material environment that had the semblance of truth and where the tangible bodies of past Britons could be located. In connecting bodies, objects, and periods, Wale was striving for verisimilitude, once again abiding by a fundamental rule in academic training and calling on a kind of realism much discussed by early novel writers. Like Henry Fielding or Samuel Richardson, the draughtsman used a descriptive style to weave the very narrative fabric of his historical illustrations.

Reconstructing dress and monuments As explained in Chapter 1, illustrations bound in pictorial histories fulfilled a cognitive purpose and supported the whole chronological intent of such publications. From one event to another, the material environment evolves and dress, especially, is used on engraved plates as a visual time marker outlining the very idea of change. In an age fascinated by the symbolic connections between dress and identity, by the many ways to dress up, down or to cross-dress, locating the gist of a particular period in its garments certainly resonated with readers of illustrated histories. As they flipped through the pages, the chronological timeline materialised through a succession of sartorial moments in which characters are presented wearing different outfits, accessories, or hair styles. Far from being clad in timeless, classical, and identical draperies, historical figures are shown in a wide array of different dress. This differentiation is not fortuitous and, through his consistent handling of it, Wale manages to show chronological sequencing with costumes: Romans set their sandaled foot on British soil, wearing helmets, body armours, and belts over short tunics; these pieces of garments clearly distinguish them from the ancient Britons they conquered, who are portrayed naked or clad in shapeless pieces of cloth. With the dawning of the so-called Saxon age, Britons are clad in longer, loose tunics and cloaks, often worn with capes and leather boots, while women are shown covering their hair. The Norman Conquest is equated with the arrival of men in short breeches, while ermine collars become distinctive ornaments for kings, and bishops are identified through their embroidered copes and mitres. Towards the fourteenth century, medieval garments appear tighter fitting: women’s waistlines are emphasised with belts, while men wear shorter cloaks over hoses with shirts and embroidered jackets. Tudor and Stuart dress is described

58  Reinventing the past in ever greater details: women’s outfits are structured with stiff bodices and farthingales; men are shown wearing short breeches over hose, tight-fitting doublets with wide sleeves and finer shoes. Attires are further refined with hoods for women, bonnets for men, and ruffs and heavy brocades for both. Accessories are key to the differentiation between Tudor and Stuart scenes: in the seventeenth century, cuffs and collars are laced, hats plumed, and shoes buckled. Hair styles also help picture political affiliations with royalists wearing lovelocks, whereas Cromwell and his partisans display their round heads and their closely cropped hair. Examined today from a historian’s perspective, those different outfits look like fancy approximations of past dresses, rarely exceeding the mere tokenism of historical periodisation. However, in the heyday of eighteenth-century fancy dressing, when newspapers were full of adverts for subscription masquerades and costume warehouses, period costume was part of a vibrant visual culture flourishing in the streets of modern cities, in theatres, both public and private, in pleasure gardens as well as on canvases or book pages. The blatant imperfections of Wale’s historical costumes should not conceal their appeal, nor the artist’s genuine concern for verisimilitude that underpinned all aspects of their design. Evidence of this can be found in the careful use of paintings as sources for costumes. In this respect, Wale’s more precise, albeit schematic, rendition of Tudor and Stuart clothing reflects the better availability of iconographic sources on those more recent periods. On The Act of Union presented to Queen Anne, by the Duke of Queensberry & Dover (see fig 2.1), one of the very rare visual representations of the subject, the queen’s dress is an evocation of the state robes depicted by Godfrey Kneller on his portraits of the last Stuart monarch. Like the many engraved reproductions of Kneller’s portraits, it shows the crowned queen in her ermine-lined cloak, wearing a heavy pearl necklace and the chain of the Garter. Further realism is achieved through the care taken to convey the queen’s actual physical features: her stoutness is made apparent in the fullness of her face and the plumpness of her arms and hands. Other plates can be directly reworked from earlier representations: Charles I taking leave of his Children is a sentimental farewell scene borrowed from the engraving of the same title, based on Jean Raoux’s painting (see fig 2.2), for the Bowles brothers’ Life of Charles I in 1728.19 Wale adapted the large horizontal composition to the reduced vertical size of the book page but faithfully copied the elements of the three characters’ dress. Yet, instead of displaying the king’s bejewelled hat prominently on the table – as on Raoux’s composition – he has placed it on a chair in the foreground. Together with the cloak that is falling from the seat on to the floor, the hat seems to have been thrown down in haste. Aligned with the door, left open behind the king and his children, this disorderly heap of garments fulfils a major narrative role, encapsulating the dramatic nature of this moment lived on borrowed time. For his Dutch Ambassadors implore Assistance of Queen Elizabeth, Wale adapted more freely a representation of the encounter between Elizabeth I and the Dutch ambassadors, sometimes attributed to Levina Teerlinc (c. 1510-1576). Indeed, his repurposing of the original led him to zoom in on the right half of the painting so as to focus on the diplomatic encounter, 20 and to throw an ermine-lined cloak over the queen’s dress, while scattering a few Elizabethan-looking touches such as her ruff, earrings and hood with billiment. Similarly, his portrayal of Henry VIII borrows both from existing painted and printed materials. Wale dresses the Tudor monarch in the exact same ermine-lined cloak on the five plates on which he portrays him: Marriage of

Reinventing the past 59

Figure 2.1  Samuel Wale, The Act of Union presented to Queen Anne, by the Duke of Queensberry & Dover originally designed for William H. Mountague’s New and Universal History of England (1771–1772), here its reissue in William Augustus Russel’s New and Authentic History of England (1777) Source:  Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

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Figure 2.2  Jean Raoux, King Charles Taking Leave of his Children, c. 1721, oil on canvas, 63.5 × 76.2 cm, private collection Source:  Photo © Christie’s Images / Bridgeman Images

Anne Bullen to Henry VIII, Cromwell Presenting the First Translation of ye Bible in English to Henry VIII, Thomas Lord Cromwell presenting the Picture of Anne of Cleves to Henry VIII, Bishop Gardiner coming with a Guard to Seize Catherine Parr Who was walking in the Garden with Henry VIII, and Dutch Ambassadors implore Assistance of Queen Elizabeth. On the plates where the royal costume is most detailed, Henry VIII wears a plumed flat cap, a thick doublet with slashed sleeves under his ermine-lined brocaded cloak, a garter fastened around his leg below the knee and duckbill shoes, all obviously derived from Holbein’s depictions of the monarch’s costume. On the plate showing Queen Elizabeth I’s meeting with the Dutch ambassadors, Wale has actually inserted the tutelary figure of the queen’s father in the form of a painting within the engraving, a large full-length, full-frontal portrait of the king hanging on the wall. Here again, Henry VIII’s assertive posture, legs astride, hands on hips, is a direct allusion to the famous Whitehall mural, painted by Hans Holbein (1497–1543), in 1537, and from which so many likenesses of the monarch were copied. Although the original wall painting had been destroyed by fire in 1698, it was well-known through a reduced copy made by Remigius van Leemput (1607–1675) for Charles II in 1667. In 1737, George Vertue reproduced this smaller canvas in watercolour and used his reproduction as a basis

Reinventing the past 61 for an etching sold in a series of four historical portraitures showing former British rulers. 21 Around the same time, a portrait of Henry in a similar fashion was painted on the canvas staging his marriage to Ann Boleyn, and this hung in the Spring Gardens at Vauxhall. 22 Our assumption that Wale’s own representation of the wedding was modelled on the Vauxhall composition seems to be supported by the study of costumes. On that scene, as well as on all five on which he portrayed Henry VIII, the king wears a cloak lined with ermine fur (like the one he is decked out with on another portrait, also derived from the canonical Whitehall mural, now at Petworth). 23 This contrasts with the sable fur that seems to be lining the royal cloak on the copies of the Whitehall mural itself by van Leemput or Vertue. A small detail of Henry VIII’s costume further evinces Wale’s concern for verisimilitude: on both Cromwell Presenting the First Translation of ye Bible in English to Henry VIII and Bishop Gardiner coming with a Guard to Seize Catherine Parr Who was walking in the Garden with Henry VIII, he added a walking stick to the king’s attire. As Wale realistically records Henry VIII’s weight gain, he also represents the king using the staff on the plates visualising events supposed to have taken place after the jousting accident that triggered the king’s dramatic physical decline. Beyond a mere reference to the monarch’s deteriorating health, the accessory, widely recognised as a social status symbol among the eighteenth-century royalty and nobility, may also have been used as a sign of authority and as a reminder of Henry VIII’s reputation as a Tudor fashion icon. Moreover, urban legends surrounding Henry VIII’s “walking staff,” a new light weapon he promoted, 24 may also have induced Wale to include the picture of a somewhat Georgian-looking walking cane in his composition as an object that could conjure up vivid details from the life of the Tudor monarch and convince viewers that these were faithful and accurate reconstructions of historical events. These examples provide an idea of Wale’s method and show how he dwelled on an extensive visual culture to achieve periodicity in costumes. Like George Vertue, he obviously considered painting as a trace and repository of past truths laid out empirically on flat surfaces. Vertue had on several occasions praised the authoritative quality of such images, for instance in the presentation of his volume of heads, 25 and in the advert for his four historical portraitures where he stated that his aim was to paint the “habits of those times” with “great exactness.”26 Wale lived and worked at a time when British artists adopted an increasingly historicised approach to costume. Since the last decades of the sixteenth century, and the publication of François Desprez’s Recueil de la diversité des habits or Cesare Vecellio’s De gli Habiti Antichi e Moderni di Diversi Parti del Mondo, the notion that dressing habits epitomised change had become widely accepted. In eighteenth-century Britain, the convergence between fashion, commerce, and historical vision gave even more wide-spread currency to that notion, as Timothy Campbell has recently shown. 27 Tellingly, Wale’s compositions are more historicised than La Cave’s vignettes on which classical-style breastplates are ubiquitous. Even Wale’s first set of illustrations for Lockman, where King Alfred’s dress does not look very different from Edward I’s, can be seen as a first, tentative step towards the more apparent chronological sequencing achieved in his subsequent sets. Over the nearly 20 years that separated Lockman’s set from Mortimer’s, Wale was given the opportunity to perfect his costume skills with at least two commissions: the 1760 edition of Izaak Walton’s Compleat Angler and William Guthrie’s Complete History of

62  Reinventing the past the Peerage. The latter was the most successful work of the Scottish-born historian and man of letter. It narrated glorious episodes in the lives of contemporary English peers and their ancestors. For each family, Wale designed a vignette illustrating a particularly remarkable event which, once engraved, was placed at the end of each family’s record. Despite not being presented on full pages but rather in the form of small tailpieces, these images were beautifully detailed, framed with decorative surrounds, and they displayed many detailed costumes. 28 The Compleat Angler was even more focused on dress since the plates designed by Wale, and engraved by William Wynne Ryland (1732–1783), for this new edition published by John Hawkins, were universally advertised for showing “figures dress’d in the habits of the time when it was written.”29 Indeed the full-page narrative scenes that visually document the eponymous angler’s adventures show Piscator and his companions in typical 1650s fashion, with a falling linen collar over their short dark coats, looking not unlike Izaak Walton himself did on the portrait Jacob Huysmans (c.1633-1696) painted of him. 30 The characters are seen wearing black high-crowned hats, as are some of the women they encounter (the innkeeper and the milkmaid’s mother for instance) who appropriately wear such headwears over white caps covering their hair. Here too, Wale’s historical style came in support of the publisher’s project, for Hawkins intended to denounce the incorrectness of Moses Browne’s 1750 rival edition, which had just been reissued in 1759. In the first publication of Walton’s classic since 1676, Browne had produced a modernised text illustrated with plates, engraved by Henry Burgh (active c. 1750), showing the male characters in eighteenth-century knee-length coats worn over long waistcoats, and with tricornes, or flat hats on their heads. Hawkins’ criticism of Browne’s editorial liberties is latent in the opening pages of his 1760 Compleat Angler where he dwells on the distance that separates himself and his readers from Walton and his contemporaries. An author with antiquarian interest, especially in music, Hawkins invokes the lost memory of the “persons,” “facts,” and “modes of living” of the previous century in order to bring an awareness of the passing of time to readers. 31 With his historicised dresses, Wale further contributed to visualising the “retrospect to the time when the author lived” required by Hawkins. 32 At the end of the 1750s, Wale started specialising in historical effects through his work on costume. His piecing together verisimilar past dress coincided with the publication of Thomas Jefferys’s first volume of his Collection of the Dresses of Different Nations, Antient and Modern in 1757. As indicated in the full title of his costume history, Jefferys based his drawings of dress on old paintings, thus sharing the method outlined by Vertue and followed by Wale. 33 Jefferys’s first delivery highlights his reliance on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century paintings, for the most ancient dresses featured in this volume do not go beyond Henry VII’s reign. Before Jefferys completed his Collection, with the inclusion of more ancient, so-called “Saxon” dress in his fourth volume, in 1772, and before antiquarian Joseph Strutt’s exploration of illuminated manuscript sources led him to publish his Compleat View of the Manners, Customs, Arms, Habits &c. of the Inhabitants of England, between 1774 and 1776, Wale therefore pioneered in fashioning the British past through an extensive historical view of British costume. As a designer employed to delineate historical accounts stretching over eighteen centuries, he attempted to define a chronology of British dress that could span that whole period. Having to provide visualisations of events arranged in the exact order of time led him to

Reinventing the past 63 try and particularise clothing as best as he could. But, given the paucity of primary material, the reconstruction of the most ancient costume proved most arduous and most inventive. Drawing on all available means directed Wale towards the London stage at a time when ties between painting and the theatre were much closer. The growing popularity of Shakespeare was consonant with antiquarian concerns, for the Elizabethan playwright was widely celebrated for having written “histories” centring on the reigns and actions of actual British monarchs. By the mid-1750s, painters immortalised in conversation pieces the growing desire to stage Shakespeare’s historical drama with a mounting degree of historical authenticity, especially in costume. The search for historicised dress also applied to the illustrative plates that were added to the several complete editions of the Bard’s works published at the time. While ancient clothes were missing and primary material was inaccessible, Wale thus found a fount of visual material in those illustrated editions of Shakespeare’s history plays. Tellingly, his first representation of the battle of Agincourt superimposes two such previous illustrations: one by François Boitard (1670–1715), engraved by Elisha Kirkall (c. 1682–1742) for Nicholas Rowe’s 1709 edition (replicated by Duguernier in the 1714 edition), and the other by Francis Hayman, engraved by Gravelot, for Thomas Hanmer’s 1743 edition. 34 The plate entitled Henry 5th defeats the French at Agincourt, made by Wale for Lockman in the mid-1740s, borrows from Boitard the focus on the two princes – seen fighting on foot and not on horseback – and brings viewers into the thick of the battle. However, instead of adopting the French engraver’s perspective, and setting the clash against a bird’s eye view of the contending armies, Wale situates the fight in the vicinity of the camp depicted by Hayman on his Hanmer plate, and on the version, the latter painted and exhibited, around 1745, in the Prince’s Pavilion at Vauxhall. 35 Looming behind the two kings portrayed by Wale are the cone-shaped tops of cloth tents recalling those Hayman placed directly behind Henry V on his composition. The inspiration Wale drew from Hayman’s plate is even more obvious in his King Henry 5th Names the Battle of Agincourt, made for Mortimer, which shows the victorious monarch standing in full armour (see fig 2.3). Although spanning nearly 40 years, the three illustrations by Boitard, Hayman, and Wale show the English hero clad in a very similar armour, equipped with the same cuirass, flexible cuisses (composed of overlapping pieces), poleyns covering his knees, and sabatons on his feet. In a subsequent reworking of the subject for Mountague, 25 years later, Wale added more details, already extant on the earlier Boitard plate, such as the plumed helmet, fully articulated gauntlets, and rowel spurs attached to the sabatons. This very armoured figure also made an apparition, quite literally, in Hayman’s depiction of a Hamlet performance, where the Ghost (played by Lacy Ryan wearing the suit of armour) dramatically enters the scene, to the horror of Gertrude and Hamlet (played by Mary Elmy and Spranger Barry, both in plain eighteenth-century clothes).36 The latter painting may hint at the armour’s belonging to stock theatrical clothing – if we were to take Hayman’s composition for a faithful representation of actual performance – but establishes at the same time this particular medieval armour as a visual expression of the past. The continuous re-emergence of this knight in shining armour in various images supposed to illustrate the past calls into question its wide currency. The connection that can be established between the suit of armour adopted by Boitard, Hayman, and Wale and the fully armoured figure on horseback (wearing a plumed helmet, cuirass, flexible gauntlets, and cuisses, as

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Figure 2.3  Samuel Wale, King Henry 5th names the Battle of Agincourt, illustration made for Thomas Mortimer’s New History of England (1764–1766) Source:  Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library

well as poleyns and rowel-spurred sabatons) found on a seventeenth-century plate entitled The Manner of the Champions Performing the Ceremony of the Challenge is quite enlightening. Originally engraved by Nicholas Yeates (active 1669–1686) for Francis Sandford’s History of the Coronation of the Most High, Most Mighty and Most Excellent Monarch James II, published in 1687, it was reissued in the visual account of the coronation of King George II in 1727. 37 Both books explain in identical terms that it pictures the moment when the King’s Champion throws his gauntlet in order to symbolically challenge any opposition to the new monarch. As related in those written accounts of both coronations, the King’s Champion performed the ceremony “completely armed, in one of his Majesty’s best Suits of white Armour, mounted on a goodly white Horse, richly Caparisoned,” wearing a “helmet

Reinventing the past 65 on his head with a great Plume of Feathers, White, Blue, and Red.”38 Visual artists striving to dress their historical characters in a verisimilar fashion had more than one reason to hold this source in particular regard. It documented a royal pageantry display that originated in a medieval custom, a tradition reiterated with each coronation. The sense of continuity it imparted was heightened by the fact that this feudal hereditary office had been held by the Dymoke family since the fourteenth century. This fact was known to Wale who made a plate to celebrate it, thus bringing further proof of his acquaintance with that custom and its iconography. His John Dimmock Performing the Ceremony of the Champion’s Challenge at the Coronation of Richard II in Westminster Hall, made for Mountague, pictures the first performance of the challenge, which allegedly took place in 1377. Through a mere repurposing of the Yeates’s template, and by moving the action a few yards further inside Westminster Hall, Wale emphasises the genealogy of the event while vindicating the authenticity of the representation. The champion who performed this ceremony allowed the public witnessing it to reach back to the past visually, through his ritual gesture involving a piece of clothing, and through the original medieval suit of armour he wore. It is no wonder that this outfit resurfaces in Hayman’s representation of Hamlet, as it does on the 1727 reissue of Yeates’s plate (on which all the characters surrounding the champion wear updated clothes), for that particular knight could stand as a personification of the ghostly presence of the past in the present. The knight also encapsulated one of the very few instances in which authentic ancient clothes, which had survived the test of time (partly of course because they were made of metal rather than textile), were worn in public. Wale’s use and reuses of this armour to clad William the Conqueror, Edward III at Crécy, Henry V at Agincourt and even Edward IV, in King Edward the 4th Striking Edward Prince of Wales with his Gauntlet, point to the absence of a coherent historiographical approach to what became later known as the “Middle Ages.” Against this backdrop, quoting the representation of a genuine armour, which could be viewed as an accurate trace of the past, was a means for visual artists to increase the realism of their historical compositions. Through a mix of accuracy and invention, even the smallest accessories, and seemingly futile details, played their part in the overall construction of historical realism. When he redesigned the capture of Guy Fawkes outside the vaults of Parliament, Wale reversed and enhanced the scene he had originally made for Lockman. Guy Fawkes Seiz’d by order of Sr. Tho. s Knevet, made for Mountague (see fig 2.4), stages the discovery of the main conspirator more dramatically than his earlier Gunpowder Plot. The revised version foregrounds Thomas Knyvett, emphasising his command, and paints shock on Fawkes’s face as he is trying to resist the arrest. In addition, it features a new object, a lantern placed in Fawkes’s right hand, and about to be seized by one of his arresters. With its cylindrical body and fluted conical top, the specific shape of this lantern was reproduced from the so-called “Guy Fawkes’ lantern” held in the collection of the University of Oxford in the eighteenth century. Supposedly taken from Guy Fawkes by Peter Heywood (portrayed doing exactly that on the plate), who had accompanied Thomas Knyvett in his search for the conspirators, the iron lantern was then passed to Heywood’s brother, Robert, who was a Proctor at Oxford and who presented the relic to the university in 1641.39 Displayed in the Bodleian Library picture gallery alongside pictures, medals, coins, and other curiosities, it was well-known in antiquarian circles. No doubt, the widely assumed authenticity of the

66  Reinventing the past

Figure 2.4  Samuel Wale, Guy Fawkes Seiz’d by order of S r. Tho. s Knevet, illustration made for William H. Mountague’s New and Universal History of England, reissued in Temple Sydney’s New and Complete History of England (1773) Source:  ©Look and Learn / Bridgeman Images

lantern, with its evocative power, could convince viewers that the scene depicted on the book plate was true and accurate. Despite their inconsistencies, Wale’s patchy reconstructions of historical dress included many details, such as Guy Fawkes’s lantern, that could be deemed exact and truthful by eighteenth-century viewers. His striving for authenticity, shared by fellow artists and early costume historians such as Jefferys, can be seen as an early sign of the dawning of the historicism more commonly associated with nineteenth-­ century paintings.40 Wale’s attempt at retracing temporal changes through material culture led him to develop a new documentary aesthetics in which his claims

Reinventing the past 67 to authenticity were predominantly played out through his handling of both dress and buildings. Of course, the greater durability of stonework (again over textile) made it comparatively easier for artists to find empirical evidence in the centuries-­ old churches, palaces, or castles spread across the country. Even though Wale cannot be credited for giving accurate depictions of buildings over a period of more than a thousand years, he was attentive to periodicity. In line with the considerable expertise in architectural drawing he had acquired, he gave Saxon, Norman, and Plantagenet buildings features that could be differentiated from otherwise recognisable Tudor and Stuart elements. By the early 1760s, while authoring perspective views of virtual cityscapes that were key to the development of immersive visual leisure, Wale also designed some of the most accurate records of iconic London venues (such as Vauxhall Gardens) and monuments (such as St. Paul’s cathedral or the church of St. Stephen Walbrook). Praised for their superior exactitude, his views were well received and, their subsequent reissues testify to the sustained interest of both the public and of booksellers. Most prominent in the book business, Robert Dodsley repeatedly employed Wale and gave him the opportunity to show the full extent of his topographical skills when he entrusted him with the complete illustrative material of his new London guide. For Dodsley’s London and its Environs, Wale made over 80 “views in perspective” of public buildings as well as private seats, from churches to bridges through hospitals and palaces, ancient and modern, all of which contribute to display a unique glimpse of the capital. On the title pages of the six volumes of London and Its Environ, Dodsley pledges that all the views in perspective were “engraved from original drawings, taken on purpose for this work”. The same compelling argument is reproduced in the work’s preface and in the adverts for it, hammering home the idea that Wale’s perfectly accurate drawings were all originals and specifically made for Dodsley’s publication.41 The rationale behind this presentation was undoubtedly promotional and aimed at praising the novelty of Dodsley’s guide over William Maitland’s survey, that had been regularly re-edited since 1739 with a “variety of fine cuts” by William Henry Toms (1724–1765).42 More recent, more numerous, and unified by their common layout, Wale’s prospects gave a more comprehensive, panoramic, view of London. As a sequence, the plates he made for Dodsley amount to a formidable catalogue of styles celebrating London’s landmarks, both metropolitan and suburban. The rendering is notably different from Toms’s mostly impossible bird’s eye views or from that of antiquarian drawings, for it does not isolate each building. The topographical accuracy coupled with the perspective format adopted by Wale result in a collection of clearly outlined vedute, showcasing buildings within their surroundings, as parts of the urban fabric. These are enlivened by human figures, horses, or carriages that contribute to give a better sense of scale. This impressive series, partly reused in some publications by Cooke,43 undoubtedly came in support of Wale’s appointment as professor of perspective, in the newly founded Royal Academy of Arts, seven years later. Wale’s experience at picturing places provided a fit preparation for the reconstruction of historical architectural settings in illustrations for pictorial histories, which included churches, castles, palaces, or inns. However, the focus on historical characters and their actions did not allow enough space for full-perspective views of monuments and only fragments of buildings could be accommodated in his designs. But even partial pictures could conjure up precise locations. For instance, the execution

68  Reinventing the past of Charles I, found solely in the Lockman (see fig 2.5) set, is depicted from the specially prepared scaffold, with the king kneeling, his head on the block, graphically positioned in the middle of the composition, in front of the viewer. The scene is framed to the left by the façade of the Banqueting House, simply summarised in three pedimented windows, while to the right, behind the crowd, the octagonal turret that stood at the corner of Holbein Gate is roughly outlined with a hint of its battlemented parapet, thus firmly locating the scene in Whitehall. Similarly, the plates dedicated to the death of Lady Jane Grey include partial views of the Tower of London, of

Figure 2.5  Samuel Wale, Charles I Beheaded, illustration made for John Lockman’s New History of England (1747) Source:  ©The Trustees of the British Museum

Reinventing the past 69 its turrets, and battlements. The first version, for Lockman, alludes to the executions of both Lady Jane and her husband Lord Guilford Dudley, showing the young woman, dressed in black, walking on the scaffold with three quarters of the White Tower’s quadrangle in the distant background. In this composition, entitled Death of Jane Grey and L. Dudley (see fig 2.6), the visual condensation of both executions

Figure 2.6  Samuel Wale, Death of Lady Jane Grey and L. Dudley, illustration made for John Lockman’s New History of England (1747) Source:  ©The Trustees of the British Museum

70  Reinventing the past is expressed through the positioning of the heroine between her husband’s coffin, hinting at the past, and the block, a clear anticipation of the future. Dramatic tension is further heightened by the church looming in the background, just behind her, an allusion to the chapel royal of St Peter ad Vincula where the couple was to be buried. This Lockman scene takes place further from the White Tower (perhaps on Tower Hill where Dudley was beheaded) than the later reworking of the subject for Mountague. Eschewing drama in favour of greater accuracy, the Mountague plate (see fig 2.7) moves the deposed queen inside the inner ward of the Tower, where she was indeed executed. Dressed in white, she is standing on the scaffold, giving her prayer book away, her back against the thick stone wall of a crenelated keep pierced

Figure 2.7  Samuel Wale, Death of Lady Jane Gray, illustration made for William Henry Mountague’s New and Universal History of England (1771–1772) Source:  Image Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland

Reinventing the past 71 with arrow slits. Although very limited from an architectural point of view, the visual reconstruction of the Tower of London is further achieved through the conspicuous presence, in the foreground, of a Yeoman Warder in his distinctive knee-length tunic and round brimmed hat. Turning his back to the viewer, he displays the embroidery that adorned his uniform: a Tudor rose surmounted by a crown with the ominous initials “M” and “R” (Maria Regina) on either side. Cropped to fit the narrative purpose of the composition, architectural details nonetheless accurately situate the event at its location. Such outdoor scenes however only constitute half of the corpus, and the fact that the other half feature indoor scenes prevented even further the inclusion of complete buildings. The close focus on characters therefore only left space for the depiction of parts of buildings, fragments of architecture, and pieces of furnishings or adornments. Much like the arrested gestures studied in Chapter 1, the fragmentary nature of these reconstructions called for the active participation of viewers who had to imagine entire monuments from a handful of metonymic features. Even within this restricted scope, Wale’s commitment to verisimilitude remained intact as shown, for example, on the plate entitled The Act of Union presented to Queen Anne, by the Duke of Queensberry & Dover created for Mountague (see fig 2.1). Reworked from a smaller version of the scene Wale had engraved on a vignette made for Guthrie’s Complete History of the English Peerage,44 the full-page plate testifies to the higher degree of accuracy intended in the illustrations for pictorial histories. Whereas on the Guthrie vignette, the setting is not localised, made of pieces of furniture and objects that are at best obvious symbols (the union jack) and at worst mere staffage, the Mountague plate shows the queen wearing the chain of the Garter and crown, appropriately seated beneath a baldachin on her throne, holding a sceptre, with fragments of unmistakable tapestries in the background. Indeed, the marine battle scenes hanging on the wall, within their sumptuously decorated borders, are references to the ten tapestries made for Elizabeth I’s Lord High Admiral, Howard of Effingham, at the turn of the seventeenth century to celebrate the English victory over the Spanish Armada. As shown on a painting of Queen Anne in the House of Lords by Peter Tillemans (1684-1734),45 the tapestries, given by Howard to James I, had been moved to Westminster Palace by Cromwell; since 1739, they could be contemplated outside Parliament thanks to the impressive engravings made by John Pine. Wale had certainly seen Pine’s engravings ornamented by Gravelot, but he borrows the general setting for his plate from Tillemans’s canvas. Such conversation pieces were often painted to commemorate events and they assumed a documentary status, being envisioned as visual traces of memorable moments. More than 60 years after the signing of the Act of Union, Wale draws on Tillemans’s detailed interior view in order to show the room as it was supposed to look when Queen Anne had given her royal assent to the Act of Union. He adapts Tillemans’s view to his own subject, focusing on the throne area in order to zoom in on the interaction between the Duke and the Queen, both portrayed in profile. The Scottish peer, his left knee slightly bent, is about to present a paper inscribed with the word “Union” to the sovereign. Above them, a ceiling coffered with an intricate pattern of octagons, hexagons, and crosses is identical to that recorded by Tillemans. By shifting the perspective sideways, Wale uses portions of the Armada tapestries as a heroic backcloth to the action. As analysed in Chapter 1, interpictoriality, particularly in the case of quotes from grand history paintings, was a means to refine and expand humble book plates. In addition to ennobling this illustration, the referentiality of its

72  Reinventing the past design, which included borrowings from artworks displayed in the House of Lords, was relevant to localise the scene. Far from being accessory, allusions to actual furnishings added greatly to the constructed authenticity of the scene. As references to “the having-been-there of things,” the identifiable portions of the Armada tapestries constitute what Roland Barthes called an index of atmosphere, and thus add much to what he termed the “reality effect” of the representation.46 Put before the viewers’ eyes, these visual notations vindicate the verisimilitude of the whole scene and predispose the public to believe that the action is shown as it had happened. Decades before Thomas Hope introduced the term “interior decoration” into the English language, with the publication of his book Household Furniture and Interior Decoration in 1807,47 Wale created a series of themed interiors, carefully fabricated to convey a very real sense of time and place. Accurate traces of the past, such as fragments of seventeenth-century tapestries hanging in Westminster Palace, were carefully selected to create each scenography. As Stephen Bann explained, such authentic details enhanced the realism of images and were instrumental in the development of historical-mindedness.48 Particularly noteworthy are therefore the tentative steps taken by Wale towards the higher degree of authenticity Bann examined in nineteenth-­century paintings. Indeed, the scattering of stylistic features that conjured up past monuments was used by the eighteenth-century draughtsman to create a sense of time that could aptly help historicise the compositions. His Tudor scenes, for instance, are unified by several motifs recurring on the plates showing Henry VIII or Elizabeth I. Father and daughter are placed under an identical coffered ceiling in rooms lit by similarly tall, narrow casement windows with latticed glass (also found on Cardinal Wolsey Resigning the Great Seal to the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk). Both Henry VIII’s and Elizabeth I’s thrones are placed on a billowing carpet evoking the one which unfolds in the foreground of Remigius van Leemput’s family portrait. On those plates, specific architectural components, and pieces of furniture, together with the elements of costume detailed above, are displayed as visual equivalents to the word “Tudor.” The same logic applied to plates describing events predating the fifteenth century as can be seen, for example, on the Lockman’s plate Henry II Scourged at Beckets Tomb, where fragments of medieval architecture are rearranged into a believable church interior where the saint’s recumbent effigy convincingly stands in lieu of the actual shrine that had been destroyed in 1538. Throughout the series, building parts are brought in as tokens of specific periods. When compelling evidence is lacking, Saxon scenes are set outside, next to a mighty English oak fulfilling a similar role. As a general rule, from Alfred to Richard I, kings are shown in bare rooms with arched windows that become pointed and trefoiled from the reign of Edward III. Over the same period, the massive round pillars get narrower, and are ornamented with capitals, before being replaced by clustered columns. For all their obvious lack of archaeological propriety, the architectural motifs littered on those plates still prevented the fusing of several centuries into one monolithic Gothic period. Instead of compressing the period extending between Saxon and Tudor ages, they helped distinguish these successive pictures of changing interiors and arrange them in order of time. Even though this reconstruction of past interiors may be deemed whimsical and fanciful, when seen through our archaeologically trained eyes, it was representative of how the Gothic was being sequenced into a succession of distinctive features in eighteenth-century Britain. Within antiquarian circles and beyond, the presence of understudied medieval buildings generated a wide array of

Reinventing the past 73 responses, some more creative than others. The sheer variety of medieval architecture prompted classifying endeavours aimed at a more coherent interpretation of Gothic forms. Painter Batty Langley (1696–1751) was the first to publish at the beginning of the 1740s an illustrated book seeking to “restore” the rules of the Gothic that had fallen into oblivion, while their monumental traces had crumbled into dust.50 Twenty years later, poet and historian Thomas Warton added to the second edition of his critical work on Spenser’s Faerie Queene 15 pages that put Langley’s patterning of the Gothic into narrative form.51 Triggered quite inadvertently by his comment on a line evoking a Doric pillar, Warton’s short essay takes readers back in time, before Inigo Jones introduced the classical orders in British buildings. Warton’s genealogical survey suggests a chronological sequencing of Gothic syntax in five stages: Norman, Saxon, Absolute, Ornamental, and Florid. It outlines the transformation of round arches, round-headed windows, and round massy pillars into rotund columns that later became split into clusters of agglomerated pilasters, while short round-headed windows were lengthened into narrow, oblong ones, with pointed tops. It further details their subsequent morphing into ever more ornamented and composite forms. Beyond description, Warton links the various gradations of the Gothic with historical figures, namely William the Conqueror with the Norman, Edward III with the refined features of the Absolute Gothic, and Edward IV or Henry VII with its most Florid forms.52 Finally, when accounting for his method, he explains that his observations result from the study of royal seals that, according to him: “display the taste of architecture which respectively prevailed under several subsequent reigns; and consequently convey, as at one comprehensive view, the series of its successive revolutions […].”53 One cannot help notice the commonalities between Warton’s approach of the Gothic and its visualisation by Wale, both revolving around a similar association of architectural features with historical figures. Because the Observations on the Fairy Queen were published by Robert Dodsley, there are grounds to believe that Wale knew Warton’s hugely influential essay. In addition, Wale worked in close collaboration with enthusiastic readers of Warton, such as Horace Walpole54 and Thomas Percy, who both played a decisive part in the development of the taste for all things Gothic. Having portrayed the bard in a vignette on the title page of James Macpherson’s Fingal, 55 Wale was in fact working with Thomas Percy on illustrations for the latter’s Reliques of Ancient Poetry while designing historical plates for Mortimer. A unique piece of archive, kept at Harvard’s Houghton Library, throws light on how Wale was involved in discussions over the representation of “Gothic” costumes and monuments.56 In this rare manuscript, entitled “Directions for Mr Wale the Designer” and dated 1763, Percy gives precise instructions on how to draw three headpieces for ballads on King Arthur, Guy of Warwick. and Saint George collected in the third volume of the new edition of his Reliques of Ancient Poetry published by Dodsley in 1765.57 The author instructs the artist to place “Gothic crowns” on the heads of King Arthur and his queen and to situate the action in a “Gothic hall” which he asks Wale to draw “with pointed arches in the manner of the old Cathedrals.” He further requires the artist to clad Saint George as well as the giant fighting Guy of Warwick with armour and to situate both fights in the vicinity of a “Gothic castle.” The resulting headpieces by Wale depict first King Arthur, and his court, listening to a minstrel playing the harp in front of three geometrical tracery windows; the other two show the heroes wearing the armour reiterated from Nicholas Yeates’s description of the 49

74  Reinventing the past royal champion’s performing the ceremony of the challenge. In the background of both scenes looms the very same castle with its thick walls, corner towers, and narrow arrow slits. This precious manuscript leaves us to imagine the many exchanges between authors and visual artists, and their discussions on the ways to visualise the past. It bespeaks of the manner in which their plea for authenticity was primarily expressed through monuments and costumes. It also documents how the remote ages referred to as “Gothic” were reconstructed by using features of actual medieval buildings deemed authentic and emblematic of the period. It therefore confirms that book illustrations were supposed to be evocative of the historical past that had given rise to the (hi) stories told in the texts, and that they were primarily looked at as historicist reconstructions of past ages. More specifically, Percy’s letter and indeed the new edition of his Reliques testify to the soaring popularity of the Gothic in Georgian Britain. Interestingly, the majority of the plates designed by Wale, i.e., 73 out of 117, fall within the category of “Gothic” subjects, for they show events situated after the fall of the Roman empire and before the accession of the Tudors on to the English throne. The notable emphasis on Saxon and Plantagenet England can be traced back to the translation into English of Rapin’s Histoire d’Angleterre, which was the source for the pictorial histories illustrated by Wale. Feeding into the debate regarding the justification of the “glorious revolution” of 1688, Rapin directed the English to study of their medieval roots. He also traced the parliamentary regime, introduced after 1689, back to a Saxon system of government which allegedly balanced the prerogatives of rulers with the privileges of the people. Fleshing out the idea of an ancient constitution, Rapin outlined a continuity between Anglo-Saxon institutions and Britain’s modern Parliament, thus dedicating a great part of his work to Britain’s ancient past, to bygone days most Britons had hardly ever heard about. Opening up vistas into pre-Tudor England, Rapin’s founding piece of Whig historiography encouraged readers to imagine their distant ancestors through the most dramatic episodes of their lives and spurred publishers to employ artists to provide marketable images of those events. The representational purview of those illustrative plates was both aesthetic and political, for it contributed to the revival of Gothic forms while promoting a sense of continuity that underscored the Saxon genealogy of Britain’s political institutions.

Fabricating Georgian medievalism For all its aesthetic outcomes, contemporary interest in medieval forms, structures, and styles was therefore enmeshed with political significance as debates on the origins of political rights were centred on the Middle Ages.58 While political theorists turned to the distant Saxon past for evidence of the existence of an English constitution, the same nationalistic logic was applied to the arts. Following Batty Langley, Thomas Warton dubbed the Gothic, “the Saxon Stile,” and described it as “the national architecture of our Saxon ancestors.”59 In the unpaginated dissertation on the antiquity of ancient English buildings that prefaced his Ancient Architecture, Langley had drawn up a historical presentation which highlighted the Saxon architectural legacy. Quoting Rapin, he forcefully argued that the Goths had built no edifice in Britain and that despite being called “Gothic,” ancient buildings were Saxon. Far from establishing a literally “Gothic” genealogy, Langley’s repertoire of ornaments aimed at just the opposite, at severing all links between Britain and the reputedly barbarian Goths.

Reinventing the past 75 In keeping with Rapin’s notion of an institutional continuity between ancient Saxon England and modern Britain, Langley brought monumental grist to the ideological agenda of eighteenth-century Whiggism. Through the reiteration of emblematic architectural features, Wale’s historical illustrations supported the appropriation of the Gothic as a quintessentially national style associated with memorable events and national heroes. Spun from Rapin’s source, the historical narratives illustrated by Wale were ideologically weighted in the sense that they gave visual expression to a commonplace Whig perspective which appears to be the guiding thread running throughout volumes, unifying texts and images. In addition to establishing the Gothic as a vernacular style, Wale’s broad visual narrative fit in with the Whig linear view of history, each image retracing the steps of the glorious march towards modernity. Bringing forward a past selectively reconstructed to validate the present, his carefully chosen scenes retrieved historical figures to be remembered, and staged their actions so as to ground the whole national panorama in the values of Protestantism and liberty that Britain was supposed to epitomise – unlike its popish, absolutist enemy across the Channel. These book illustrations thus strongly anchored the visualisation of national history in Anglo-Saxonism, in the minimisation of the Norman Conquest, while celebrating victories against France, exposing misuses of power by both religious and secular authorities, thus providing a Whig prism through which viewers should see the past in order to make sense of their present. Unsurprisingly Wale’s two initial series, made for Lockman and for Mortimer, opened up on the deeds and achievements of Saxon kings. Until the early 1770s, when the series was reissued in Mountague’s History, the historical panorama did not include any reference to ancient history. Subjects alluding to the Roman conquest, such as the landing of Julius Caesar or the capture of Caratacus, were added in the 1770s, at a time when the revival of Greek and Roman arts made classical themes a most popular trend, especially among British painters who were active proponents of European Neoclassicism at home and abroad. For the first 25 years of its circulation, the series therefore began with King Æthelberht and King Alfred and staged their founding roles in establishing a Christian English kingdom. As already mentioned in Chapter 1, the central position of the cross in St. Austin preaching under an Oak in the Isle of Thanet to the Saxon King Ethelbert and his Queen Bertha (see fig 1.8), clearly makes the case for an ancient and voluntary conversion to Christianity from the part of the English. The plates illustrating four episodes from the life of King Alfred completed the ideal picture of early Englishness with a tribute to the emblematic “King of the Anglo-Saxons” whose cult was gathering momentum in eighteenth-century Britain.60 Wale expanded on Vertue’s head of King Alfred, itself based on “an ancient picture preserved in University College at Oxford,”61 now known to have been commissioned by the college master in the seventeenth century. Drawing from the historiated pieces of furniture and scattered objects included by Vertue to narrate the defeat of the Danes while alluding to Saxon artistic achievements, Wale represented Alfred as both a military hero and a patron of learning. Focusing on the most familiar stories, constitutive of the Alfredian myth, stories that were already present in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and taken up by Rapin,62 Wale pictured how the English king had repelled Danish invaders. His Alfred taking the Danish Standard, designed for Mountague,63 shows a commanding king seizing the Raven standard from his grounded enemy. Still focused on the same event, Alfred disguised in the character of a harper, viewing the

76  Reinventing the past Danish camp, designed for Sydney 3 years later, shows the conquest in a more entertaining light. The first of Wale’s Alfredian scenes, drawn for Lockman, Pope Adrian the IInd Crowns King Alfred at Rome, was supposed to visualise the outcome of Alfred’s victory. On its own, the plate could have been seen as an illustration of the pope’s performative power to make kings. Yet viewed alongside Lockman’s facing text, it illustrates the excerpt asserting that Alfred “made a voyage to Rome, where he caused Adrian II, to set the crown upon his head.”64 Even though the two voyages that prince Alfred had made to Rome had been undertaken, in 853 and 855, before he became king, the image shows him as an adult. Wale’s scene therefore supports Lockman’s text and helps to buttress the idea that the English king did not take orders from the pope but rather told the bishop of Rome what to do. The fourth plate, Alfred makes a Collection of Laws and divides the Kingdom into Counties, was originally dedicated by Mortimer to Whig politician Charles Lennox, third Duke of Richmond. It complements the picture of the only English king known as “the great.” In this well-balanced interior scene dominated by a crucifix, the king is given centre stage, surrounded by three types of characters on either side, monks, clerks, and a child. Alfred is shown wearing short hair and a beard, and his likeness is clearly a variation on Vertue’s head; the books, scrolls, compass, and drawings, scattered on the composition, are likewise borrowed from the accessories Vertue used as visual emblems of the man of learning he and his contemporaries imagined Alfred to be. The king’s head is turned towards the group on the left, his arms and legs facing the group on the right, and his twisted pose connects the two groups dynamically, focusing their attention on the imposing volume he maintains open between them. Standing in front of this character and embodying the part played by the monarch as law maker and law enforcer, a child brings a map of England divided into counties, further emphasising the achievements of the king whom David Garrick hailed as the “nation’s father”.65 The text that corresponds to Alfred makes a Collection of Laws and divides the Kingdom into Counties shows that the addition of this map was not Wale’s invention but rather a literal visualisation of Mortimer’s words: “His [King Alfred’s] laws were mild, but strictly enforced. He was the first who settled juries, divided England into shires and counties, and encouraged the spirit of trade among his subjects. To him likewise is owing the original of doomsday-book, so famous in our histories.”66 The last words betray the author’s intention to belittle Norman achievements with the invocation of an Alfredian precedent visualised on the plate. As previously mentioned in Chapter 1, the arrival of the Normans is not depicted in the most flattering light (see fig 1.7). Their actual conquest, dramatically imaged by Francis Hayman for the EHD in a print repurposed to illustrate Tobias Smollett’s Complete History of England in 1758, is notably absent from Wale’s sequence of plates. Furthermore, The Landing of William the Conqueror sets the arrival of the duke of Normandy in front of a coastal landscape dominated by steep cliffs that hamper the march of the Norman army and thus stand as a powerful symbol of English defence and defiance. The urge to minimise the Norman Conquest led Wale to revise his representation of the English surrender. For Lockman, he originally depicted the deputies from London kneeling in front of the triumphant Norman conqueror in Deputies from London present ye Keys to William the Conqueror. The English can be seen submissively handing over the symbolic keys of the capital to a fully armoured William astride his horse and followed by his impressive army. Still wearing the same armour,

Reinventing the past 77 the only visual reminder of the conquest, (again reiterated from Yeates’s) on the plate reworked for Mortimer, the Norman invader stands alone, inside a church, supposedly in Berkhamsted, in order to receive an oath of allegiance from a bishop on his knees. On this plate, entitled Some Bishops & Eminent Citizens of London Swearing Fealty to William the Conqueror at Berkhamsted, the word “fealty,” in the caption, hints at the feudal organisation imposed by Norman rulers on freedom-loving Saxons. Two additional plates, designed for Mountague, complete the grim portrait of the land-grabbing family who imposed their iron rule on England: William the Conqueror Seizing his Brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeaux & Earl of Kent dramatically stages William’s half-brother’s fall out of favour and his arrest subsequent to having amassed a huge estate and enjoyed considerable power. Even more undignified is the episode illustrated on Anselm Fitz-Arthur claiming the Ground wherein William the Conqueror was going to be Buried which relates how a poor knight disturbed William’s burial, claiming that the king had robbed his father of the land on which the Abbey of St Stephen – where the body of the ruler was to be laid to rest – stood in the city of Caen. While avoiding a graphic representation of the battle of Hastings, Wale does not shy away from showing fights, but exclusively those won by the English (Agincourt and Crécy, for instance) at a time when high feats of arms against the French were needed. These medieval illustrations were thus aimed at showing how Georgian England was continuous with its remotest past. In keeping with the deployment of history for political purposes, some medieval subjects were selected to denounce abuses of power, or conversely to praise resistance to arbitrary rule. To that end, the involvement of Catholic clergy in political matters is condemned through the staging of feuds between kings and bishops. Both The Insolent Behaviour of Dunstan to K. Edwy on the Day of his Coronation and Becket’s Haughty Entrance in the Presence of Henry IId with the Cross &c. (also entitled Insolent Behaviour of Tho. s Becket before Henry II in the Grand Assembly at Northampton) dramatise the power struggle between the English monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church. Consistent with the wording of their captions, both plates portray arrogant bishops confronting English kings. Materialising the negative judgments passed in the captions, which both include one of the few qualifiers used in the whole corpus, the bishops are shown treating kings with contempt, to the point of physical harassment in the case of Dunstan. While both Dunstan and Thomas Beckett had been venerated as saints until the Henrician Reformation, the plates are blatant examples of Protestant visual revisionism. In contrast to the very idea of martyrdom, the plates expose disapprovingly the lack of respect shown by the prelates, hinting at a possible justification for the ways in which they were treated by the exasperated monarchs, all the more so since the penitent Henry is subsequently shown making amends at Beckett’s tomb on another plate. While monarchs like Henry II were redeemed, and their portraits reconfigured to suit the Whig agenda; others were less lucky in the process. Both Edward II and King John are turned into weak, despicable figures. Both are portrayed giving up their crown, the former in favour of his son, and the latter to the pope’s legate. In the wake of Shakespeare’s evil and murderous impression of King John, the figure of Henry II’s youngest son is interpreted in a particularly dark manner. He is first pictured for Lockman, in a composition repurposed from earlier representations of the subject, as kneeling submissively, laying his crown at the papal ambassador’s feet. King John is then shown meeting the barons at Runnemede in King John Signing the Magna Carta

78  Reinventing the past made for Mortimer, before being seen drawing his sword against an imploring child in The Murder of Prince Arthur by King John (drawn for Mountague). Central to his historical figure is, of course, the Magna Carta which King John reluctantly signs surrounded by members of the nobility and clergy. In the texts accompanying the image, the Magna Carta itself is repeatedly celebrated as a major political landmark, the “foundation of the English liberty and Constitution,” albeit only in as much as it confirmed the ancient rights enjoyed by the people under Saxon monarchs.67 The relatively harsh treatment of medieval kings, glaringly apparent when compared to the depiction of the early Stuarts, for instance, points towards the main quality of the Middle Ages, that is to say their remoteness. The many centuries that separated Georgian readers and viewers from Saxon, Norman, or Plantagenet England meant that medieval times were distant and less well known than more recent periods. Medieval archives and artefacts were less abundant and, although discussed by scholars, they were not widely studied or debated. It was easier to pass judgements on medieval characters and to use their supposed actions didactically to embody the lessons of history. Conveniently, remote and yet not as alien as ancient Roman times, the Middle Ages became one of the most popular touchstones for eighteenth-century Britons because this period was invented and constructed as a time of origin. This emergence of the modern presence of the Middle Ages persisted long after the 1800s and manifested itself throughout Europe. What is remarkable in our corpus of historical illustrations is that it provides a very valuable insight into the visual fabrication of a Georgian medievalism that remains to this day overshadowed by Victorian medievalism in scholarly research.68 This sequence of images visualises how the past was fabricated to help define the Georgian present and thus shows that Gothic times were no longer pictured as dark and barbaric ages. Much to the contrary, they were populated with ancestors whose achievements and failings defined the values on which the nation was built and thus shaped its historical culture.

Sharing the past The disclosure of history in a discrete series of visual scenes outlined a singular trajectory that pointed back to the origins of modern Britain and touched upon expressions of collective ancestry. Wale’s series can therefore be studied as an early instance of what Rosemary Mitchell called “picturesque history,”69 not only because his historical illustrations put forward a past fit to be framed and presented as a picture but also because, through the process of selective reconstruction studied above, they helped localise and particularise the national past. To be deemed factual and authentic, Wale’s fabricated historical scenes had to show embodied events unfolding at a particular time and in a specific place, inciting Georgian viewers to situate their ancestors in this panoramic landscape of the past. In addition to the place names evoked in their captions, the scenes depicted by Wale situate historical, dated, events in identified locations throughout Britain, that is in modern mnemonic places that recalled the loci of the ancient art of memory. Drawing on the intimate connection between geography and history, his historical illustrations encouraged viewers to see time through space and to look around for sites they could associate with past. While spatial metaphors had been used by Rollin, for instance, to describe the long series of ages that have succeeded one another since the creation of the world as “vast regions of the universe” or to compare readers of history to travellers,70 Wale’s essentially

Reinventing the past 79 picturesque illustrations inscribed memorable historical events within the national territory, hinting at how local wanderings could lead to time-travelling experiences.71 Our corpus also fits into Mitchell’s picturesque history for it was, to borrow her words, a “a far more suitable vehicle for the development of a sense of national identity” than classical history.72 Before the advent of official nationalism, a new sense of nationhood could be fostered by those widely disseminated printed sequences of images. The pictures engaged viewers to see the defining features of the British nation imagined after 1688 in a genealogical light, or, in Benedict Anderson’s words, to see the nation “as a solid community moving steadily down (or up) history.”73 As underlined in Chapter 1, the events illustrated by Wale were drawn from narratives entitled “History of England” and were supposed to give an overview of British history subsumed under English history. This English bias is made obvious by the reduced number of Welsh and Scottish subjects, and by the absence of any Irish one, in our corpus. The only three Welsh and Scottish subjects were amongst the latest additions to the series: Lady Mary Bruce exposed as a public spectacle at Roxburgh Castle, by order of Edward the first was completed for the publication of Sydney’s History in 1773, and The Head of Llewellyn the last reigning Prince of Wales, publickly exposed on a pole in Cheapside, London together with Baliol’s submission to Edward I was issued in 1777 with Russel’s. As can easily be gathered from their titles, these plates were blatant celebrations of Edward I’s conquest of Wales and of his aggressive interference in Scottish affairs. Displaying the weaknesses of humiliated Celtic leaders and their families, these images rooted English domination in the Middle Ages, the preferred period of ancestry of the Whig national narrative, and showed how the past could be used to legitimate present claims. Aimed at commercialising and popularising a vision of the past, picturesque historical illustrations had to be shared if they were to ensure the prevalence of the English version of Whig history. To reach out to a wider audience, they had to visualise the actions of historical characters that could be acknowledged as suitable ancestors by Georgian viewers. In history drawing as in history writing, the general progress of politeness transformed the ways in which the actions of past heroes were accounted for.74 In the words of Lawrence Klein, politeness was “an important eighteenth-­ century idiom,” “with uses for a wide range of people,” and “it also often served as a medium facilitating interaction and access to shared experience.”75 Wale appropriately used the idiom of politeness to fashion a polite historical style that could appeal to an extended group of educated viewers. Presented in the most elegant Rococo frames, his historical scenes were made pleasing in style as well as agreeable in content. Conceived of as fitting illustrations to narratives of worthy deeds, these images dignified protagonists and their actions, sparing viewers the spectacle of offensive scenes or controversial figures. This explains why King Richard II only features indirectly, through the ceremony performed upon his coronation for, shaped by the play Shakespeare had dedicated to the end of his reign, his reputation was tarnished by suspicions of tyranny, misrule, and by his shameful downfall. Similarly, Richard II’s successor makes a brief appearance, on a plate portraying him as the ailing Henry IV whose crown is readily seized by his son and heir in the fourth act of another of Shakespeare’s play. The need to gloss over sensitive episodes, however well-known they might have been, is further exemplified in the overlooking of Thomas Becket’s murder. Beaten to death by four soldiers on both Morellon La Cave’s vignette and on Vertue’s head of Henry II, the Archbishop of Canterbury is only portrayed in frontal

80  Reinventing the past opposition to the king and any discussion of his martyrdom is left out from Wale’s visual series. The necessity to treat historical events with all due decorum is nowhere more obvious than in the representation of scenes showing assaults on the king’s physical or political body. In Edward 2nd resigns the Ensigns of Royalty, the unprecedented deposition of Edward II is not described as a forced abdication but as a quiet transfer of power. The king is portrayed in conversation with the commissioners (bishops, earls, abbots) who were sent to notify him of his deposition. Inside the walls of a medieval palace room, a deputy is reaching towards the sceptre the king is handing over to him. Their body language does not indicate any particular reluctance on the part of the king, nor any noticeable eagerness on the part of his opponent. There is no hint of any threats having been made, nor of any violation of kingship and the whole scene could be mistaken for a common ceremonial. Equally underwhelming is the depiction of the demise of the crown caused by the unexpected deaths of William II and Richard I. Both are shown being wounded by an arrow in scenes that are completely devoid of pathos. The changing approach to the more problematic fates of both Richard III and Charles I further highlights the representational challenges posed by the impolite spectacle of undignified rulers. Whereas the execution of Charles I was initially included in the Lockman series (see fig 2.5), the depiction of the king, his head on the block, was removed and replaced by the sentimental farewell of a benevolent father to his children. Wale’s remediation of a plate from the Bowles brothers’ Life of Charles I concealed the regicide behind good feelings, undermining its political significance and allowing viewers to remember the event without entering into the debate regarding the king’s martyrdom. However, no amount of sugar coating could help redeem the infamous Richard III, whose reputation had once again been shaped by Shakespeare’s portrayal of the king as a malevolent tyrant. As the play Richard III, with David Garrick in the leading role, was hugely popular on the London stage in the 1740s, Wale first pictured the death of the last Plantagenet king at Bosworth Field in his 1747 Lockman series. Bringing viewers off stage, the composition takes them inside the Yorkist camp, where soldiers in full armour are loading the dead king onto a horse. Stark naked, the king’s body natural is exposed in the most indecorous manner, like that of any other mortal. The image matches the corresponding text which details how the king’s body was found amongst the dead on the battlefield, taken to Leicester on horseback, and buried in a churchyard. The plate was however removed from the subsequent series and replaced by a more glorious scene. Lord Stanley puts ye Crown of Richard 3rd on ye Earl of Richmond transports viewers to the Tudor camp where Lord Stanley is crowning the Earl of Richmond. This performative action is transforming the victorious Tudor lord, standing below a white standard bearing his emblem (a dark, hence red, rose of Lancaster) into a king already wearing an ermine-lined coat. A herald is blowing his trumpet and soldiers are greeting the news with enthusiastic cheers. The dead man stretched across a dead horse in the foreground, next to a dark standard bearing a white rose of York, may be a reminder of the treatment reserved to Richard III. While this plate was continuously reissued, Wale reworked the conclusion of what David Hume called the “wars between the two roses” and added, in the Mountague set, a plate imaging Richard III’s death more appropriately. Inspired by Shakespeare, Richard III Killed in Bosworth Field pictures the king’s last stand: having lost his horse but still wearing his crown, he is fighting on foot holding a shield displaying a boar, his personal symbol. A mad expression

Reinventing the past 81 on his face, he is determined to defend his rights, trampling on dead bodies, but his enemies are closing in. This time, viewers are left to imagine who is going to strike King Richard III to the ground. Outside battlefields, graphic violence remains the exception and is only resorted to expose the abhorrent crimes of the greatest villains in the series. Wale’s restraint is all the more noticeable in this matter as he was employed by Cooke to design sensational illustrations for the Tyburn Chronicle and Newgate Calendar in which he compiled a visual catalogue of gruesome murders, repulsive tortures, and dreadful executions. Within our corpus, however, three plates stand out as particularly macabre: The Massacre of the Danes made for Mortimer but never reissued, The Plague of 1665, originally made for Lockman and reworked for Mountague, and Kirk’s Cruelty to a Young Woman who begged her Brother’s Life, created for Lockman and reissued in Mortimer with the amended title Remarkable Instance of Col.l Kirke’s Cruelty & Villany. Wale’s crude representations of the deadly consequences of the Great Plague of 1665 are not unlike some of his lurid crime scenes. Both the Lockman illustration and its reworking for Mountague focus on the activities of searchers who were responsible for collecting bodies and taking them to plague pits in and around London. Realistically portrayed as smoking pipes to avoid catching the disease – for such was the belief in tobacco’s protective properties – the men are loading corpses onto their cart in the first version and unloading them into a mass grave at Holywell Mount, in Shoreditch, in the second. Both plates can be seen as a minimal series documenting the work of searchers, therefore including ghastly visions of dead, contorted bodies, some pathetically huddled together (like the mother and child lying in the foreground on the first plate), others seen tumbling down from the cart into the pit where they are being dumped. The rather impolite depiction of the latest outbreak of plague points to the traumatic nature of an event that was still vivid in people’s memory. As seen in Chapter 1, The Massacre of the Danes reaches back to a more remote past; it shows Danes being slaughtered by order of King Æthelred’s men. This is one of the very few instances in which the English are not pictured heroically. Graphic details, such as the bodies of children, reminiscent of the massacre of the innocents, strewn before Gunhilde, leave little doubt as to the responsibility the English had in the massacre. Wale may have felt compelled to include the event in his series, because the St. Brice’s Day massacre had been, for centuries, linked with the Hocktide festival, and commemorated as a great Saxon victory, as a first step towards freedom from the Danish yoke. The theatrical rendering of Gunhilde’s murder, which literally seems to be unfolding on a stage, allows viewers the possibility to distance themselves from the ugly deeds of their Saxon ancestors. The unease it suggests was confirmed by the fact that the plate was not included subsequent reissues of the series. On the other hand, no such reluctance seems to have hindered the publication of the plate related to Colonel Percy Kirke’s retaliation against the Duke of Monmouth’s supporters. Ordered by King James II, executions were carried out by Kirke in the South of England and the plate metonymically alludes to the colonel’s cruel treatment of prisoners. Like The Massacre of the Danes, the historical event is staged and even presented here as a typical bedchamber scene. Kirke in his robe and night cap – his sword, hat, and day clothes laid on a table in the foreground – is directing the attention of a young woman towards a window which opens onto the spectacle of a hanged man. All the ingredients are here to make it a powerful scene: lust, deceit,

82  Reinventing the past grief, and a gruesome death. Focusing on the morning after, Wale leaves the viewer to imagine the story, which is fully recounted in the text, of a young woman forced by Kirke to prostitute herself to save her brother’s life, but to no avail. In the wake of the “glorious revolution,” the barbarous repression of those who had opposed the accession of Catholic James II had been interpreted as an instance of persecution against Protestant Whigs. A grin on his face, Kirke stands between his two victims not only as a sexual predator and torturer, but as a personification of the “cruelty” and “villainy” of the regime that had allowed him to carry out a bloody repression of its opponents. As such, Kirke’s figure persisted in Whig history books, and it is interesting to notice that Thomas Babington Macaulay reiterated and amplified the anecdote illustrated by Wale.76 Conversely, battles, which could have included violent and gory depictions of fights, are remarkably understated in the series. As previously noted, only six battles are illustrated in the whole sequence of 117 subjects: Crécy (1346) and Agincourt (1415), the two major English victories of the Hundred Years’ war, the defeat of Spanish Armada (1588), Blenheim (1704), the siege of Quebec (1759), and the capture of Havana (1762). One can only appreciate the amount of condensing and compressing required from a visual artist illustrating such military subjects when the images are compared with the dozens of pages over which the unfolding of past armed conflicts are narrated in the books. The page format compelled Wale to focus on a reduced number of figures and actions to ensure clarity in his compositions. Be they soldiers or ships, his protagonists are thus very few in number. The defeat of the Spanish Armada is inspired by Pine’s engravings and represented as an unimpressive sea scene, featuring a ship ablaze in the foreground with another one sinking in front of her. With its dozen soldiers in the foreground, the plate entitled The British Troops entering the Breach of the Moro Castle appears like a close-up of a similarly titled image, a canvas by Dominic Serres (1722-1793).77 Both royal academicians were simultaneously working on that same subject in the early 1770s, and Wale’s composition borrows the perspective adopted by Serres while compressing the breach so as to show troops storming the castle despite the narrow book page format. Apart from this operation from the Seven Years’ War, all other battle scenes in the series focus on commanders and officers. The battle of Blenheim is no more than a vague setting outlined behind the commanding figure of John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough, portrayed on horseback. On The Battle of Cressy, made for Mortimer, foot soldiers can be seen and English archers imagined behind the raining arrows, but the King of France and the Black Prince are taking centre stage. Fighting on horseback, flanked by standards that help identify both sides, the princes are shown in the heat of the battle. Their horses are trampling on maimed, dying soldiers, and despite the glory attached to this English victory; these shocking details may account for the removal of the event from later reissues of the series. Agincourt, on the other hand, features in all publications but was continuously amended and polished. The initial design, made for Lockman, focuses on the English warrior king, sword raised, facing his French enemy. As mentioned above, the tents in the background are borrowed from Francis Hayman’s illustration of Henry V. Wale however changed this setting in the subsequent version of the event he designed for Mortimer: depicting the immediate aftermath of the battle, he portrays the victorious English king, in full armour – also inspired from Hayman’s illustration – receiving the homage of his French counterpart, and pointing towards the castle, and locality, after which the

Reinventing the past 83 battle was named. As seen in the background of this composition, dead bodies have been evacuated and only two remain in the foreground, partially visible. The third version, designed for Mountague, takes viewers back to the battlefield to celebrate the English king’s decisive blow but in surroundings that have been mostly cleared of casualties. The evolution of the representation of Agincourt outlines how battles could be made a pleasing subject, fit for the broadest public. Hiding the killing fields behind the celebration of ideal patriots led Wale to include the death of General Wolfe in the series. Composed in the wake of the sensation caused by the exhibition of Benjamin West’s own interpretation of the event at the Royal Academy in 1771, Wale’s design is mainly a remediation of an earlier canvas by Edward Penny (1714-1791), or more probably of a simplified canvas made to serve as a model for an engraving.78 Wale’s book plate barely hints at a battle unfolding in the distant background in order to focus on four main characters. The pathetic trio, showing the wounded hero supported by a faithful grenadier and comforted by an aide, is directly modelled on Penny’s composition. However, unlike Penny, or West, Wale brings the soldier, rushing to announce the British victory, much closer to the main characters. Showing viewers the look of alarm on the face of the man who was supposed to be a bearer of good news produces a heightened sense of drama, leaving no doubt as to the fatal nature of Wolfe’s wounds. Like his predecessors’ commemorations of the battle of Quebec, the plate Wale designed for Mountague thus shows General Wolfe expiring on the battlefield at the moment of victory, transforming a military casualty into a heroic sacrifice. As shown in the previous examples, at a time when politeness was prescribed as a model of behaviour among the Georgian elite, it was also used by artists to offer gratifying visualisations of the past in which controversial figures, undignified monarchs, graphic violence, or shocking subjects were best avoided. In the wake of the Seven Years’ War, battles were replaced by restorative representations of victorious patriots whose actions consolidated ideas of national and imperial identity. Hence, purged of their most offensive content, historical plates outlined a constant and gradual polishing of manners over the centuries. The Black Prince waiting on ye King of France his Prisoner is one case in point (see fig 2.8). Originally made for Mortimer, it was never removed from the series nor amended. The plate shows Edward, the prince of Wales in his tent – marked with his heraldic badge and motto – handing a beaker on a plate to King John II of France seated at a table. As subsequent rewordings of the plate’s title made it clear, this was supposed to be a visualisation of the aftermath of the Battle of Poitiers where King Edward III’s son and his troops captured the king of France, his son, and several French nobles. Leaving out any reference to the brutality of the English raid and destruction of the French army, the composition resembles a courtly scene featuring elegantly dressed and well-mannered characters. Dumped on the floor in the right-hand corner, a few props (a standard, helmet, and drum) metonymically allude to the battle that is not shown. All eyes are on Prince Edward serving his guest. Yet King John II looks embarrassed at being treated with such regard, reaching out for the plate with his right hand while expressing reluctance with the left. This image illustrates the text written by Mortimer who, like Rapin de Thoyras before him, had borrowed the anecdote from Froissart’s Chronicles. The French medieval author praised the alliance of bravery and humility in Prince Edward’s character, thus portraying him as the epitome of chivalry. The literary construction of the chivalrous English prince resonated with Georgian historians who repeatedly dwelled

84  Reinventing the past

Figure 2.8  Samuel Wale, The Black Prince waiting on ye King of France his Prisoner, illustration made for Thomas Mortimer’s New History of England (1764–1766) Source:  Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library

on his alleged civility. Mortimer uses the word “moderation” to describe the prince’s behaviour towards the vanquished French,79 and the historian’s account points to the overlap between chivalry and politeness. This conveniently allows him to clear the Black Prince’s name, arguing that the French gave him that epithet “on account of the fatal effects they had felt from his courage,” of “the gloom with which his victory had overspread all France,” or simply because of the “black feather he wore on his helmet.”80 Fashioned as a polite host, who “ordered a magnificent repast to be prepared in his tent” added Mountague,81 or who “comforted [the captive King] in his afflictions” and “paid him the tribute of praise due to his valour” explained Sydney,82

Reinventing the past 85 Edward bears only limited resemblance to the ruthless English commander of the Hundred Years’ War. Accordingly, the plate designed by Wale dramatises Edward’s gentlemanly performance visually. Placing him under a theatrical display of lifted tent flaps, the artist foregrounds Edward as a model of generosity. His gracious attitude is greeted with thankfulness and relief by the French king’s son who looks up towards him with his hands clasped. In keeping with Mortimer’s text, which also describes the Black Prince as “magnanimous,” Wale’s polite portrayal of the fourteenth-century hero recalls that of General Jeffery Amherst, celebrated by Francis Hayman for his supposedly benevolent treatment of the French after the capture of Montreal in September 1760. The Surrender of Montreal to General Amherst, a massive work, measuring 15 by 12 feet, was exhibited in the Rotunda at Vauxhall in 1761.83 This impressive contemporary history painting was an instant crowd pleaser containing the right amount of classical references translated into a readable vernacular spectacle telling a tale of victorious, and yet humane, wars. On the two studies that survive, Hayman’s generous hero stands in profile in front of a tent; he is shown stepping towards imploring men, women, and children with one hand extended. The similarity between the postures of both Hayman’s and Wale’s magnanimous heroes is underscored by the Black Prince’s anachronistic breeches, stockings, ribboned shoes, and long hair. Vauxhall visitors had already been presented with the idea of a continuity between Prince Edward’s father and General Amherst in the form of a song, written by John Lockman.84 Likewise, visual echoes between Hayman’s painting and Wale’s plate aligned past and present English heroes who had repeatedly vanquished the French and presented their celebrated bravery and magnanimity in a genealogical light. Historical plates, where the past was polished and improved, such as The Black Prince waiting on ye King of France his Prisoner, materialised visions of history through a selection of events that had supposedly moulded the British nation. Shaped in the present for the present, those invented scenes supported patriotism and strengthened viewers in the pursuit of politeness.

The lessons of visual history The polite rendering of the actions of the Black Prince illustrates how historical characters were fashioned into usable icons that could easily be shared and appropriated for cultural purposes. Such reworkings of history, deprived of any consistent irony, were key to the circulation of historical plates and to their popularity. History had been the bedrock of male education for centuries: Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome were considered as meaningful sources of relevant examples from which valuable life lessons should be learnt. Ancient history was also inspirational for painters who pieced back together reconstructions of the virtuous actions of ancient heroes deemed worthy of imitation. While interest in the histories of Ancient Greece and Rome did not abate in eighteenth-century Britain, modern, that is national, histories became widely read. As Mark Towsey has shown, however, modern history was rarely taught in formal educational environments in the early decades of the eighteenth century, and it was mostly confined to domestic teaching and private study.85 This evolving context did not affect the general didactic framework in which history was appreciated. As this study tends to demonstrate, the popularity of modern, especially national, history depended upon the selection of a whole series of new historical examples. These were not solely aimed at preparing male heirs for the political realm

86  Reinventing the past but had to be instructive for a wider audience assiduously seeking self-improvement.86 Polite Britons who were keen to expand their knowledge of British history could thus put historical illustrations to good use. The plates that were sold with history books made the lessons of history more pleasant, and they were widely praised for their educational function. From Nicolas Lenglet du Fresnoy through to Maria Edgeworth, educators in eighteenth-century Britain kept explaining that a good historical education should start with images, provided these were used with due caution.87 Half a century before the pictorial turn in British education, and the commercialisation of pictorial teaching aids by the Dartons for instance, Samuel Wale produced plates intended to help young Britons acquire basic historical knowledge visually. In the mid-1740s, Wale was indeed employed by publisher Thomas Astley and author John Lockman to design two sets of illustrations for the latter’s New History of England and New Roman History, which had, respectively, been first published in 1729 and 1737 without plates. As mentioned in Chapter 1, both books, written in the form of questions and answers arranged chronologically, were conceived of as textbooks, explicitly intended for schools. Despite their popularity, Lockman’s unillustrated histories were obviously thought to be lacking an important asset, one that could greatly enhance their educational potential as well as their marketability. This was probably precisely what Thomas Astley thought, for he did not republish Lockman’s volumes in order to revise or amend them but for the sake of adding images to them. In keeping with John Locke’s influential writings on education, Astley certainly believed that it was important to create images that could help readers know the past. He also expected the reprinting to be profitable since the illustrated volumes of Lockman’s histories sold for almost twice the price of the unillustrated ones; sets of illustrations could also be purchased separately for the price of an unillustrated book.88 As has already been noted, the plates for Lockman’s New History of England were small, neat, simple, and carefully titled. They highlight 32 events that children were supposed to have heard of and which are described in the text. However, sources on how those plates were used are lacking: were images studied in conjunction with texts or could they be looked at by children who could not read (with adults or older children reading the matching pages to them)? Were they used to make lists of memorable events that could be copied and learnt in order to get chronological landmarks? Could they support and document moral lessons? All of these uses may be considered as well as alternatives such as serving as sheets to be coloured or cut into pieces. What is noticeable is that the Lockman set includes lighter, more entertaining subjects that were removed from subsequent series. It features, for instance, the adventures of superhero Guy of Warwick, the legendary knight presented as one of the most memorable figures of Æthelstan’s reign. It sets the mythical origins of the Order of the Garter in a ballroom where a gallant King Edward III has picked up the ribbon that has fallen from a lady’s leg. It also pictures children as leading historical characters: Edward, First Prince of Wales, Born at Carnarvan Castle is a scene that borrows from stock Biblical imagery, such as the adoration of the Magi, to celebrate the historical creation of the title given to the heir apparent. Set in a room already decked with the Prince of Wales’s emblem (the three ostrich feathers adorn the fourposter bed headboard as well as the top of the canopy), it portrays a group of men kneeling in front of a woman (presumably a servant because the prince’s mother is resting in bed) holding a new-born baby wearing a gown and a tiny coronet. With its religious undertones, the plate equates the birth of the providential child with the

Reinventing the past 87 creation of the title that was, in fact, granted to teenage Edward by his father. The conquest of Wales is completely absent from this visualisation of the event staked out for children. This glorification of the heir apparent was undoubtedly underscored by the hopes Wale, Lockman, like many other contemporary artists, vested at the time in the patronage of Frederick, the Prince of Wales. All three plates were discarded from the Mortimer set, which was, as already noted, more visually sophisticated. While children were taught with Lockman’s illustrated histories well into the nineteenth century, the new sets of illustrations were made suitable for a larger audience – that could still include children – thanks to their decorous style. Designed as pictures of polite historical performances, Wale’s images functionalised historical characters as examples for the Georgian middle-class public. At a time of growing recognition that historical change was not confined to the fall of kings and the rise of empires, these illustrations did not articulate a discourse on good and bad government, nor on martial prowess. They brought into Georgian homes images of past Britons behaving properly (honourable men, modest women, dutiful children, wise kings, magnanimous princes, and appeased crowds) while denouncing those who did not conform to that social ethos. Contrary to history paintings that emphasised the sublimity of heroic actions or lofty moral dilemmas, these plates narrowly focused on the small picture but without a hint of humour or satire. Instead of focusing on momentous, solemn episodes of universal significance, they throw light upon particular, sometimes quite mundane, anecdotes that seem rather inconsequent. Accordingly, many scenes are depicted in domestic surroundings and bear compositional similarities with conversation pieces, which were then a popular vehicle for fashionable family representations. With a similar focus on members of close circles, many events depicted on historical plates seem to scrutinise familial rather than diplomatic relations. By adopting this perspective, they were disseminating the ideals of personal behaviour in the manner of conduct-books, triggering what Mark Towsey described as “Georgian readers’ well-known obsession with historical conduct models.”89 Even major political or religious landmarks are pictured as family scenes: in St. Austin preaching under an Oak in the Isle of Thanet to the Saxon King Ethelbert and his Queen Bertha (see fig 1.8), the Christianisation of the Saxons is presented as a peaceful gathering. A faithful dog is lying quietly next to the royal couple. Hatching is used to shed light upon the action and to enhance the chiaroscuro effect. In the shaded foreground, two kneeling characters with their backs to the viewer – a fearful child clinging to its mother’s cloak – further inscribe this religious and political event in a close domestic circle. Putting less emphasis on politics than on personal morality, these plates showcase a range of situations involving both men and women. It is indeed worth noticing that women do feature on Wale’s plates, all the more so since these images were made by male artists to illustrate masculinist histories.90 Even more remarkable is the fact that women are present throughout the series, from the most remote Saxon times through to the early decades of the eighteenth century. Like their male counterparts, all are white and most of them are queens, consorts, or princesses, with a few anonymous lower-class women here and there. Unsurprisingly for female figures accessed through male writings, and their visual translations by male artists, most are portrayed as males’ favourite characters: mothers, wives, sisters, daughters embodying much appreciated feminine qualities. The unassuming queen Bertha, who had, in fact, enabled Augustine’s mission, is watching her husband King Æthelberht play the decisive part in the process of Christianisation on the plate above (see fig 1.8). Appearing

88  Reinventing the past twice in the series, Elizabeth Woodville is portrayed as a mother protecting her children: as the widow of the Lancastrian baron, John Grey, she is pictured imploring the Yorkist king to give back her sons the property and rights of their deceased father in Lady Elizabeth Grey at the Feet of Edward IV imploring a maintenance for herself and her Children (see fig 2.9). Widowed again in The Queen Dowager of King

Figure 2.9  Samuel Wale, Lady Elizabeth Grey at the Feet of Edward IV imploring a maintenance for herself and her Children, originally designed for Thomas Mortimer’s New History of England (1764–1766), here its reversed reissue in William Augustus Russel’s New and Authentic History of England (1777) Source:  Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

Reinventing the past 89 Edward 4th Parting with the Duke of York, she is shown as an affectionate mother having to hand her younger son over to Cardinal Bourchier in an emotional farewell scene. The series also includes repentant sinners (Jane Shore, Queen Emma), innocent victims (Lady Mary Bruce, the young woman raped by Colonel Kirke), and all those moralised views of gendered roles far outnumber depictions of powerful women. Yet, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Anne, shown performing their official duties, or Joan of Arc in full armour, are notable exceptions in this gallery of emblems of womanly virtues. As reconstructions of the past in the Georgian present, Wale’s illustrations show gendered performances of historical characters’ commitment to the foundation values of the polite nation. These images nonetheless situated women in a chronology and contributed to populating the past with female characters, thus encouraging women, and men, to feminise national genealogies and ancestries. Those portraits of historical women did not sketch out a female community with a historical identity. However, they did assert the presence of women in British history. The very fact that the first visual historical panorama of its kind included portraits of women was in itself a step towards the idea that women could be remembered for the imprint they had left on history. In comparison with historical texts, from which women were virtually absent, historical illustrations greatly enhanced the visibility of women and thus contributed to a remarkable change in the face and body of history. Apart from establishing the historical presence of women, these images also hint at a female readership. Further evidence that Georgian women were consumers of historical plates can be found in Charlotte Cowley’s Ladies History of England, a pictorial history specifically intended for female readers in which nearly half of the illustrations (21 out of 48) were reused from the sequence of Wale’s plates sold by Cooke. Around the same period, the educationist Sarah Trimmer, née Kirby, already well known for her publications intended for religious training in Sunday schools, turned to visual history. Concerning educational matters, Trimmer was a follower of the much-admired Félicité de Genlis and issued several volumes containing prints of religious, ancient, and English histories. Her series of prints of English history was explicitly sold to be displayed in “those apartments in which children receive the first rudiments of their education” and in “nurseries” as the book’s title page indicates.91 The visual compendium included 64 rather crude plates (or tables) that spanned the history of Britain from the Roman conquest to the reign of George III. It was sold alongside a companion volume of “easy lessons” providing background for and commentaries of the images.92 Nearly all the events selected and illustrated for Trimmer’s publication featured in the sequence commercialised by Cooke and some (Canute commanding the sea to retire, The death of Lady Jane Grey, The Invincible Armada, The Gunpowder Plot or King Charles II in the oak for example) presented striking similarities with the illustrations designed by Wale. There is a strong likelihood that Sarah Trimmer, who was the daughter of architect Joshua Kirby (1716-1774), knew Samuel Wale personally for the latter had been taking subscriptions for her father’s successful book on perspective, Dr. Brook Taylor’s Method of Perspective, at a time when both men were members of St Martin’s Lane Academy.93 Beyond her probable acquaintance with the artist, Trimmer found that book plates such as Wale’s could be used satisfactorily to teach history visually to British children. Although she claims that her “easy lessons” are merely extracted from Hume’s History and refers her readers to specific pages,94 her selection of pictures borrows from the visual sequence that was in circulation in the early 1790s, at a time when no illustrated edition of

90  Reinventing the past Hume’s History had been completed. Both the chosen subjects and outlines of plates show that she was familiar with Cooke’s sequence and that she endorsed its polite depiction of the nation’s past, finding it instructive both from historical and moral points of view. The way in which Wale’s plates recalibrated the national past in the domestic sphere, stressing the private lives of historical characters, resonated only too well with the eighteenth-century gendering of spaces and the association of women with the household. However, this new visualisation of history which displayed reconstructed polite individual behaviours suited to eighteenth-century social ideals involved performances of both femininity and masculinity. As seen with the example of Edward the Black Prince, male characters were equally praised for their refined manners or their concern for others and were accordingly portrayed as men of feelings. Partaking in the culture of sensibility, Wale’s historical illustrations therefore set a sentimental historical trend, which dramatised history, and which would become prevalent in the nineteenthcentury forms of anecdotal history writing and painting. The new language of sentiments, widely used in literature in the second half of the eighteenth century, was applied to this new form of visual historical drama so as to reach out to female, male, young and old audiences alike. Whereas grand style history paintings presented viewers with universal examples to look up to, small historical plates were looked into, often in the quiet studious atmosphere of the home. These historical illustrations particularised the lessons of history painting and enhanced a new sense of closeness between viewers and historical characters. With their narrowed horizon and smaller proportion of heroes and warriors, they were predicated upon their relatability rather than their exemplarity. Grounding national history in everyday life, they encouraged viewers to seek in history inspiration for their own personal struggles through an emotional connection with the characters and situations represented. These little stories within the grand national narrative helped domesticating history while enhancing its emotional potential. Like the reconstruction of monuments or costumes, the revivification of the past through feelings and emotions was a means to authenticate it. Georgian viewers felt they could access the irretrievable life stories of their ancestors through the emotions they were induced to project into the perspective boxes that contained the reconstructed actions of historical characters. As documented by G. J. Barker-Benfield, the aggrandisement of feeling underscoring the developing culture of sensibility was invested with moral value.95 The new models of sympathetic, compassionate, benevolent men and women, of affectionate spouses and tender mothers identified by Barker-Benfield in fashionable novels were similarly found in pictorial histories. Portraying human beings that had existed in a style that emphasised the authenticity of their alleged actions, historical illustrations posited them as true heroes and heroines of sensibility. Georgian viewers could thus search the sequence for images of their civilised ancestors and look up to them as models for self-reform. Reconstructed material environments and projected feelings were essential in fostering a new engagement with the past. They were equally necessary to manage the historical distance. Drawing on Mark Salber Phillips’s studies on the subject, we can observe the push and pull of historical distance at work in Wale’s historical illustrations.96 While the retracing of chronological sequences through costumes and monuments highlighted temporal distance and emphasised the otherness of the past, empathy drew sentimental viewers closer to it. The unifying culture of sensibility allowed modern Britons to empathise with the historical characters portrayed on

Reinventing the past 91 the plates and to acknowledge them as their foremothers and forefathers. Crucially, this new sense of historical distance allowed viewers to bond with women and men that were remoulded to become the ancestors their descendants wished them to be. A far cry from partisan history, this series pieced together a consensual overview of the past purged of distressing scenes, unpleasant characters, or contentious issues. Fashioned mostly in the wake of the Seven Years’ War, after Culloden but before the loss of the American colonies, this visual past was reassuringly unequivocal. With no hint that things could have gone otherwise, the sequence of images establishes a continuity between apparently disconnected events and posits a causal connection. The post hoc fallacy satisfactorily squared with the genealogical project and with the idea that divine providence had guided Britons since the dawn of times to bring about the glorious present they lived in. The comforting, restorative qualities of the reordered past visualised on historical plates are buttressed by visions of ancient buildings restored to their former glory. Medieval churches and palaces that had long disappeared, dissolved monasteries or slighted castles were fully repaired on plates. That pleasing historical spectacle begged a new social function for the national past: instead of being associated with strife and conflicts, it could become a hospitable place, a territory Britons would want to expand to and inhabit.

Notes 1 Barbara J. Shapiro, A Culture of Fact. England 1550–1720 (2000; Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell UP, 2003) 57. 2 On issues of trust, truth, and social order, see Stephen Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994) 8–15 and 65–125 (Chapter III). 3 There are only five subjective adjectives in the 117 captions (insolent, haughty, tragical, dreadful, remarkable). 4 Richardson 20. 5 Richardson 53. 6 George Turnbull, A Treatise on Ancient Painting (London: n.p., 1740) 79. 7 Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism, and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism (Oxon/New York, NY: Routledge, 1998) 43. 8 For a discussion of great antiquarians and their fictional caricatures, see Daniel Woolf’s chapter “Images of the Antiquary in Seventeenth-Century England” in Susan Pearce, ed., Visions of Antiquity. The Society of Antiquaries of London 1707–2007 (London: The Society of Antiquaries, 2007) 11–12. 9 On the construction of this opposition in the 19th century, see Philippa Levine, The Amateur and the Professional. Antiquarians, Historians and Archaeologists in Victorian England 1838–1886 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986). 10 See Haskell, op. cit.; Arnaldo Momigliano, “Ancient History and the Antiquarian,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 13: 3/4 (1950) 285–315; Rosemary Sweet, “Antiquaries and Antiquities in Eighteenth-Century England,” Eighteenth- ­C entury Studies 34: 2 (2001) 181–206, and Antiquaries. The Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London and New York, NY: Hambledon and London, 2004). 11 On this survival of antiquarianism outside history, see Peter N. Miller, ed., Momigliano and Antiquarianism: Foundations of the Modern Cultural Sciences (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007). 12 See Stephen Bann’s preface in Martin Myrone and Lucy Peltz, Producing the Past. Aspects of Antiquarian Culture and Practice 1700–1850 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999) xviii. 13 Charles Rollin, Method of Teaching and Studying the Belles Lettres, vol. 4 (London: Bettesworth, 1734), 172.

92  Reinventing the past 14 Sweet, “Antiquaries and Antiquities in Eighteenth-Century England,” 194. 15 See Helen Mary Petter, The Oxford Almanacks (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974). 16 Richard Pococke, A Description of the East, and Some Other Countries, 2 vols. (London: Bowyer, 1745). Wale drew famous temples, obelisks, gates, and aqueducts from Antioch, Baalbek, Mitylene, Mylasa and Nice. 17 Antiquarian Richard Gough refers to Wale’s plates of the tomb and endorses the attribution to the Clarences, see Anecdotes of British Topography or, an Historical Account of what has been done for illustrating the Topographical Antiquities of Great Britain and Ireland (London: Richardson and Clark, 1768) 176. 18 See, for example, the advert for the copper plates he designed for Temple Sydney’s New and Complete History in the General Evening Post, issue 6122, January 5–7, 1773. 19 See the list of ten engraving in John Bowles, A Catalogue of Maps, Prints, Books, and Books of Maps, Which Are Printed For, and Sold by John Bowles, at Mercer’s Hall in Cheapside (London, 1728) 10–11. For studies of this series, see Robert Raines and Kenneth Sharpe, “The Story of King Charles I, Part I,” The Connoisseur 184 (1973) 38–46 and “The Story of King Charles I, Part II. The Paintings and the 1728 Engravings,” The Connoisseur 186 (1974) 192–5 as well as David Solkin, “The English Revolution and the Revolution of History Painting: The Bowles Brothers’ ‘Life of Charles Ist’” in Mark Hallett, Nigel Llewelyn, and Martin Myrone, Court, Country, City: British Art and Architecture, 1660–1735. Studies in British Art 24 (New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 2016) 263–86. 20 See Queen Elizabeth Receives the Dutch Ambassadors, 1570–1575, gouache on paper, 28.8 × 41.4 cm, Neue Galerie, Kassel, Germany (GS 10430). 21 Both George Vertue’s watercolour version (RCIN 452658) and Remigius van Leemput’s oil on canvas (RCIN 405750) are in the Royal Collection. 22 Einberg 24–6. 23 See Hans Holbein the younger (studio of), Henry VIII, c. 1543–1547, oil on panel, 238.5 × 122 cm, National Trust, Petworth (48186). 24 See https://collections.royalarmouries.org/object/rac-object-3295.html (Accessed August 24, 2021). 25 Vertue, Heads of the Kings of England, 5–8. 26 See, for instance, the London Daily Post and General Advertiser, January 28, 1743, issue 2581. 27 See Timothy Campbell, Historical Style. Fashion and the New Mode of History, 1740–1830 (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). Campbell argues: “And through a fashion system, Britons coordinated this new awareness of the historical past with an unprecedently abundant material world.” 12 28 William Guthrie, A Complete History of the English Peerage; from the Best Authorities. Illustrated with Elegant Copper-Plates of the Arms of the Nobility, blazoned in the Heralds-­Office, by the Proper Officers; Copper-Plates of the Premiers, in their Parliamentary Robes; and At the Conclusion of the History of Each Family, Vignets, and Other Ornaments, Proper for the Subject, 2 vols. (London: Dryden Leach, 1763). 29 See Izaak Walton, The Complete Angler: or, Contemplative Man’s Recreation. Being a Discourse on Rivers, Fish-Ponds, Fish, and Fishing. In Two Parts (London: Hope, 1760) vii. The same emphasis on proper costume was laid in adverts published in the London press at the time of the book’s release, see, for example, The Whitehall Evening Post or London Intelligencer, issue 2225, June 19–21, 1760, which read: “Cuts are now added of the principal Scenes, designed by Mr Wale, and engraved by Mr Ryland, in which the Characters are dressed in the Habits of the Times: Which Cuts the Reader may be assured cost, in Designing and Engraving, upwards of One Hundred Pounds.” 30 See Jacob Huysmans, Izaak Walton, c. 1672, oil on canvas, 77.5 × 64.8 cm, London, National Portrait Gallery (NPG 1168). The portrait was kept in Walton’s family until 1838 when his descendant, Rev. Dr. Herbert Hawes of Salisbury, bequeathed it to the National Gallery, see Ralph N. Wornum, Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the Pictures in the National Gallery with Biographical Notices of the Painters (London: Clowes and sons, 1847) 102. 31 Walton, Advertisement ix.

Reinventing the past 93 32 Walton, Advertisement ix. 33 Thomas Jefferys, A Collection of the Dresses of Different Nations, Antient and Modern. Particularly Old English Dresses After the Designs of Holbein, Vandyke, Hollar and Others. With an Account of the Authorities, from which the Figures are Taken; and Some Short Historical Remarks on the Subject. To which are added The Habits of the Principal Characters on the English Stage, 4 vols. (London: Thomas Jefferys, 1757–1772). 34 See [Nicholas] Rowe, The Works of Mr. William Shakespear; in six volumes. Adorn’d with cuts, vol. 3 (London: Tonson, 1709) and [Thomas Hanmer], The Works of Shakespear in six volumes. Carefully Revised and Corrected by the former Editions, and Adorned with Sculptures designed and executed by the best hands, vol. 3 (Oxford: The Theatre, 1743). 35 See Teri J. Edelstein, Vauxhall Gardens. With Essays by T.J. Edelstein and Brian Allen (New Haven, CT: Yale Centre for British Art, 1983) 31. 36 See Francis Hayman, Spranger Barry, Mary Elmy, Lacy Ryan, c. 1755–1760, oil on canvas, 127 × 108 cm, London: Garrick Club (G0049). 37 See Francis Sandford, History of the Coronation of the Most High, Most Mighty and Most Excellent Monarch James II (London: Newcomb, 1687) and A Complete Account of the Ceremonies observed in the Coronations of the Kings and Queens of England (London: Roberts, 1727). 38 Sandford 121 and Complete Account 50. 39 The lantern was transferred to the Ashmolean Museum in 1887 and it is still there today (accession number AN1887.2). 40 Stephen Bann has thoroughly explored the development of historical realism in the 19th century, see for instance The Clothing of Clio, op. cit. 41 Robert Dodsley, London and Its Environs Described. Containing An Account of whatever is most remarkable for Grandeur, Elegance, Curiosity or Use, In the City and in the Country Twenty Miles round it. Comprehending also Whatever is most material in the History and Antiquities of this great Metropolis. Decorated and illustrated with a great Number of Views in Perspective, engraved from original Drawings, taken on purpose for this Work. Together with a Plan of London, A Map of the Environs, and several other useful Cuts, 6 vols. (London: Dodsley, 1761). 42 William Maitland, The History of London, from its foundation to the present time (London: Richardson, 1739). This was reissued in 1754 and, from 1756, with a slightly amended title: The History and Survey of London from its foundation to the present time (London: Osborne, 1756). 43 See Chamberlain. 44 Guthrie 42. 45 See the canvas in the Royal Collection (RCIN 405301): Peter Tillemans, Queen Anne in the House of Lords, c. 1708–1714, oil on canvas 139.8 × 122.9 cm. 46 Roland Barthes, The Rustle of Language, translated by Richard Howard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989) 147, 141. 47 Thomas Hope, Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, executed from designs by Thomas Hope (London: Longman, 1807). 48 Bann, Clothing of Clio, 57–8. 49 On the revival and continuous use of Gothic ornament in other styles, see Peter Lindfield, Georgian Gothic. Medievalist Architecture, Furniture and Interiors 1730–1840 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2016). 50 See Batty and Thomas Langley, Ancient Architecture, Restored and Improved by a Great Variety of Grand and useful Designs, Entirely New in the Gothick Mode for the Ornamenting of Buildings and Gardens. Exceeding every Thing Extant (London: Langley, 1741–1742). From 1747, it was reprinted under the title “Gothic Architecture improved by Rules and Proportions”. 51 Thomas Warton, Observations on the Fairy Queen of Spenser, 2 vols. (London: Dodsley, 1762). His “hasty remarks” on the Gothic are in the second volume, 184–98. 52 Warton 186, 189, 191. 53 Warton 194.

94  Reinventing the past 54 Joseph Levine explains that Horace Walpole was impressed by Walton’s essay, see Joseph M. Levine, Humanism and History. Origins of Modern English Historiography (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell UP, 1987) 197. 55 James Macpherson, Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem, in six books: Together with several other poems, composed by Ossian the son of Fingal. Translated from the Galic language (London: Beckett and De Hondt, 1762). 56 See Thomas Percy (1729–1811) Papers (1759–1785), Ms Eng 893, Box 139 A. 57 Thomas Percy, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry: Consisting of Old Heroic Ballads, Songs, and other Pieces of our earlier Poets (chiefly of the lyric kind.) Together with some few of later date, 3 vols. (London: Dodsley, 1765). 58 On the Gothic theory, or search for medieval self-justification, see R[oger]. J[ohn]. Smith, The Gothic Bequest. Medieval institutions in British thought, 1688–1863 (Cambridge UP, 1987). 59 Warton 186. 60 See Simon Keynes, “The Cult of King Alfred,” in Michael Lapidge, ed., Anglo Saxon England 28 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999) 225–356. 61 Vertue, Heads of the Kings of England, 5. 62 Keynes 228, 274. 63 The same plate was reissued in Sydney’s and Russel’s histories with a caption attributing the capture of the Danish standard to Odun, Earl of Devon. 64 Lockman, New History of England, 26. 65 In 1751, the play Alfred: A Masque, written by James Thomson and David Mallet, originally performed for the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1740, was revived by David Garrick with Mallet’s added prologue praising “Alfred the nation’s father”, “In arms renow’d, for arts of peace ador’d”. See David Mallet, Alfred: A Masque. Acted at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane by His Majesty’s servants (London: Millar, 1751) unpaginated Prologue.   Interestingly, the very words “arts of peace” wormed their way through to Mortimer’s text which reads: “Having thus attained to the meridian of power and glory, and having no enemy to disturb the quiet of his reign, [King Alfred] he turned his thoughts to the cultivating the arts of peace, and to repair the mischiefs that the ravage of the barbarous Danes had done to his country,” Mortimer, New History of England, vol. 1, 69. 66 Mortimer, New History of England, vol. 1, 69. 67 See Lockman, New History of England, 83 and Mortimer, New History of England, vol. 1, 343–4. 68 On the relative neglect of Georgian medievalism, see Barbara Gribling, The Image of Edward the Black Prince in Georgian and Victorian England. Negotiating the Late Medieval Past (Fakenham: The Boydell Press, 2017) 6. 69 Rosemary Mitchell, Picturing the Past: English History in Text and Image, 1830–1870 (Oxford: OUP, 2000) 15–16. 70 Rollin vol. 3, 2 and vol. 4, 172. 71 The Modern Universal British Traveller, op. cit. published by Cooke, precisely developed the link between travel in space and time. In this volume, he provided views of towns and interesting landmarks but also reused historical plates to illustrate certain history-steeped locations, associating for instance Ashdon with the plate showing the combat between Edmund Ironside and Canute the Great (73), or Winchester with the trial of Queen Emma (348) and Corfe castle with the murder of Edward the martyr (432). 72 Mitchell, Picturing the Past, 15. 73 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections of the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, revised edition (London: Verso, 2016) 26. 74 For the search for a polite historical narrative, see Hicks 172–88. 75 Lawrence E. Klein, “Politeness and the Interpretation of the British Eighteenth Century,” The Historical Journal 45: 4 (2002) 870, 873. 76 See Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James II (London: Longman et al., 1848) vol. 1, 439. 77 See The Capture of Havana, 1762: Storming of Morro Castle, 30 July, oil on canvas, 78.7 × 109.2 cm, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (BHC0413).

Reinventing the past 95 78 See Alan McNairn, Behold the Hero. General Wolfe and the Arts in the Eighteenth Century (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s UP, 1997) 106–7. 79 Mortimer, New History of England, vol. 1, 593. 80 Ibid. 81 Mountague 311. 82 Sydney 157. 83 The original canvas has been lost and is known through two extant studies in the collections of the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa and of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, New Brunswick. 84 One of many patriotic songs written to entertain Vauxhall visitors, Lockman’s “Cape Breton and Cherburg” compared the landing of Edward III at Cherbourg with Amherst’s capture of the fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton and was sung to the tune of “God Save the King.” See Benjamin Martin, Miscellaneous Correspondence vol. 2 (London: Owen, 1759) 875. In the 1750s, Londoners had also seen a theatre adaptation of the Battle of Poitiers: Shirley William, Edward the Black Prince; or the Battle of Poictiers: An Historical tragedy Attempted after the Manner of Shakespeare (London: Tonson, 1750). David Garrick played the part of the Black Prince, and an etching portraying him in the character’s costume shows that he was wearing breeches and ribboned shoes, hinting at a possible source for Wale’s selection of clothing, see Mr Garrick in the character of Edward, etching with hand-colouring, 1779, British Museum Ee,3.91. 85 Towsey 30–31. 86 In his preface, Thomas Mortimer opposed the general knowledge of history necessary to those “being called to the management of public affairs,” and national history that should be studied by all, see Mortimer, New History of England vol. 1, 1. 87 See Nicolas Lenglet du Fresnoy, A New Method for Studying History. Translated by Richard Rawlinson, 2 vols. (London: Burton, 1728) vol. 1, 248 and Edgeworth and Lovell Edgeworth, vol. 1, 348–9. 88 See, for example, The General Advertiser, issue 3936, June 6, 1747. The New History of England was sold for five shillings with plates and two shillings and six pence without them; the New Roman History was sold for four shillings and six pence with plates and three shillings without them. 89 Towsey 49. 90 For a study of masculinist historiography, see Mary Spongberg, Writing Women’s History since the Renaissance (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) part 1 “Men History”, 14–33. 91 Sarah Trimmer, A Series of Prints of English History (London: Marshall, 1788). 92 Sarah Trimmer, A Description of a Set of Prints of English History: Contained in a Set of Easy Lessons, 2 vols. (London: Marshall, 1787–1788). 93 See London Advertiser and Literary Gazette, issue 20, March 26, 1751; the advert was repeated throughout March, April, and May of that year. 94 Trimmer, Description, unpaginated advertisement. 95 G.J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility. Sex and Society in Eighteenth-century Britain (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992), see more particularly chapter V, “A Culture of Reform”. 96 On the opposing impulses of historical distance, see Mark Salber Phillips, Society and Sentiment: Genres of Historical Writing in Britain, 1740–1820 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Press, 2000) 26–8. See also Mark Salber Phillips, On Historical Distance (New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 2013).

3

The historical genre

Historical illustrations were composed as reconstructions of past events intended to document history. The full process of visualisation required active participation from viewers who had to continue movements, comprehend feelings, infer causes, deduce consequences, imagine whole buildings, complete room decoration, and fill the blanks between pictures. Responses to those historical book illustrations involved acts of contemplation, depiction, and interpretation (be they silent or loud, individual, or collective) that kept multiplying as images were disseminated. Details regarding the dissemination of the history books themselves, which can be adumbrated from subscribers’ lists, are scarce and mostly limited to the initial journey of the publications. This chapter deals with the subsequent travels undertaken by historical illustrations, within or without books, and seeks to assess what those images did when they circulated. Initially inserted in books to image the past in order to revive it, those small plates left books and led to wilder imaginings and reimaginings of actions and characters. Each viewer’s engagement enhanced the plates’ potential for imaginative reflection and refraction, unlocking new insights into British history. What happened when artists engaged with this visual corpus? To answer this question, this chapter examines the development of historical illustration in a wider artistic context, that of the appropriation of history painting in eighteenth-century Britain. As previously mentioned, the labels “history painting” or “history painter” were part of the lexicon of seventeenth-century continental academies. These regulated institutions, derived from earlier academies associated with intellectual humanist endeavours, had introduced a new theoretical form of art instruction based on knowledge rather than skill. Whereas training in medieval guilds was individual and practical, undertaken by apprentices in a master’s workshop, the backbone of the academic educational programme was a set curriculum based upon drawing applied to copying, life classes and anatomy. Academies intended as art schools were further formalised with the addition of a programme of lectures and meetings. These new art institutions aimed at raising painting to the status of a liberal art, like poetry. They used ancient texts to justify their aspirations and to develop the theory of the sister arts. Drawn from the analogy introduced by Horace in his Ars Poetica, the parallel between painting and poetry, better known as ut pictura poesis, implied a comparison between the achievements, and respective conditions, of painters and poets. The move towards academic education had strong social underpinnings and academies placed under the aegis of princes and kings connected image makers to courtly circles alongside poets. Embracing ut pictura poesis also yielded intense aesthetic speculation and changed for centuries the way images were made, looked at, and valued. DOI: 10.4324/9781003245445-4

The historical genre 97 But it also meant that, in acknowledgment of her sisterly bonds, painting had to submit to poetry’s authority and accept texts as sources while emulating poetry’s ability to represent human actions. Within this logocentric paradigm, the more narrative the painting, the better painted productions were designed as compressed temporal units that needed to be expanded and explained through verbal commentary. Descending from Alberti’s historia, history painting thus became the ultimate narrative genre, the most adequate to articulate public visual discourses. Ruling supreme at the apex of the academic system of the arts, history painting was the genre towards which academic education was geared. As academies operated according to strict selective rules, history painting was used to distinguish an elite among painters, those who were recipients of the most prestigious commissions, and those who reached the highest positions. Although by no means all painters became history painters, members of art academies unreservedly supported the primacy of history painting for the recognition it carried. It therefore should come as no surprise that when British painters gathered in London, or Glasgow, to advance their art in the early decades of the eighteenth century, they chose to do so within academies and expressed interest for history painting. At a time when all academies throughout Europe abided by the same rules, based on the hierarchy of genres theorised in France, participation in the artistic field required a commitment to those principles. All major British artists who enriched the discourse on art, from Richardson to Reynolds, addressed the topic of history painting. In practical terms, however, they had to overcome numerous hurdles. British painters were placed in a weak position in the face of continental competition by their inexperience in history painting, and by the fact that there had been very few native practitioners of the genre. Additionally, the absence of any sustained state or Church patronage in Britain deprived artists of opportunities for public commissions. Finally, the dominance of French models and styles in a context in which France was seen as Britain’s arch-enemy meant that British painters had to balance conflicting demands. This chapter presents the manner in which historical painting in Britain developed as a means to resolve this conundrum, allowing British artists to prove themselves as painters of grand narrative works of national significance fit to be exhibited in public. In the wake of landmark publications on London exhibitions,1 this study sets the advent of a new historical genre of painting in Britain against the burgeoning, from the 1760s onward, of an exhibition culture. While venues for contemporary art displays multiplied, so did the number of British painters practising this new genre, and so did the number of historical paintings. Some famously attracted attention and even stirred up emotions among the public. Many were in fact derived from the historical illustrations initially designed for pictorial histories. The following pages aim at demonstrating the high cultural impact of historical illustrations: before the advent of the historical novel, the outlines, or first sketches, of grand canvases that celebrated national heroes and heroines of the past often sprang from humble book plates used as templates for the visualisation of British history.

Public exhibitions In his masterly work, Art in Britain 1660–1815, David Solkin wrote about the year 1760: “There is no more important date in the entire history of British art.”2 This undeniable milestone year saw artists from St Martin’s Lane academy use a room on

98  The historical genre the Strand – rented by the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in Great Britain (Society of Arts from now on) and lent to them by William Shipley (1715–1803), the Society’s founder and secretary – to display their achievements to the public.3 In the wake of earlier displays at the Foundling Hospital and Vauxhall gardens, exhibitions of contemporary artworks by British artists went on to become a landmark in the London season as well as the reason behind the division of the artistic community into two societies (the Society of Artists of Great Britain and the Free Society of Artists). Due to the split of the artistic community, precisely over the organisation of such art shows, the Royal Academy was created in 1768 with the dual goal of “establishing a well-regulated School or Academy of Design, for the use of Students in the Arts, and an Annual Exhibition open to all Artists of distinguished Merit, where they may offer their Performances to public Inspection, and acquire that degree of Reputation and Encouragement which they shall be deemed to deserve.”4 As pinpointed by David Solkin, the importance of the new system of public art exhibitions, initiated in 1760, cannot be overstated. The display of artworks to the wider public had a profound impact on both artists and viewers. Year after year, the crowds that thronged the venues where art exhibitions were held could see a new and wider array of visual creations including paintings, drawings, engravings, as well as architectural models and handcrafted works. Not only did public exhibitions change the number of artworks put on show but they also changed the way Britons were made to see art and how they saw themselves seeing art. Artists had to adapt to the consequences of the newly gained visibility of visual works, while the fledgling exhibition culture entailed the development of new genres, subjects, and styles. Chief among them was the historical style or the inspiration visual artists drew from the past to fashion portraits, to enhance the evocativeness of landscapes or the topicality of genre scenes, and to extend the scope of history painting.

The Society of Arts’ premiums Remarkably, not only did Shipley’s Society of Arts give the impetus to a new system of public art exhibitions, but it also expanded the province of visual history. As Wale had finished his first historical series for Lockman, fellow artists were likewise encouraged by the Society of Art to visualise events from British history through a pioneering reward scheme. Thanks to the success of the Society, which attracted a thousand fee-paying members over the course of its first ten years of existence, the president and fellow members were able to use their growing income to extend the premiums – initially granted in the fields of agriculture, chemistry, or manufactures – to the visual arts. Drawing was considered a priority from the foundation of the Society of Arts in 1754, and prizes for many different categories of drawings were given to boys and girls under the premise, expressed in the Society’s minutes, that good draughtsmanship was absolutely necessary in many employments, trades, and manufactures.5 As more and more visual artists became members of the Society, or were invited to serve on the committees that convened to attribute the premiums for drawings, they brought artistic matters up the agenda. In line with a concern that ranked high amongst the interests of William Hogarth (elected in 1755) or, Joshua Reynolds (elected in 1756), the Society ordered the Arts Committee “to consider of giving a Premium for the Improvement of History painting in this Country” in 1758.6 Its conclusions were presented three months later when it came with the resolution

The historical genre 99 “That a Premium for 100 Guineas be given for the Best Original Piece of History painting containing no less than three human Figures as big as Life, and that 50 Guineas be given to the second best Piece of the like Kind.”7 In addition, the committee prescribed that the subjects for the history painting premiums be chosen from a list of six: 1. Boadicia relating her injuries to Cassibolan and Paulinus in the presence of her two daughters 2. Queen Eleonora sucking the poison out of King Edward’s wound after he was shot with a poison’d arrow 3. Regulus taking Leave of his friends when he departed on his return to Carthago 4. The death of Socrates 5. The death of Epaminondas 6. The Birth of Commerce described by Mr Glover in his poem called London8 The same committee recommended the creation of a premium for landscape painting and that “Proof be made to the Satisfaction of the Society, That the whole of each Picture, either in History or Landscape painting, has been painted in England,” “That the Age of the Candidates in both Kinds be unlimited,” “That Subjects of any Nation (painting the whole of the said works in England) may be Candidates,” and ‘That the Society do hire a proper Room wherein the Works of the several Candidates shall be exhibited to public views.”9 Here laid out, these resolutions, which made it possible for foreign-born artists to contribute to the development of painting in England (as they had been doing for decades in London’s private academies), remained guiding principles for the various artistic societies’ as well as for the Royal Academy’s annual exhibitions. Equally groundbreaking was the initial list of subjects; the three drawn from ancient Greek or Roman history were incredibly modern, literal precursors of neoclassical masterpieces that were to be painted in Europe in the following decades. Likewise, the three remaining suggested themes implied a modernisation – and a remarkable feminisation – of the repertoire of history painting to include new British subjects, never painted before. The allegory of commerce was intended as a visual adaptation of Richard Glover’s 1739 poem, London, or the Progress of Commerce, which gave pantheonic depictions of the transformation of the capital into a commercial hub. Another of Glover’s works, his play Boadicia, performed at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane in 1753, may have been in the minds of the Society’s members when they included the queen of the Iceni in the list. The sentimental scene involving King Edward I and Eleanor of Castile, which featured in the English History Delineated (EHD) list, may have been slipped in by prominent bookseller Robert Dodsley, one of the initiators of the EHD, who was elected member of the Society of Arts in 1755 and became the Society’s first designated stationer. The amount of discussion around the choice of subjects has been lost but some passages from the minutes leave us to imagine that they might have been lively. Indeed, the six subjects above, prescribed by the Arts Committee, were discarded during the meeting and the minutes record: “The Society disagreed to the Second Resolution; and Resolved That the Candidates shall choose their Subjects out of the English History only.”10 While the actual diversity of the artistic community gathered in London may have dictated the conditions that placed foreigners on a par with natives in the premium competition, the refocusing of the competition on English history echoes the growing

100  The historical genre clamour for a national school of painting that could improve Britain’s artistic standing in Europe.11 The patriotic motives underlying the qualification of the Committee’s resolution – and more generally the activities of the Society of Arts – were undoubtedly exacerbated by the rivalries against France that were developing at the time into a major conflict, later known as the Seven Years’ War.

Dr Johnson’s definition of the historical genre The Society’s focus on national history was confirmed a few weeks later when the consolidated list of premiums was agreed upon. Under the heading “History Painting” (in the margin), it reads “For the best Original Historical Picture, the subject to be taken from English History only, containing no less than three human Figures, as large as the Life, One hundred Guineas.”12 The changing terms of the competition may well have been chosen with the expert assistance of the lexicographer, and distinguished member of the Society, Samuel Johnson (elected in 1756). A compelling argument in favour of his direct involvement in the discussion lies in the fact that four days before the Society examined the creation of a premium for history painting Dr Johnson discussed the opportunity to give such a reward in issue 45 of The Idler, published on February 24, 1759. Known under the title “On painting. Portraits defended,” Johnson’s piece for The Idler could be seen at first glance as only loosely related to history painting. Yet after opening onto a defence of the portrait genre set against a criticism of painting formulated in standard Shaftesburian terms (faulting ornamental pictures that “neither imply the owner’s virtue nor excite it”13), Johnson continues: “Genius is chiefly exerted in historical pictures, and the art of the painter of portraits is often lost in the obscurity of his subject.”14 In a concessive clause, he puts that blunt statement into perspective adding that “what is greatest is not always best”15 while opportunely celebrating the genius of his friend, the portrait painter and fellow-member of the Society of Arts, Joshua Reynolds. In keeping with his comment on the moral deficiency of certain pictorial genres, Johnson’s tribute to Reynolds polarises the familiar opposition between the naturalness of (British) portrait painting and the fictional splendour of (continental) depictions of “heroes and goddesses,”16 a judgment that must have been music to Hogarth’s ears. Johnson’s praise of the part played by portraits in maintaining ties between people despite distance, and even beyond death, is reminiscent of the writings of another early contributor to the aesthetic debate in Britain in as much that it actually reiterates a passage from Jonathan Richardson’s Essay on the Theory of Painting where the latter appropriates Leone Battista Alberti’s words to express the power of portraits.17 While encouraging Reynolds to keep practising his art, Johnson again concedes “Yet in a nation great and opulent there is room, and ought to be patronage, for an art like that of painting through all its diversities; and it is to be wished, that the reward now offered for an historical picture may excite an honest emulation, and give beginning to an English school.”18 It therefore appears that Johnson’s unexpected support for historical pictures, in an essay extolling the merits of portrait painting, can be directly related to the reward scheme then devised by the Society of Arts. In the name of diversity, Johnson calls for a broadening of national taste and goes to even greater lengths since he discusses potential subjects in the remaining part of the essay. In this truly ekphrastic piece, he gives carefully detailed depictions of five imaginary compositions, weighing their

The historical genre 101 strengths and weaknesses. Drawing on Shaftesbury’s definition of the perfect history painting, extensively discussed by Richardson, Johnson disposes his exemplary picture on the principle of unity of time and action. With this rule in mind, he rejects a sublime representation of the death of Hercules, precisely for its lack of unity. A pathetic encounter between Achilles and a Trojan prince is equally discarded because of the difficulty to translate visually the characters’ complex feelings. Johnson also disapproves of the emotional discovery of Ulysses by his nurse because it does not include enough characters. Although the heroic death of valiant general Epaminondas could be suitable, it does not satisfy Johnson who, after eliminating those mighty ancient contenders, urges British painters to consider the dissolution of the parliament by Cromwell instead. In accordance with the rule of unity mentioned earlier, Johnson selects the moment when Cromwell supposedly seized the mace, on April 20, 1653, saying: “Take away that fool’s bauble!” and explains that the episode would give painters the opportunity to depict a whole array of different feelings, or passions, while allowing for the inclusion of realistic portraits of the principal characters. His was an interesting double bill, a group portrait, unquestionably historical, already featuring in the EHD in 43rd place, and which, he concludes, would “make a picture of unexampled variety, and irresistible instruction.”20 Readers of The Idler wondering who could supersede divine heroes, who could surpass the greatest and brightest warriors of Ancient Greece, and may have felt somewhat surprised to find the English Lieutenant-general and leader of the Commonwealth of England. Overcoming their initial surprise, they could gain a much clearer understanding of what a historical picture should be, i.e., a composition visualising a memorable event involving important Britons. The semantic shift, in the minutes of the Society of Arts’ meetings, from “history painting,” first employed to refer to the creation of the new premium in November 1758 and in February 1759, to “historical picture” employed in the first consolidated list of premiums in May 1759, as well as in all subsequent communication about that premium, can be seen as the result of Johnson’s convincing case. Crucially, such terminology betrays a move away from a canonical genre, which was only marginally historical, to the creation of images that visualised national history. The idea that historical events of collective significance could be recorded on canvases was certainly not new in the eighteenth century. Commemorative pieces had long been produced to immortalise battles, treaties, or marriages, but these grand compositions did not develop into a new subgenre of history painting for their subjects were either mythologised or partially allegorised, and most often classicised. What Johnson does, however, is nothing less than to direct his audience’s gaze away from canonical history painting. By exposing the alleged flaws of scenes that could have been perfectly turned into paintings (most of them had actually been), he inches his readers along one imagined picture after the other, towards a radical modernisation of history painting in Britain supported by a Society spearheading scientific research. From Alberti’s historia to the peinture d’histoire practised and theorised at the French Royal Academy, the most elevated genre had been narrative and devoted to the most edifying subjects drawn from religious or ancient textual sources. Johnson’s essay supports a groundbreaking transformation of the genre that worked to undermine its theoretical universalism. Establishing new ties between painting and history, his essay supports the transformation of ut pictura poesis into ut pictura historia and the advent of a new particularised form of vernacular history painting. 19

102  The historical genre

Historical pictures rewarded In compliance with the rules of the competition, the young British painters who submitted works to the Society of Arts all painted subjects drawn from British history, but they did so without taking up Johnson’s particular suggestion. Over a decade, the Society granted up to three premiums a year to historical pictures, depending upon how the committee assessed the qualities of the canvases they had to examine. Except for George Romney (1734–1802), whose Death of General Wolfe was a premium winner in 1763, all canvases visualised scenes from distant pre-Tudor times. The two artists who repeatedly won in the first few years, Robert Edge Pine (1730–1788), an outspoken supporter of public art exhibitions, and Rome-born Andrea Casali (1705–1784), seem to have flipped through historical book illustrations for inspiration. In 1763 for instance, Pine won with King Canute Rebuking his Courtiers for their Flattery, now lost but known through the 1766 reproductive engravings by François Aliamet (1734-1790). The dramatic composition hinges on the figure of the king, standing on a beach between a crowd on the left and a turbulent sea and stormy sky on the right. Behind him, his throne and sceptre are being submerged by waves as he vehemently addresses the other characters. His contrapposto is accentuated by his outstretched left arm, pointing at the sea, while his face is turned in the opposite direction towards the courtiers. First told by Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum, the story of how Canute had shown his courtiers that even the king was unable to stop the tide featured in Rapin de Thoyras’s History of England. It had therefore been alluded to by George Vertue who referred to it in a small historiated vignette placed below his head of King Canute and surrounded by an ornamental frame seemingly carved in relief. Despite their small scale, the characters are easily identifiable, with the king sitting on his throne, waves covering his feet, and a few male figures, some bent forward, surrounding him. Expanding on the tiny vignette for his Lockman book plate, Wale brought into focus the interaction between the king and his courtiers merely adumbrated by Vertue. Staring at an obsequious-looking man, the king points to the wave about to crash on his feet. Extrapolated from Wale’s book plate for Lockman, Pine’s composition gives centre stage to the commanding stature of the king in a composition that has also been interpreted as a critical commentary on the corruption and authoritarian tendencies of King George III’s government. 21 While it was not selected by Cooke for his sequence, the subject was reactivated and given renewed currency by Pine’s remediation. Second behind Pine’s Surrender of Calais to Edward III in 1760, Andrea Casali’s Edward the Martyr Stabbed in the Back in the Presence of Elfrida at Corfe Castle (see fig 3.1) shows the king on horseback wearing a feathered hat and a kind of doublet, holding a cup in his right hand while looking at his stepmother Elfrida. The dowager queen stands at the entrance of a vaulted gallery (supposedly at Corfe), a protective hand on the shoulder of her son Æthelred, with another boy next to her and four women behind her. Unaware that a man is coming from a dark corner behind his horse to stab him, the king only has eyes for his hospitable stepmother. This rather sentimental scene bears compositional resemblance to both de’Cavalieri print (which shows Edward’s horse front leg bent, one hoof in the air, and includes a very similar double portrait of Elfrida and her son)22 and to Wale’s Edward the Martyr Stabb’d by Order of his Mother in Law, made for Lockman (see fig 3.2). On Casali’s painting, the group formed by the king and his attacker is reiterated from Wale’s plate rather

The historical genre 103

Figure 3.1  A ndrea Casali, The Assassination of Edward the Martyr, c.1760, oil on canvas, 254 × 208 cm, Burton Constable Hall, Yorkshire Source:  © Burton Constable Foundation

than from Cavalieri’s print (where Edward wears a classicised costume); Edward’s historicised costume and his horse’s unstable position on Casali’s canvas seem to have been reversed and enlarged from the Lockman plate. Since there are other borrowings from de’Cavalieri’s engravings (see Chapter 1) in Wale’s illustrations, it is highly probable for his Lockman plate, that he borrowed the horse’s position from the sixteenth-century engraving. Wale may also have been introduced to the scene through a copy of an illuminated manuscript, Queen Mary Psalter, which shows

104  The historical genre

Figure 3.2  Samuel Wale, Edward the Martyr Stabb’d by Order of his Mother in Law, illustration made for John Lockman’s New History of England (1747) Source:  ©The Trustees of the British Museum

The historical genre 105 King Edward and another man on horseback facing two women at the entrance of a castle. 23 The women are looking on, holding up their draped dresses, while a man gives a cup to the king and stabs him at the same time. This kind of active depiction, in which several events are shown in the same image, could be confusing for modern readers and Wale only borrowed for his Lockman plate the two women witnessing the scene, holding the folds of their dresses, while adding some documentary realism to the scene. Moreover, both he and Casali dissociated the offering from the assault contrary to the depiction of the event on the fourteenth-century devotional book. Wale’s subsequent take on the event was published in the first volume of Mortimer’s History, only three years after Casali’s premium winning painting was exhibited with the Free Society of Artists in 1761. In his reworked version (see fig 3.3), Wale

Figure 3.3  Samuel Wale, King Edward Stab’d at the Gate of Corfe by Order of his Mother, illustration made for Thomas Mortimer’s New History of England (1764–1766) Source:  Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library

106  The historical genre kept the same four characters presented in an improved architectural setting. He did, however, change the perspective on the scene, showing the king from behind so as to expose his attacker. Painting a cruel expression on the assailant’s face, Wale borrowed from Casali the resolute gesture of the attacker, fist clenched on his dagger. Did Wale and Casali actually discuss the ways in which they intended to visualise the event, or did they exchange through each other’s images only? The question remains unanswered, but there is every reason to believe that Wale saw Casali’s painting while it was shown to the public. He certainly knew about it, not least because Wale had dealings with the Arts committee, as recorded in the Society of Arts’ minutes. 24 In addition, Wale was directly involved in London’s public exhibitions both as organiser (he was elected among the six artists from St Martin’s Lane academy who formed the first committee in charge of public exhibitions in 1759), 25 and as a regular contributor. Besides, these annual events gave him the opportunity to show a selection of his historical illustrations in public, most being shown on multiple occasions, and some with slightly amended titles: The Widow of Sir John Grey petitioning King Edward the Fourth (with the Society of Artists of Great Britain in 1760 and 1763), Richard I prisoner (with the Society of Artists of Great Britain in 1763 and 1767), and Several of the bishops, nobility, and principal citizens of London, swearing allegiance to King William, at Berkhampstead Abbey (with the Society of Artists of Great Britain in 1767).

Particularising history At the time of the introduction of Society of Arts’ premiums, the appropriation of history painting by British artists was taking a distinctive national turn. As he sat on the Society of Arts’ premium committee and was also among the six artists in charge of public exhibitions, Francis Hayman started painting for Jonathan Tyers, the owner of Vauxhall Gardens, four enormous canvases celebrating British victories in the wars Britain was waging against France in America and Asia.26 Painted between 1760 and 1764 and exhibited at Vauxhall, they are now lost, known only through modellos and reproductive engravings. United by their triumphant tone, the four canvases were not homogeneous in style: while The Triumph of Britannia and Britannia Distributing Laurels were allegorical, The Surrender of Montreal to General Amherst and Lord Clive Receiving the Homage to the Nabob fell under the label of “historical picture” as defined in the minutes of the Society of Arts. These last two compositions depicted scenes from recent British history and included numerous life-size figures all clad in their contemporary clothes, thus giving centre stage to British uniforms. It was not the first time a piece foregrounding British soldiers was on show in London. William Hogarth’s March to Finchley, exhibited at the Foundling Hospital in 1750, displayed his very personal outlook on the actions of the king’s grenadiers who were sent to quench the 1746 Jacobite rebellion. Amidst a crowd of disorderly soldiers, the composition gives prominence to a scene involving one grenadier, with a rather overwhelmed look on his face, being claimed by two women. To his right stands a young, obviously pregnant would-be companion, ready to walk arm-in-arm with him; in her basket, the ballad “God Save our Noble King” indicates that she supports the king’s troops. On the other side, an old hag, who is pulling his left arm, wears a crucifix around her neck and is waving a rolled-up Jacobite newspaper. With the Union Jack behind his back, the soldier’s predicament is given a collective meaning. Re-enacting the “Choice of

The historical genre 107 Hercules,” the comic-historical hero stands as an embodiment of the choice the whole nation was facing between – in Hogarth’s view – a loyal, promising, future and the return to an unappealing past. Being set in 1746, the scene is teeming with people all dressed in their modern-day clothes. As Douglas Fordham underlined, with The March to Finchley, Hogarth made a decisive move away from the allegorical expression of nationhood found in James Thornhill’s murals at the Royal Naval Hospital in Greenwich. 27 A far cry from Hogarth’s mock heroism, Hayman’s Surrender of Montreal to General Amherst, and Lord Clive Receiving the Homage to the Nabob, composed in the wake of the annus mirabilis of 1759, embellished the actions and character of British officers, to a point that is known today to be extremely dubious. Eschewing Hogarthian satire, Hayman was however similarly involved in the nationalisation of history painting through his choice of subjects and his use of modern dress. As David Solkin demonstrated, Hayman’s grand visual celebration of Jeffery Amherst and Robert Clive resulted in a new vernacular painterly idiom that gave a particularised expression of heroism, one that was accessible to the visitors of Vauxhall Gardens. 28 But the development of a new subgenre of history painting that modernised centuries-old rules and pushed decorum to its chronological limits did raise questions. Whereas Hogarth’s satirical tone, in his mock-heroic portrayal of the king’s army, may have accounted for the artist’s use of ordinary outfits and daily clothes, Hayman’s unequivocal celebration of Amherst and Clive seemed at odds with the classicising convention established in history painting. But given that historical fact was an integral element in the definition of new historical pictures and that dress, as seen in the case of book illustrations, was incorporated in paintings as a visual time marker, there were calls for supporting this modernisation. Tellingly, a contemporary account of the pleasure gardens described Hayman’s Lord Clive Receiving the Homage to the Nabob as a “historical picture,”29 and vindicated the painting’s “propriety” explaining that the representation of British uniforms was necessary, while Indian dresses added variety and local colour. For this author, modern clothes, instead of being seen as jarring with the noble style and universal purpose of history painting, seemed topical and appropriate in a historical picture visualising a contemporary event. Far from being negligible, issues of propriety concerning costume resurfaced in the following years, around the portrayal – first by George Romney, then by Edward Penny and Benjamin West (1738–1820) – of another Seven Year’s War hero. Romney’s Death of General Wolfe won the Society of Arts historical picture premium in 1763; it was awarded the third prize behind Pine’s King Canute Rebuking his Courtiers for their Flattery (which was first) and John Mortimer’s Edward the Confessor Taking his Mother’s Treasures (which was second). The minutes reveal however that Romney’s canvas had come second but was retrograded to the third place precisely because some members disagreed with the contemporary dress he incorporated.30 Very little is known about his painting,31 which was immediately bought by a banker, Rowland Stephenson, who had it shipped to Bengal even before engravers could make copies of it, thus hiding it from public view and from the world ever since. A tragic mirror image to Hayman’s Surrender of Montreal to General Amherst, hung at Vauxhall in 1761, Romney’s grand composition was certainly made to impress. And it did inspire his fellow artist Edward Penny who likewise clad his figures in modern dress on his own interpretation of the Death of General Wolfe, exhibited with the Society of Artists

108  The historical genre of Great Britain a year later in 1764.32 Smaller than Romney’s, Penny’s composition foregrounds the dying general surrounded by three soldiers, with his victorious troops behind him. Similar to a conversation piece, both in format and tone, it is less a celebration of heroism than an emotional tribute to a national hero. It was apparently well received as such and was shown again in a special exhibition intended to showcase the best examples of British contemporary art upon the visit of the king of Denmark in the autumn of 1768.33 Costume matters famously came to a head when Benjamin West exhibited his own Death of General Wolfe at the 1771 annual exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. In a widely cited passage, West’s biographer, John Galt, re-enacts the opposition between the Pennsylvania-born foundation member of the Royal Academy and its first president, Joshua Reynolds, over the style of clothing most appropriate to clad General Wolfe. In seeming response to Reynolds’s objection to modern dress, West is supposed to have reminded Sir Joshua of the date of the event, adding that since he was representing a British victory that “history will proudly record,” “the same truth that guides the pen of the historian should govern the pencil of the artist.”34 Carrying the comparison further, West allegedly explained that his intention “to mark the date” (visually) commanded him to be factually accurate.35 Whether uttered by West or not, these arguments recall Jonathan Richardson’s parallel between painters and historians while reiterating Richardson’s understanding of decorum in historical terms.36 They do uphold the alignment of dress and date in the name of historical truth, and it is worth noting that modern dress is arguably the only truthful element in West’s Death of General Wolfe. The setting, positions, and actions of the characters are pure invention, and yet the image captured the public’s imagination. Georgian viewers saw it as the concrete embodiment of contemporary heroism, perhaps precisely because of the display of contemporary costumes. West has since been widely hailed as the great moderniser of history painting in the wake of an article Edgar Wind published more than 80 years ago.37 Dwelling essentially on West’s iconic Death of General Wolfe, Wind argued that the painter was able to portray heroic death in everyday dress by setting the action explicitly on the American territory, thus replacing the chronological distance (usually expressed in classicising robes) by the geographical (personified by the Native American foregrounded in West’s composition). While David Solkin has qualified this analysis and stressed the radical novelty of Edward Penny’s Death of General Wolfe (also painted in modern dress and exhibited some eight years before West’s),38 it seems relevant to relate the historicisation of heroic painting to the development of historical illustration. Given that Wind connects what he calls “the revolution of history painting” to the evolution of minor genres in Britain, namely to the documentary use of conversation pieces made to record memorable events,39 there are grounds to assume that the visualisation of events from British history on book plates may have wielded some influence on the style in which contemporary historical events were represented. These hypotheses are all the stronger since, according to his biographer, John Galt, West was guided in his choice by historical considerations. The appropriation of history painting in Britain relied on the semantic shift outlined by Dr Johnson’s article, from history to historical, and it was brought about by the necessity British painters were under to prove themselves capable of practising the highest genre. Both from an aesthetic and a sociological perspectives, the new historical genre was most likely to attract the diverse viewing public that thronged exhibitions venues and to deserve to be publicly displayed, if it was rooted in British history.

The historical genre 109 Since the visualisation of British history had started in smaller formats, on vignettes and plates, the vernacular transformation of a continental pictorial genre into a distinctively British one was achieved when history painting took its lead from humble book plates that brought into focus new subjects for a new painterly genre.

Historical painting and painters at the Royal Academy It therefore appears that the so-called revolution of history painting was achieved in Britain by artists who visualised subjects from national history and who refused to classicise them, engaging in a similar process of visual reconstruction to the one practised in historical illustrations. The advent of this new historical subgenre can be traced within the very rules of the Royal Academy, where a premium was created for the best “historical picture” and not for history painting.40 Moreover, the neologism “historical painting” was a favourite of Reynolds’s who very seldom used the traditional “history painting” in his annual discourses, even when he discussed canonical works by Raphael or Michelangelo. His audience had to wait three years before hearing him utter the words “history painting,” in his fourth discourse, in 1771. Praising the nobleness and dignity of human figures in Raphael’s cartoons, he concluded: “In conformity to custom, I call this part of the art History Painting; it ought to be called Poetical, as in reality it is.”41 While conceding there is a category for this kind of painting, he immediately suggests a better name, arguing that it should be called “poetical painting” because according to the ut pictura poesis principle, painting was supposed to take its cue from poetry, not from history. The year after Reynolds delivered his fourth discourse, Benjamin West started styling himself “Historical Painter to the King” in the catalogues of the Royal Academy’s annual exhibitions. Twenty years later, the common purpose of royal academicians involved in the development of the historical subgenre was acknowledged by their fellow academician Joseph Farington (1747–1821) in the retrospective account of the foundation of the Royal Academy he wrote shortly after the celebration of the institution’s 25th anniversary.42 In this brief memoir, Farington distributes the founding painters across eight categories and includes Angelica Kauffman (1741–1807), Francesco Bartolozzi (1727–1815), Francis Hayman, Giovanni Battista Cipriani (1727–1785), and Samuel Wale among the “historical painters” alongside Benjamin West. The change between Wale being described as a “history painter” by Mortimer, in 1763, and then as a “historical painter” by Farington, in 1794, allows us to chart semantically the transformation of British painting over the course of the eighteenth century, and to highlight Wale’s integral role in this process. Farington’s classification was undoubtedly informed by his experience as a student at the Royal Academy schools, where he was taught by Wale. Not only was Wale the Academy’s first professor of perspective, but he was also a regular contributor to the annual exhibitions, where he showed several larger versions of book illustrations he had made for the Bible, or for Plutarch’s Lives or for pictorial histories. Five of his designs for historical book illustrations were exhibited, some with slightly amended titles, most on multiple occasions: St Austin Preaching to King Ethelbert and Queen Bertha in the Isle of Thanet (in 1769 and 1774), The Queen Dowager of King Edward in the Sanctuary delivering up the Duke of York to the Cardinal Archbishop of Canterbury (in 1769 and 1776), King Alfred making a Code of Laws and dividing the Kingdom into Counties (in 1771), Catherine Gordon, wife of Perkin Warbeck, brought before King Henry VII (in 1772), and Several of the bishops, nobility, and

110  The historical genre principal citizens of London, swearing allegiance to King William, at Berkhampstead Abbey (in 1775 and 1776). Apart from King Alfred makes a Collection of Laws and divides the Kingdom into Counties, depicted in the catalogue of the 1771 Royal Academy exhibition as a “stained drawing,”43 we cannot be sure whether all exhibits were painted versions of the original designs. However, the reviews published in the press, with their references to “picture[s],” hint at both St Austin Preaching to King Ethelbert and Queen Bertha in the Isle of Thanet and Several of the bishops, nobility, and principal citizens of London, swearing allegiance to King William, at Berkhampstead Abbey being paintings.44 Furthermore, reviewers tended to praise the design of Wale’s historical exhibits while venting reservations about their execution. About St Austin Preaching to King Ethelbert and Queen Bertha in the Isle of Thanet (see fig 1.8), the critic acknowledges the reference to the Raphael cartoon, Paul Preaching at Athens, while lamenting that “the painter has [not] availed himself of the original as much as he might.”45 The biographical notice of Samuel Wale, written by his fellow painter Edward Edwards (1738–1806), alludes to the mixed assessment of his elder’s works, while corroborating that he tinted his larger drawings with colours.46 How much larger than the book illustrations were the watercoloured versions exhibited? This question remains unanswered. Despite the technical issues raised by critics, Wale’s compositions turned small drawings intended for books into exhibits fit for the gazes of the motley crowd that jostled in the early London art exhibitions. The presentation of works that visualised British history to numerous viewers, who were not necessarily buyers nor readers of pictorial histories, certainly affected the very regime of visibility of British history itself, positing it as a subject that could be mediated visually. The interest Wale and West shared in the establishment of the “historical” as a new aesthetic category in Britain is further evinced by their take on the very historical picture held up as an example by Dr Johnson in The Idler. While none of the candidates in the Society of Arts competition followed Johnson’s suggestion, both Wale and West portrayed Cromwell forcibly expelling the members of the Long Parliament: Wale’s book plate, Oliver Cromwell Dissolves the Parliament (see fig 3.4), was made for Mortimer in 1764 and West’s canvas, Oliver Cromwell Dissolving the Long Parliament (see fig 3.5), probably commissioned by the first Earl of Grosvenor, was painted in 1782 and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1783.47 The compositional similarities between the two visualisations are striking: both are structured around the Speaker’s chair, placed in the centre, against a wall where open curtains on both sides let the sunlight flood in through large lattice windows. To the right of the chair and the table situated in front of it, stands Oliver Cromwell, a hat on his head and a sword hanging behind his left leg. He is portrayed in a very similar commanding attitude, looking to the right, his right arm outstretched, hand lifted to prevent resistance from the Speaker on the book plate, and finger pointed towards the mace (ordering a soldier to remove it) on the canvas. On the engraving as on the painting, the central piece of furniture is a wooden canopied chair with Corinthian pillars, while the Cromwell wears a similar short doublet with a white collar and cuffs in both pictures. Both compositions focus on the removal of the mace: the soldier has already got his hands on it in the painting and the conspicuous support of the army, embodied by the heavily armed soldiers in the foreground, hints at the futility of any protest. On the engraving, the mace’s unstable position is left to express visually the dissolution of Parliament, as its members can already be seen exiting to the left; the Speaker is standing, aghast, and the Clerk, equally dismayed, is hurrying as if

The historical genre 111

Figure 3.4  Samuel Wale, Oliver Cromwell Dissolves the Parliament, illustration made for Thomas Mortimer’s New History of England (1764–1766) Source:  Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library

pushed out by Cromwell’s hand. A similar play on movements can be observed in the painting, where the momentum of Cromwell’s gesture seems to throw the Speaker off balance while he is in fact being roughly pulled from his chair by Colonel Harrison. West’s more dynamic setting includes the portrait of Sir Henry Vane in the bottom lefthand corner. He has risen in protest, arms outstretched, and his posture, which echoes that of the soldier behind him, reveals his failed attempt at thwarting Cromwell’s plan. West uses the landscape format and imposing size of his canvas to increase field depth and give an all-round view on the action, peopling the shallow space with a tumult of figures displaying a greater variety of expressions than might be expected on such an ambitious painting. The structure is altogether more sophisticated and enhanced by his use of colours and textures, as well as by the effects of light and shades which emphasise the glaring brightness of Cromwell’s figure.

112  The historical genre

Figure 3.5  B enjamin West, Cromwell Dissolving the Long Parliament, 1782, oil on canvas, 153 × 214.6 cm, Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey, USA Source:  Bridgeman Images

West’s Oliver Cromwell Dissolving the Long Parliament was one of five historical pictures Lord Grosvenor purchased from him. The others were The Death of General Wolfe, General Monk Receiving Charles II on the Beach at Dover, The Battle of the Boyne, and The Battle of La Hogue. As King George III initially shunned the innovative Death of General Wolfe, only to commission a copy soon afterwards, Grosvenor bought the sensational canvas and went on to commission from West four seventeenth-century historical paintings to go with it. Details of the transaction are unknown and only fragments of preparatory drawings have survived. However, the similarities between West’s and Wale’s versions of the dissolution of the Long Parliament do throw light upon the impact pictures visualising British historical landmarks for the first time could have on the artistic community. Deemed polite and accurate, this sequence of historical illustrations provided a whole catalogue – well over a hundred subjects and a store of figures to choose from – for those willing to undertake the new historical style. Among West’s circle, his compatriot, John Singleton Copley (1738–1815) similarly borrowed from a historical illustration on the rare occasion when he turned his attention away from recent events to paint Charles I Demanding the Five Impeached Members of the House of Commons.48 Started around the same time as West’s dissolution of Parliament, it was likewise structurally based on Wale’s illustration King Charles I in the House of Commons demanding the five Members. Although reversed from the book plate, the general perspective, setting, and room’s furnishings are identical, the posture and dress of the

The historical genre 113 king very similar. The landscape format and imposing dimensions allowed Copley to produce a highly dramatised version that includes 58 portraits for which he toured the country and copied sources for more than a decade.49 If this was quite a unique instance in Copley’s career, West kept returning to British history. The series of seven paintings celebrating the reign of Edward III created for the King’s Audience Chamber at Windsor Castle between 1786 and 1789 are a testimony to the academician’s growing confidence in handling historical subjects.50 Painted in the wake of his Cromwell, three out of the seven had previously been illustrated by Wale: the intercession of Queen Philippa for the burghers of Calais, the Black Prince’s gracious treatment of King John of France after the battle of Poitiers, and the institution of the Order of the Garter. The first two do not show significant similarities apart from the required compositional elements (a group of barefooted, bearded, and dishevelled burghers together with the queen placed in front of the king’s tent in the first and the magnanimous English prince greeting the humbled French king in the second). West’s Institution of the Order of the Garter is a huge canvas, apparently seen by the painter as the central piece in his medieval series. 51 It stages the creation of the knightly confraternity as an event of great solemnity: a mass performed by the bishops of Winchester and Salisbury is attended by King Edward III, the Prince of Wales, and their knights, kneeling on either side of the altar. Attended by other members of the royal household, Queen Philippa is kneeling in front of the altar. The captive King of Scotland and the bishop of St Andrews are following the ceremony from the balcony above the altar, while the Queen of Scotland, her children, and several French prisoners (including Charles of Blois, King Philip VI’s nephew, leaning on his elbow) witness the event from under the arches at the back. Portraying a colourful assembly of over a hundred figures, including many portraits of historical characters, of members of the artist’s family and of his studio as well as his own self-portrait, the scene is highly decorated with numerous trophies (shields, banners, arms, and crests) placed all along the upper edge of the composition. Enlivened by a dazzling variety of costumes, including the exotic touch of foreign ambassadors, it focuses on the king and knights bedecked in blue mantles embroidered with the arms of the Garter worn over red robes. The comparison of such a masterful display of pictorial technique with the tiny plate inserted in Lockman’s textbook may seem groundless, all the more so since Wale’s illustration depicts a much more informal occasion, one that had nonetheless been part of the legendary foundation of the Order of the Garter for centuries. As related on the corresponding page, Wale’s mock-heroic version stems from the belief that the Order had been founded at a great feast held to celebrate the taking of Calais by the English and during which King Edward III had returned to the Countess of Salisbury the garter that had fallen from her leg.52 Lockman relies on the motto “Honi soit qui mal y pense,” probably intended to support Edward III’s claim to the French throne, to moralise the trivial episode and stress the king’s good intentions. The plate thus focuses on the king’s gallant gesture: he and the grateful countess are placed in the foreground with several figures of smiling, gossiping, courtiers behind them and, musicians in the background as befitted a ball scene. Members of that group stand with their instruments on top of a Gothic gallery pierced regularly with pointed arches surmounted by trefoil crosses. This 1747 design for Lockman was expanded and popularised in the 1752 Stationers Almanack (see fig 1.5). To transform the plate into a poster likely to be pinned on walls, Wale opted for a landscape format that shows king and countess in a similarly awkward situation,

114  The historical genre surrounded by groups of seated and standing courtiers with musicians gathered on what resembles a balcony. In the press, the plate was advertised as a truly cinematic piece, full of actions and passions: The Whole Ornamented with a curious engraven Head piece designed by Mr S. Wale representing K. Edward III holding in his Right Hand a Garter, which the Countess of Salisbury dropt in Dancing; the Lady’s Confusion; the lively sense the King had of it; with the Sneers of the Courtiers on that occasion; are all here delicately touch’d and the different Passions admirably well expressed. From this Incident, the Most noble Order of the Garter was first instituted, in the year 1350.53 The setting was derived from Lockman’s plate. For the Almanack, Wale elaborated upon the flat Gothic background of his previous design which he morphed into a screen with arches opening onto additional prospects. On the left half of the scene, one pointed arch surmounted by the trefoil cross has been enlarged to offer a glimpse of another wall partly hidden behind a curtain and featuring a lattice window and a decorated door. On the right half, musicians are crammed on a balcony placed above a semicircular arch through which a stone-vaulted room with pillars can be seen. In between those two openings, the wall is decorated by a statue in a niche placed in between two groups of clustered columns. With these eclectic additions, Wale perfected his Gothic scenography, and his architectural creation seems to have convinced West who used a similar setting as the backdrop to his grand visualisation of the event. Meant to be taking place in the nave of St George’s Chapel – even though this was anachronistic as the chapel was built in 1500 – the ceremony imagined by West is not based on the perspective views of the chapel provided by antiquarian Elias Ashmole.54 The American painter, who intended to present “the original institution” with the “original knights,”55 probably drew from Ashmole the design of the knights’ mantles, embroidered with garters, 56 but it is on Wale’s imagined ballroom that he modelled the space of his composition. West’s pageant is staged against a background made of arches supported by pillars composed of clustered columns. Furthermore, the arches and balcony are used, by both Wale and West, as spaces where characters occupy different viewpoints, and thus provide different perspectives, on the main event. The similarities between the two representations of the institution of the Order of the Garter lead us to believe that Almanacks and pictorial histories were amongst the many ancient volumes that West inspected, according to his biographer, “to assist his composition, especially in architecture, and the costume of the time,” and to achieve “that historical truth which the artist thought essential to historical painting”.57 This, however, failed to convince learned antiquarian John Carter, whose expert eye detected the whimsical outdated medieval reconstruction.58 Even after having been elected president of the Royal Academy, West did not turn away from historical illustrations. His familiarity with printed images should not come as a surprise for West, like most leading British painters at the time, was heavily dependent upon the work of engravers who reproduced his paintings. The revolution of history painting that West has often been credited with could not have happened without the assistance of those who engraved reproductions of his works, nor it seems without the store of historical subjects he found in prints. Around 1792, West painted a new historical canvas that had long been found in printed book illustrations: The Citizens of London Offering the Crown to William the Conqueror.59 Central to his

The historical genre 115 composition is the kneeling figure of young Edgar Ætheling, the last member of the royal house of Wessex, who had been elected king in the aftermath of the battle of Hastings but not yet crowned. He is offering exactly that crown he never wore to William of Normandy whose imposing figure stands in front of two fierce white horses against a background of colourful flags. The submissive expression of the two men behind Edgar, hands over their heart, underlines the end of English resistance and the conqueror’s victory. Further confirmation of the upcoming coronation of William comes on the right where Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury, and Ealdred, Archbishop of York, can be seen acquiescing to the transfer of power. The moment when the English yielded to the Normans had also been illustrated by Wale, first for Lockman and then for Mortimer as well as on a larger composition, mentioned above, shown in three major London art exhibitions. His extant plates both focus on English allegiance embodied by characters kneeling in front of the Norman prince. This is the case on the Lockman plate where four citizens bow to the triumphantly armoured conqueror, leading his army on horseback, and humbly offer him the key to the capital, hands over their hearts. On the Mortimer plate, the two archbishops are paying homage to William, one kneeling in front of the exultant armoured conqueror while the other’s obedience is again expressed in the positioning of his hand over his heart. Both plates include architectural elements aimed at situating the action inside, or in front of, Berkhamsted church where the encounter was thought to have taken place. On the Mortimer plate, the action is depicted inside a church featuring bare thick walls and semicircular arches supported by thick columns. On the Lockman plate, however, the young draughtsman outlined the portion of an eclectic medieval church surmounted by a bell tower. West also placed his visualisation of the event in front of a medieval church façade seemingly surmounted by a square bell tower. While von Erffa and Staley wrote that the edifice on the right of West’s painting may have been intended to represent either Canterbury Cathedral or Westminster Abbey,60 it seems more likely that the American painter was inspired by Wale’s tentative reconstruction of Berkhamsted church when he delineated the contours of a church behind the main action.

Historical painting in commercial galleries West’s Citizens of London Offering the Crown to William the Conqueror was part of a new historical series to which numerous other painters and engravers contributed. This series of historical works was commissioned by Robert Bowyer (1758–1834), between 1792 and 1806, to illustrate a large new folio edition of David Hume’s History of England, originally published unadorned between 1754 and 1762. Bowyer was a successful miniature painter, whose works were already well-known through London art exhibitions, when he turned to publishing in the early 1790s. The kind of publishing ventures he engaged in was part and parcel of the new exhibition culture. This was particularly the case with his planned illustrated edition of Hume’s History, which was to materialise not only as a collection of printed pictures but also as a Historic Gallery where the paintings he commissioned, and had engraved for this purpose, were to be displayed in the house he rented in Pall Mall. Bowyer’s Historic Gallery was not the only one of its kind in Georgian London and the trend for such venues had been set by another publisher, John Boydell, when he opened his Shakespeare Gallery in 1789. Bowyer’s predecessor and source of inspiration was

116  The historical genre the owner of a thriving print empire. He was the businessman who had commissioned William Woollett (1735–1785) to make the engraved version of West’s Death of General Wolfe. It has long been established that the partnership between West, Boydell, and Woollett gave new impetus to the development of the historical genre,61 and the same can certainly be said about Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery.62 Launched as a costly and magnificent edition of Shakespeare’s plays in 1786, the project involved engraving a whole set of 72 new paintings, commissioned by Boydell from prominent painters. The resulting were to be exhibited in a purpose-built “gallery of Shakespeare” sited in Pall Mall, an area mapped by Rosie Dias who defined it as the “artistic nucleus of the capital” in the last decade of the eighteenth century.63 In the preface to the catalogue published upon the opening of his gallery, in May 1789, Boydell did not hide his concern for the aesthetic underpinnings of the project. His initial lines state in the clearest way that: “To advance [Historical Painting] towards maturity and establish an English School of Historical Painting was the great object of [his] design.”64 His claims could hardly be disputed given the status of national bard acquired by Shakespeare and the generally accepted historical accuracy of his plays.65 But from that perspective, it was even more difficult to challenge Robert Bowyer who proudly declared that no happier plan than his Historic Gallery could support the development of historical painting.66 Indeed, Bowyer’s ambition was to provide illustrations for a work by Hume who was widely considered as the greatest British historian and a new model for modern historical writing. Like Boydell’s, Bowyer’s project materialised in a fashionable London gallery where he displayed history as a grand spectacle.67 Even though the other part of Bowyer’s project featured the edition of an illustrated history book, it seemed distinctively more ambitious than the publication of previous pictorial histories, and it has been hailed as “the most important set of images of English history available at the close of the eighteenth century.”68 Yet, Bowyer’s Historic Gallery was related to the visualisation of British history in the volumes published by Cooke, not only through their obvious common intent but also through the interpersonal connections formed by artists who worked for both publishers. Former Royal Academy student Thomas Stothard (1755– 1834) was one of them. At the end of the 1780s, after Samuel Wale’s death, he was employed by Cooke, alongside Daniel Dodd (active 1752–1780) and Conrad Martin Metz (1749–1827) to provide new illustrations for George Frederick Raymond’s New, Universal and Impartial History of England, in which Wale’s series was reissued with additions by this new generation of artists. Stothard contributed a Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni Burning the City of London, a composition which gives centre stage to the fury of the English queen, whose thirst for revenge is supported by her army. Stothard subsequently designed seven illustrations for Bowyer among which Oliver Cromwell Dissolving the Long Parliament. Although the painting has been lost, it is known through its engraved reproduction by Joseph Collyer (1748–1827), who also worked for Cooke on Raymond’s History. The engraving commercialised in 1806 by Bowyer shows that Stothard’s composition recalls both Wale’s and West’s earlier versions of that event singled out by Samuel Johnson as the archetypal historical subject. Using a portrait format like Wale’s (rather than West’s wider landscape), which was better fitted to pages, Stothard depicts only a handful of characters and focuses on Cromwell. Standing in the middle of the composition, the general is handing the mace over to a soldier. Behind him, the speaker, standing up from his chair, is watching in dismay the performative gesture which is dissolving Parliament. Stothard’s choice of

The historical genre 117 costumes owes much to West, while the setting, the lack of field depth, and attitude of the speaker are reiterated from Wale. Focusing on a moment that directly follows the one illustrated by Wale and West, Stothard’s adaptation is both different from his predecessors’ versions and reminiscent of those previous visualisations with which it can almost be paired as a mini-series. Other artists employed by Bowyer seem to have been familiar with the historical sequence Cooke reissued at the time when the Historic Gallery attracted crowds of visitors.69 The Landing of Julius Caesar by Edward Francis Burney (1760–1848), known through its engraved version by Anker Smith (1759–1819), commercialised by Bowyer in 1793, is one of them (see fig 3.6). The rather confusing composition shows Julius Caesar ordering the invasion on the left and Roman soldiers disembarking on the right, with Roman galleys and a tumult of soldiers and horses in the distant background. In the foreground, a Roman soldier has already jumped into water to lead the invasion: the aquila he is holding, while encouraging soldiers to follow him, allows viewers to identify him as the aquilifer, or eagle-bearer, i.e., the standard-bearer. Interestingly, Wale’s illustration of the same subject, designed for Mountague, was clearly focused on the standard bearer (see fig 3.7). Despite being captioned Landing of Julius Caesar, it does not include the general’s commanding figure. While the eponymous Roman hero is nowhere to be seen, the plate highlights the curious dress of the aquilifer, wearing his usual bearskin headgear. Burney similarly gives the leading role to the standard-bearer while allowing Julius Caesar to make an appearance, however detrimental this is to the general intelligibility of the composition. One of the most important contributors to Bowyer’s Historic Gallery was Henry Tresham (c.1751–1814), a painter who had just come back from a 13-year stay in Italy, where he had been busy painting and even more active as an antiques dealer. Upon his return, his eagerness to establish his reputation as a historical painter led him to become involved in the vibrant exhibition culture of the capital, sending many works to the annual exhibitions of the Royal Academy and contributing to both Boydell’s and Bowyer’s galleries. Like Stothard’s or Burney’s, some of Tresham’s historical illustrations followed Wale’s templates. Although very different in style, his St Augustine before Ethelbert is an outdoor scene showing the king and queen in the presence of Christian missionaries. Like Wale, who had visualised Christianisation through the symbolic handing over of a cross, Tresham mobilises the narrative potential of objects when he places a monstrance in the middle of the composition, on the line that divides the Christians, on the left, from the pagans, on the right. His Baroque monstrance, no doubt drawn from his Roman memories, glints against the king’s armour. The facilitating role of the queen, barely alluded to by Wale, is dramatised by Tresham who animates her character and accentuates her body’s powerful expressive lines. Queen Bertha’s contorted pose (face lifted towards Ethelbert, left hand pointing to heaven, and right arm bent backward to hold her husband’s hand) mirrors the complex lines of argument deployed to persuade Ethelbert to listen to Augustine. Similarly, for their representations of the encounter between the young widow and the monarch, commissioned by Bowyer, both Tresham and John Opie (1761– 1807) borrowed from Wale the figure of Elizabeth Woodville (the widow of John Grey) kneeling at the feet of King Edward IV. Opie’s canvas, entitled Lady Elizabeth Woodville Pleading for her Children before Edward IV (see fig 3.8), and the engraved reproduction made by John Rogers (c.1800-c.1888), captioned slightly differently,

118  The historical genre

Figure 3.6  A nker Smith (after Edward Francis Burney), The Landing of Julius Caesar, illustration made for Robert Bowyer’s edition of David Hume’s History of England (1793) Source:  Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

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Figure 3.7  Samuel Wale, Landing of Julius Caesar, illustration made for William Henry Mountague’s New and Universal History of England (1771–1772) Source:  Image Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland

Lady Elizabeth Gray Entreating Edward IV to Protect her Children, focus on the imploring mother. The chiaroscuro effect, accentuated by the light reverberated from the dress of the younger boy Elizabeth holds against her, highlights the woman’s face, her beseeching look, her outstretched arms, and supplicant hands. Tresham’s painting, now lost and known only through James Fittler’s engraving, Edward IV Declaring his Attachment to Lady Elizabeth Gray (see fig 3.9), similarly shows the young woman on her knees, holding her infant son on her lap in front of the king. On the plate designed by Wale for Mortimer, which probably bore a resemblance to the piece he exhibited twice with the Society of Artists in 1760 and 1763, Elizabeth and Edward IV meet in a room adorned with a coffered ceiling, a trefoiled lattice

120  The historical genre

Figure 3.8  John Opie, Lady Elizabeth Woodville Pleading for her Children before Edward IV, 1798, oil on canvas, 249 × 198 cm Source:  ©Hampshire Cultural Trust

window, and a coat of arms hanging above the door (see fig 2.9). The couple is in the foreground with Elizabeth’s mother and sons behind them, while a door in the background opens onto the king’s horseman waiting outside. All three compositions can be seen as variations on the subject listed in the EHD as “Elizabeth Woodville, at the feet of Edward IV.” Wale’s identically titled portrayal of the supplicant widow plays on interpictorial references to the Noli me tangere trope and its appropriation in popular visual culture. The kneeling Elizabeth could be seen as the repentant widow

The historical genre 121

Figure 3.9  James Fittler (after Henry Tresham), Edward IV Declaring his Attachment to Lady Elizabeth Gray, illustration made for Robert Bowyer’s edition of David Hume’s History of England (1795) Source:  Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

of a Lancastrian traitor being forgiven by the Yorkist king who invites her to rise (both literally – to her feet – and socially – through their subsequent marriage). On this plate, Elizabeth is primarily the woman who touches the king’s heart. The visual allusion, drawing upon an ironic reading of the “touch me not,” displays a tactile encounter: his hand on his heart, Edward is obviously touched, and also touching

122  The historical genre the hand of Elizabeth. Her role as mother, intending to protect her children’s rights, is not stressed, and it is here delegated to her own mother who stands behind her pointing towards the two boys. Opie and Tresham kept the general positioning of the couple but brought the children back to the front of the composition. In addition to moralising the scene, the new emphasis on Elizabeth’s maternal identity allows both Opie and Tresham to play with a new set of fashionable visual references, conjuring up images of exemplary ancient mothers celebrated in neoclassical painting. As Elizabeth’s maternal identity is underlined, her own mother fades in the background in Opie’s version (see fig 3.8) and disappears in Tresham’s (see fig 3.9), where the profile portrayal of the couple further classicises the composition. Noticeably, in Tresham’s version, Elizabeth is not even looking at the king standing in front of her, but at her infant son, sitting on her lap and tenderly stretching his chubby hand towards Edward IV. Her eldest son, sitting opposite, is also looking affectionately at the king who has become, both visually and verbally, the only active character in the composition. He is holding a giant bow in his left hand, appearing not only as a lover but as a hunter (or potential ancient warrior), and the addition of the weapon furthers references to popular neoclassical subjects. According to the caption of Tresham’s illustration which stresses the part played by King Edward in declaring himself, the representation shows a passive Elizabeth, eyes lowered, leaving the king to hold her left hand. As underlined by Cynthia Roman, the encounter between Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville is the only episode represented twice in Bowyer’s illustrated edition of Hume.70 In the span of 30 years, between Wale’s first visualisation of the subject for Mortimer and the two versions made for Bowyer, at least two other leading artists were inspired by it: Angelica Kauffman who exhibited her Lady Elizabeth Grey imploring of Edward IV, the restitution of her deceased husband’s lands, forfeited in the dispute between the houses of York and Lancaster at the 1776 annual exhibition of the Royal Academy,71 and Richard Westall (1765–1836), whose Lady Elizabeth Gray imploring of Edward IV, the restitution of her husband’s lands was shown in 1793.72 The latter (whereabouts unknown) was reviewed as “a very beautiful picture” in an article from The True Briton which started with a discussion of “the dignity of Historical Painting.”73 Kauffman’s canvas,74 now lost and known through William Wynne Ryland’s engraving, follows Wale’s in that it situates the couple’s first meeting in an interior space reconstructed in a decorative Gothic style made of many twisted columns, quatrefoil niches, and vaulted ceiling (see fig 3.10). Her version accentuates the gendered division of space that is present in Wale’s plate where it is not emphasised structurally but not emphasised structurally. Here, the composition is clearly divided horizontally into two parts: on the right, the domestic space is inhabited by women and children (Elizabeth, her sons, her mother, and two female servants). On the left, the outside world is peopled by men (Edward IV and his attendants) with the king’s body standing at the frontier between the interior and the exterior. As a foundation member of the Royal Academy and renowned history painter trained in Rome, Angelica Kauffman contributed several works illustrating subjects from ancient literature in the annual exhibitions. Often, her yearly yield included one or two historical canvases sourced in Tasso, Ossian, or British history. But no matter how ancient or recent the sources, her perspective was feminine in the sense that her focus was almost exclusively on female characters. Her compositions celebrated the beauty and virtue of exemplary women admirably fulfilling their roles as daughters, wives, or mothers. While she undeniably changed the face of history

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Figure 3.10  William Wynne Ryland (after Angelica Kauffmann), Elizabeth Woodville, later Queen, the Widow of Sir John Grey imploring King Edward IV to restore her Husband’s Lands, coloured engraving Source:  ©National Trust / Robert Thrift

painting, she did so through the repeated portrayal of heroines that fitted into gendered role divisions. Following Wale’s sentimental trend, her take on the first meeting between Elizabeth Grey and Edward IV anticipates the approach developed by both Tresham and Opie: her protagonists are shown in profile with Elizabeth’s younger son in between them. While the king is holding the young woman’s hand, she keeps her eyes lowered, and her son is playing with the guard of the king’s sword. Disseminated through Wynne Ryland’s 1780 engraving dedicated to Queen Charlotte, Kauffman’s Lady Elizabeth Grey was adapted by Biagio Rebecca (1735– 1808) for the decoration of the new manor that Nathaniel Curzon, the first Baron Scarsdale, had built by Robert Adam at Kedleston in Derbyshire. There, stretched on a wide landscape format and painted in grisaille, the neoclassical potential of the composition was enhanced by the monochrome technique, which accentuated the relief of the figures and objects. Although clearly sourced from Rapin’s History in the Royal Academy’s catalogue and on Wynne Ryland’s engraving, Kauffman’s historical scene is here hung alongside more classical compositions dedicated to the heroes of Ancient Greece. In his pioneering reappraisal of historical painting, Roy Strong wrote that King Edward IV’s encounter with Elizabeth Grey was among the three incidents that “positively obsessed the late eighteenth-century artists.”75 According to him, the other two were the life – and more particularly the death – of Mary, Queen of

124  The historical genre Scots, as well as the murder of the princes in the Tower. The royal heirs in question were Edward V and his brother Richard, the Duke of York, both the sons of King Edward IV and his queen, Elizabeth Grey, née Woodville. The fact that the assassination of the two young princes and the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, also featured in Wale’s series can only come in support of Strong’s view. As already mentioned in Chapter 2, Elizabeth Woodville is one of the few women featuring in the sequence commercialised by Cooke and, remarkably, she appears on two different plates illustrating first her encounter with Edward IV in 1464 and then her moving farewell to their younger son, twenty years later. This second subject Wale initially pictured for Mortimer with a plate entitled The Queen Dowager of King Edward 4th parting with the Duke of York was probably the source for the similarly titled composition he showed twice at the Royal Academy, in 1769 and 1776. On the Mortimer plate, the scene is set in Westminster Abbey where the queen had taken refuge following the death of her husband. Divided into two halves, the plate includes, on the right, a pathetic variation on the Madonna and child motif where Elizabeth is stopping her son, Richard, the Duke of York, from clinging to her, as Cardinal Bourchier, the archbishop of Canterbury, in his recognisable dress, arrives from the left, stretching his hand towards the boy. From the look of resignation on Elizabeth’s face, it is clear the cardinal has convinced her to let her son leave the Westminster sanctuary to be reunited with his elder brother, Edward V, who had been placed in the Tower of London by their uncle and supposed protector, the Duke of Gloucester and future Richard III. In keeping with Cooke’s sequence, Bowyer’s series also included this moving farewell scene between mother and her son, painted by John Opie, entitled The Duke of York, Brother to Edward V, Resigned by the Queen and engraved by James Fittler (1758–1835) in 1795.76 A fit companion to his Lady Elizabeth Woodville Pleading for her Children before Edward IV, Opie’s large composition offers a similar close-up on a reduced number of larger than life characters. In the foreground, summing up the dilemma, the young duke (wearing a shimmering white dress) stands in a position reminiscent of Hercules at the crossroads, between the queen, tenderly holding his right hand, and the cardinal taking his left hand to lead him away in an overwhelming display of cardinalic scarlet. Bourchier’s costume had already attracted the eye on Wale’s plate and provided a much sought-after reality effect. On Opie’s painted version, the chromatic intensity of the cardinal’s dress literally steals the show: reversed from Wale’s plate, the archbishop of Canterbury, on the right, is immersed in red colours. His cassock and cape reverberate on the dress of the character behind him, as well as on the huge, folded curtain in the background. The fluid draperies surround the queen and her son in liquid red and hint at the bloodshed to come while heightening historical drama. As with the encounter between Elizabeth Woodville and Edward IV, between its first visualisation by Wale and its inclusion in Bowyer’s catalogue, the subject had not gone unnoticed by other artists. Three royal academicians had contributed to its growing popularity. John Francis Rigaud (1742–1810) exhibited in 1786 a much smaller tondo entitled The Queen Dowager of England, Widow of Edward the IVth, delivering her son, the Duke of York, to the Cardinal,77 in which he garbs Bourchier with his full outfit, complete with his Roman hat, he, like Wale earlier, and coloured in bright scarlet, with additional red pieces of clothing or furniture dotted in the background. Roughly at the same time, Giovanni Battista Cipriani painted a canvas on the same subject, engraved by his fellow academician,

The historical genre 125 and former master, Francesco Bartolozzi in 1786, and again dedicated to Queen Charlotte. Book illustrator, Richard Westall, also made a version which emphasised its interpictoriality with the Madonna and child, which was here made obvious by the addition of a statue of the Virgin and baby Jesus mirroring the group formed by Elizabeth clasping young Richard in her arms.78 The marked interest for, if not the obsession with, those subjects stretched from publishing houses to the most prestigious art institution in Britain, from the homes of polite Britons to royal palaces. The curiosity about Edward IV, his consort, their children, and relatives was undoubtedly linked to the historical context of the dynastic feud between the houses of Lancaster and York. But before Rapin or Hume presented the main protagonists and episodes of the conflict, theatregoers had become acquainted with the heroes, victims, and villains of those civil wars through Shakespeare’s tetralogy (Henry VI, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Richard III). Following up from Roy Strong’s observation, we could explain the early interest in the first meeting between Edward IV and Elizabeth Grey through its emotional potential. Readers of illustrated histories looking at the touching image of burgeoning love could also feel a pang of sadness for the fate of the royal couple’s children. In addition to leading to what Georgian viewers would consider as an unusual union between a king and a near-commoner, the visualisation of the couple’s initial moments contained other images of the tragic fate of their two sons, anticipated in the tearful farewell between Elizabeth and young Richard. The peculiar poignancy of this latter episode resided in its “direct connection” to the scene Strong referred to as the murder of the princes in the Tower. Shakespeare in Richard III, Act IV, scene 3, had left it to the king’s trusted servant, James Tyrrell, to report indirectly on that “bloody act,” “most arch of piteous massacre,” and “ruthless piece of butchery.” In his monologue Tyrrell recalled how the children had been smothered, before informing Richard III in person that they had been killed and buried according to his orders. The double murder for which Richard III was most demonised in the play was his most notorious crime. Before the subject caused a sensation on the walls of fashionable London venues, it was formulated visually in Wale’s plates and first visualised as a historical event for Lockman, in a series that did not include any other reference to the reign of Edward IV. In this textbook intended for children, the murder of the two princes was immediately followed by the graphic representation of the death of Richard III, his naked body about to be slumped over a horse by two soldiers: the outrageous treatment of the king’s natural body seeming like a deserved punishment for his deeds. By contrast, Wale showed on the preceding plate Edward 5th, and his Brother Smother’d (see fig 3.11), two young boys asleep, unaware of the two strong men coming from both sides of their canopied bed; Tyrrell’s agents are about to suffocate them with a huge pillow. Reminiscent of the tiny vignette that featured under the head of Edward V engraved by James Smith for Mechell’s translation of Rapin’s Histoire,79 the plate includes an additional visual device, an arch through which the action can be glimpsed. The reframing effect doubles the frontier between viewer and representation, thus distancing the young public from the shocking bedchamber scene. In the foreground, a gruesome half-opened coffin lies on the floor, while the giant picture of a bright angel, behind the boys’ heads, proclaims their glaring innocence. When Wale reworked the plate for Mountague, he produced a more explicit scene lit by a dramatic chiaroscuro effect from a torch held by one accomplice (see fig 3.12). It shows the two murderers actually stifling

126  The historical genre

Figure 3.11  Samuel Wale, Edward 5th and his Brother Smother’d, illustration made for John Lockman’s New History of England (1747) Source:  ©The Trustees of the British Museum

The historical genre 127

Figure 3.12  Samuel Wale, The Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, sons of Edward IVth Murdered in the Tower, originally designed for William Henry Mountague’s New and Universal History of England (1771–1772), here its reversed reissue in William Augustus Russel’s A New and Authentic History of England (1777) Source:  Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

128  The historical genre the boys with the full weight of their bodies, kneeling on their chests, with one of the boys’ raised knee clearly suggesting a struggle. The seraphic faces of the brothers eerily float below Mountague plate as parts of the decorative frame surrounding it. Objects were adapted too in this version: a simple crucifix has replaced the figure of the angel and there is a small trunk in lieu of the ominous half-opened coffin. Far from being less sinister, or useless, the trunk – like most material parts of the historical sets reconstructed by Wale – is a very significant detail. The notation of this concrete object embeds a story within the story for it refers to the box, containing two small skeletons, found in 1674 under a staircase in the Tower of London. Believed to be the bones of Richard III’s nephews, the remains were placed in an urn, and buried at Westminster Abbey in 1678 on the orders of Charles II. The second edition of Rapin’s History by the Knaptons included a view, engraved by George Vertue, of the white marble sarcophagus, designed by Christopher Wren, erected above the princes’ resting place, with its Latin inscription recalling that the boys had been “stifled with pillows,” and “privately and meanly buried by order of their perfidious uncle, Richard the Usurper.”80 While the story was well-known in antiquarian circles, it was told in Lockman’s textbook,81 thus further circulated among the young public who learnt about it in the 1740s. By the time the Mountague plate was printed, three decades later, the indexical detail of the box that posits the verisimilitude of the scene could be widely recognised as a token of truth. Wale’s authenticating endeavours did not go unnoticed by the artists who visualised the scene for commercial galleries. Logically, the subject featured in both Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery and Bowyer’s Historic Gallery. A version of the event by James Northcote (1746–1831) was not actually commissioned by Boydell (see fig 3.13). It was, in fact, exhibited at the Royal Academy’s annual exhibition of 1786, under the title King Edward the Vth, and his brother Richard, Duke of York, murdered in the Tower, by order of Richard IIId,82 the same year Rigaud showed The Queen Dowager of England, Widow of Edward the IVth, delivering her son, the Duke of York, to the Cardinal. The two exhibits thus formed a mini-series whereby the narrative unfolded on the walls of the Great Room at Somerset House. Northcote’s claustrophobic rendering of the murder offers a close-up view of the assassins’ faces, of their inexorably merciless expressions, as they are about to press the pillow on the angelic faces of the two brothers, tenderly sleeping in each other’s arms. The chiaroscuro emphasises the boys’ fair complexion, white gowns, and the pillow haloing their heads, as well as their open prayer book and rosary in the foreground. Coming out of the night, their murderers emerge from the darkness, framed by scarlet red curtains, with a crucifix looming behind them. The Christian reading of the scene, which had been part and parcel of the visualisation of the event in Wale’s plates, is here reiterated unambiguously. So is the brutality of the assassins: with their strong musculature, and even more so with the full armour one of them is wearing, they are leaving no chance to the innocent children. With such powerful symbols, the imposing canvas caused a sensation at the Royal Academy and Boydell acquired it. The belief that the mysterious disappearance of Edward IV and Elizabeth’s male heirs had been unlocked undoubtedly enhanced the thrill of a scene that was deemed historical by the public. Northcote later wrote that his picture had given Boydell the idea of a gallery dedicated to the works of Shakespeare.83 Among the eight works Boydell subsequently commissioned Northcote for display in his Gallery, three others dealt with related events: Edward IV, Queen Elizabeth and the Young Prince illustrates

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Figure 3.13  James Northcote, The Princes in the Tower, 1786, oil on canvas, 180.3 × 137.2 cm, private collection Source:  Photo © Christie’s Images / Bridgeman Images

130  The historical genre the end of Henry VI, Part 3 when King Edward IV kisses his baby son, Edward, and rejoices at the peaceful family settlement, while Richard’s “Judas kiss” to the baby anticipates his treason to come; The Meeting of the Young Princes takes place after Richard, the little Duke of York, has left his mother in her sanctuary at Westminster and shows his reunion with his elder brother, Edward V, in the ominous presence of their uncle, King Richard III.84 Finally, The Burial of the Royal Children directly follows The Murder of the Princes in the Tower, and reproduces the device used by Wale to distance viewers from another ghastly scene. Through an arch, and suspended portcullis, the murderers can be seen taking the boys’ dead bodies down a staircase to dispose of them. Whether inside Boydell’s or Bowyer’s gallery, dramatic images of the last Plantagenets’ saga kept spawning at the end of the eighteenth century, on canvases as well as on printed pages.85 For Bowyer, Tresham designed The Queen Dowager Putting herself and her Daughters under the Protection of Richard III, engraved by Isaac Taylor in 1800, while Stothard composed his own version of the murder of the princes. His Murder of Edward V and the Duke of York, engraved by James Parker (1750–1805) in 1795, stands out for it takes most of the physical violence out of the representation (see fig 3.14). In comparison with Northcote’s figures, Stothard’s murderers display neither brutal force, nor pitiless determination. One knee down on both sides of a streamlined bed, which resembles a cot where the two angelic princes are asleep, the men hold a heavy blanket above the children. On the left, the man wearing a body armour looks down, whereas his accomplice, on the right, glances at the children. They seem hesitant, already repentant. The vertical lines of the men on both sides, the horizontal lines of the bed reduced to a minimal mattress, and the blanket above it form a rectangle that contains the scene. Whereas the heavy blanket held above the children could be mistaken for a protective device, with neither holder intent to press it down, it is the rectangular shape, evocative of the trunk in which the princes’ supposed remains were found, that is, the primary signifier of the murder. It compresses the scene in a suffocatingly reduced space and foreshadows the boys’ fate.

The agency of historical illustrations The examples of the subjects from the reigns of Edward IV and Richard III visualised in history books, in commercial galleries, or hung on the walls of the Royal Academy show that artists shunned open political messaging, or even any historical bias, when visualising history. Richard III may have been universally condemned, but he was mainly censured for his treatment of his nephews. There was no image of Edward IV’s execution of their brother George, the Duke of Clarence, nor of the murder of King Henry VI. Decisive battles, such as Barnet and Tewkesbury, or Edward IV’s invasion of France, did not inspire artists at a time when contemporary victories, especially against France, were celebrated visually. The same sentimental approach pervaded the series of historical illustrations published by Cooke in which battles, or remarkable political landmarks, were few and far between. Tellingly, Samuel Johnson’s argument in favour of painting Cromwell’s dissolution of Parliament did not allude to the political significance of the leader’s gesture. In his Idler essay, his justification for the choice of the historical subject is entirely based on the emotional appeal of the scene, on “the various appearances which rage, and terror, and astonishment, and guilt might exhibit in the faces of that hateful assembly” and on “the irresolute

The historical genre 131

Figure 3.14  James Parker (after Thomas Stothard), Murder of Edward V and the Duke of York, illustration made for Robert Bowyer’s edition of David Hume’s History of England (1795) Source:  Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

132  The historical genre repugnance of some, the hypocritical submissions of others, the ferocious insolence of Cromwell, the rugged brutality of Harrison and the general trepidation of fear and wickedness.”86 Furthering the functional approach to images that relied on their didactic uses, Johnson’s perspective brings aesthetic pleasure to the fore. In his view, delight precedes instruction in historical pictures. Three decades later, Bowyer confirmed that the historical genre was a prime vehicle for emotions when he wrote: “it is the province of the historical painter to give delight by rousing the passions, to fire the mind with emulation of heroic deeds, or to inspire it with detestation of criminal actions.”87 In addition to tracing a genealogy of feelings and to inventing past models that justified the contemporary Georgian ethos, historical pictures with sentimental contents were easier to apprehend as a narrative series. Feelings such as love, hate, revenge, and moralising patterns relying on basic causal connections highlighted plots which viewers could unravel mentally. Very much like arrested gestures, the depiction of feelings invited viewers to animate characters, not only to carry forth the movements of their limbs but to stir fresh emotions into their hearts and minds. Images on which viewers were able to project their own emotions triggered a new form of historical empathy that hinged on mental, verbal, and visual re-enactments of the scenes represented. Emotional engagement with historical pictures strengthened the hold visual media took on viewers’ imagination and promoted new modalities of consumption of the visual, that were based on sequences. Interactions between images had been part and parcel of the reception of visual media for centuries, with artists revelling in erudite referential play to demonstrate the extent of their training and to meet the expectations of erudite amateurs. Interpictorial referencing was still at work in illustrations using, for instance, the Choice of Hercules trope or quoting the figure of a penitent Magdalene. Yet new forms of visual interactions were brought about through the emplotment of illustrations in sequences. At the time when exhibition walls were covered with hundreds of works, visitors got used to picking their selections and apprehending them in succession.88 This mode of visual apprehension emphasised interactions between images rather than between images and texts. Besides, the many reissues of the same set of historical illustrations with different texts show that visual sequences had begun to have a life of their own. In that respect, the evolution in the wording of the captions should be noted: Cooke’s last reissue of the sequence in George Frederick Raymond’s New, Universal and Impartial History of England features illustrations with longer titles. Those wordy captions add elements of context on the actions represented and include many additional adjectives and adverbs that help viewers paint a more detailed portrait (both physical and moral) of the characters involved. It could be argued however that publisher John Cooke reused the same set of illustrations for similarly titled history books that did not promote radically different interpretations of history. It is therefore more striking to retrace the journeys of pictures, such as the murder of Edward IV’s sons, which were made to visualise Rapin’s Whig vision of history and subsequently remediated to illustrate both Shakespeare’s and Hume’s works. It is also particularly enlightening to notice the remediation of favourite episodes over a long period of time and the amending of captions to suit the reiteration of visual signs. A case in point is the death of King Edward the Martyr. The scene, allegedly the best-known event in Edward’s short reign, features in all the sets designed by Wale, and it was visualised by Casali for the Society of Arts’ competition (see fig 3.1), by Edward Edwards on a book plate

The historical genre 133 for an unidentified history book, and twice by Robert Smirke (1753–1845), first for Bowyer, then a couple of years later for Theophilus Camden’s Imperial History of England.90 The visualisation of that scene over a period of some 65 years, on paper and canvas, included key elements borrowed from previous visualisations published at least two centuries before, and reiterated over and over again: Elfrida greeting King Edward at the entrance of a castle, the king on horseback attacked by a man. Whichever angle they were presented from, all representations shared the same setting, i.e., the front of a castle (supposedly Corfe) that was more or less visibly gothicised. The involvement of Elfrida is quite difficult to grasp visually and her guilt, initially asserted in captions, is not reflected in her being portrayed as a benevolent host. There is a clear discrepancy between her attitude on Wale’s book plate and her description in Lockman’s corresponding text, which states that she actually wounded Edward herself.91 In this illustration intended for the young public (see fig 3.2), her pointed finger hints at the threat of the dagger, hidden from view since the assailant’s arm stretches out of the plate’s border. Interestingly, while the attack appears in full on Wale’s subsequent plate for Mortimer (see fig 3.3), published with the same caption as Lockman’s, the queen has moved back a few steps and can be seen hands crossed over her chest, in a posture denoting humility and usually applied to the depiction of the Virgin Mary in religious imagery. The weakening ties between text and image are even more obvious on Casali’s composition: entitled The Assassination of Edward the Martyr at the time when it was awarded the Society of Arts’ second premium in 1760, it seems to exonerate Elfrida verbally (see fig 3.1). On the contrary, from a visual point of view, the depiction of the queen with her young son, borrowed from de’Cavalieri’s sixteenth-century engraving, adds the motive for the crime (i.e., the need to eliminate Edward in order to leave the way for Æthelred), even though her kind expression is at odds with her supposed intention. In keeping with Casali’s painting, painter Edward Edwards portrays the queen with her young son but in a static rendition of the scene structurally modelled on Wale’s book plate and with an identical caption. Smirke’s subsequent versions, for Bowyer and Camden, present the scene from two opposite angles but under a single title: The Treachery of Elfrida. The new caption posits the duplicity of the queen, but Smirke’s visualisations show her giving a cup of wine to the young king, face lifted towards her stepson, almost amorously, obviously recalling images of the woman who had touched the heart of Edward’s father, King Edgar. Was the image of the suspected murderess gradually erased by more seductive portrayals of Elfrida? It seems all the more likely as she was also the heroine of a popular sentimental scene visualising her first encounter with King Edgar (Edward’s father), an episode dramatised on the London stage since the 1710s. Tellingly, Wale’s visualisation of that scene for Sydney’s New and Complete History is a variation on his earlier plate, showing the first encounter of another celebrated loving couple, Elizabeth Woodville and Edward IV. Around that time, that is, in the mid-1770s, the encounter between King Edgar and Elfrida was also painted by both Angelica Kauffman and William Hamilton (1751–1801), in scenes focusing on King Edgar being smitten by Elfrida’s beauty. Interestingly, Hamilton, who copied Wale’s plates for Lyttleton’s History, repurposes the assassination of Edward the Martyr into a seduction scene (see fig 3.15). While both Wale and Kauffman set the first interview between Edgar and Elfrida indoors, Hamilton’s King Edgar’s First Interview with Queen Elfrida reuses the outdoor setting of the assassination of Edward, the Gothic castle entrance, 89

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Figure 3.15  William Hamilton, King Edgar’s First Interview with Queen Elfrida (Ælfthryth), 1774, oil on canvas, 134.6 × 182.9 cm Source:  ©National Trust Images

and the key elements of the tragic scene (the queen with servants and children, and the king with horse and servants). Giving the scene a romantic twist, he shows the king (here Edgar instead of Edward), having dismounted from his horse, approaching the young woman, still standing at the entrance of the castle with servants and children, illuminated by a ray of light. Men that could have been potential murderers on the assassination plate are shown attending the king, his horse, and dogs. With Hamilton’s canvas, the superposition of two images that are not unrelated but that should paint two opposite sides of Elfrida’s character points to the high impact the increased circulation of historical images had on the artist’s imagination. The hold of the visual is even more palpable in Bowyer’s decision to add images to his edition of Hume’s History even though the events they visualised did not feature in the historian’s text.92 In two instances, Bowyer admits that the scenes represented are absent from Hume’s History: to justify the addition of yet another sentimental encounter, that of Rowena and Vortigen, painted by Hamilton, Bowyer simply refers his readers to Rapin’s History. His inclusion of the highly popular first meeting between the King of Britain and the Saxon princess, previously visualised by both Wale and Kauffman, and dramatised in numerous plays, could presumably make do without more solid arguments. About Opie’s less engaging Queen of James II secretly embarking at Gravesend, previous to the Abdication of the King, Bowyer states that “the publisher was happy in having an opportunity to introduce an additional illustration of the English History, by what he flatters himself will be deemed an honourable example of

The historical genre 135 English art.” In this case, strikingly, the mere addition of a work to the nation’s artistic output sufficed to include the image in the edition of a book where the episode was not narrated. From a commercial point of view, both Boydell’s and Bowyer’s galleries eventually shared the same disastrous fate. But before taking their owners on to the brink of financial ruin, both projects heightened the circulation of historical pictures. Both publishers each commissioned nearly 200 new pictures (around 170 for Boydell and 190 for Bowyer) and, even though the Shakespeare Gallery included some poetic subjects, much of the visual corpus was related to, or directly illustrative of, British history. Both galleries significantly improved the panoramic view of British history while enhancing the visual status of historical pictures. Despite their low aesthetic value, unsophisticated historical illustrations made for books proved easy to appropriate by artists. As sources for a new genre of paintings, this widely available printed material provided the template for new images of British history. Through their remediation on canvases, and through their exhibition in dedicated public spaces (be they commercial or galleries or the Royal Academy rooms), humble book plates acquired a new and formidable artistic aura, one that led viewers not only to look down on scenes printed on book pages but to look up to colourful, impressive renditions of those very same scenes on the walls of fashionable venues. When Bowyer’s commercial gallery was closed, a significant number of historical events had been circulating in visual form for 60 years. With each iteration, a subject was potentially addressed to different audiences and operated within a different context, thereby reiterating each time its validity and reinforcing its iconic presence in the collective imagination. This study points to the surprising agency of ink-and-paper images. They helped redefine traditional aesthetic rules and hierarchies, and brought forward an emotional understanding of national history.

Notes 1 David Solkin, ed., Art on the Line. The Royal Academy Exhibitions at Somerset House 1780–1836 (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2001), Matthew Hargraves, Candidates for Fame. The Society of Artists of Great Britain. 1760–1791 (New Haven, CT and London: 2005) and Mark Hallett, Reynolds. Portraiture in Action (New Haven, CT and London: 2014). 2 David H. Solkin, Art in Britain 1660–1815 (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art: Yale UP, 2015) 151. 3 Papers of the Society of Artists of Great Britain (London: Royal Academy of Arts Library) SA/24/1-3. 4 The Royal Academy Archives, General Assembly Minutes RAA/GA I, 2. 5 See the minutes of the first meeting of the Society dated March 22, 1754, RSA/AD/ MA/100/12/01/01, 1. 6 See the minutes of the meeting dated November 29, 1758, RSA/AD/MA/100/12/01/03, 107. 7 See the minutes of the meeting dated February 28, 1759, RSA/AD/MA/100/12/01/03, 154. 8 RSA/AD/MA/100/12/01/03, 154. 9 RSA/AD/MA/100/12/01/03, 155. 10 RSA/AD/MA/100/12/01/03, 155. 11 The emphasis on national history became even more apparent in the motion that later replaced “English history” by “British history” in the advertisement of premiums, see the minutes dated March 31, 1761, RSA/AD/MA/100/12/01/06, 193 12 See the minutes of the meeting dated May 2, 1759, RSA/AD/MA/100/12/01/04, 46. 13 The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, vol 2, ed W. J. Bate, John M. Bullitt and L.F. Powell (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1963) 140.

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14 15 16 17

The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, vol 2, 140. The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, vol 2, 140. The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, vol 2, 140. The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, vol 2, 140 where Johnson describes portrait as “that art which is now employed in diffusing friendship, in reviving tenderness, in quickening the affections of the absent, and continuing the presence of the dead.” See by comparison Richardson, Essay on the Theory of Painting, 9–10: “And thus we see the Persons and Faces of Famous Men, the Originals of which are out of our reach, as being gone down with the Stream of Time, or in distant Places: And thus too we see our Relatives and Friends, whether living or dead, as they have been in all the Stages of Life. In Picture we never dye, never decay, or grow older.” 18 The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, vol 2, 140–1. 19 The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, vol 2, 141–2. 20 The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, vol 2, 142. 21 See John Sunderland, “Mortimer, Pine and Some Political Aspects of English History Painting,” The Burlington Magazine 116:855 (1974) 322, 325–6. 22 See Ecclesiae Anglicanae Trophaea, plate 23. 23 See Queen Mary Psalter in the British Library Digitised Manuscripts (Royal 2 B VII f. 245) https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid& IllID=53247 (accessed on November 28, 2021). 24 See the Minutes of the Various Premium Committees [RSA/PR/GE/112/12/1] 74 for the years 1758–1760. In their examination of a landscape painting by John Hakewill, the committee read a letter, dated March 17, 1759, “from Mr. Wale testifying that he saw this candidate draw the landscape from the sketch, and believes no unfair practice was used.” 25 See Papers of the Society of Artists of Great Britain, vol I, 650 SA/1, Royal Academy of Arts Library, London. 26 See Brian Allen’s account of these canvases in Francis Hayman (New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 1987) 66–69. 27 Fordham 16. 28 Solkin, Painting for Money, 193–4. 29 Anon., A Description of Vaux-Hall Gardens. Being a proper companion and guide for all who visit that place. Illustrated with Copper-Plates (London: Hooper, 1762) [53]. 30 See John Sunderland, “John Hamilton Mortimer. His Life and Works,” Walpole Society 52 (1988) 16–7. 31 McNairn 98–101. 32 See Edward Penny, The Death of General Wolfe, The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford, accession number WA1845.38. 33 McNairn 105. 34 John Galt, Esq., The Life, Studies and Works of Benjamin West, Esq., President of the Royal Academy of London (London: Cadell and Davies, 1820) 48. 35 Galt 49. 36 See supra in Chapter II. 37 Edgar Wind, “The Revolution of History Painting,” Journal of the Warburg Institute, 2:2 (October 1938) 116–27. 38 Solkin, Painting for Money, 209. 39 Wind 120. 40 See the minutes of the Council of the Royal Academy announcing the award of a gold medal for the best historical picture on May 20, 1769, RAA/CM I, 24. 41 Joshua Reynolds, Discourses, edited by Pat Rogers (1798; London: Penguin, 1992) 120. 42 Kenneth Garlick and Angus Macintyre, eds., The Diary of Joseph Farington, vol I, July 1793–December 1794 (New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 1978) 132–3. 43 The Exhibition of the Royal Academy, MDCCLXXI, The Third, Printed by W. Griffin, Printer to the Royal Academy (London: Griffin, 1771) 20. 44 See the reviews in The Morning Chronicle, May 3, 1774 p 2, The London Evening Post May 6-9, 1775, last page and The Morning Chronicle, May 29, 1776, 1. 45 The Morning Chronicle, May 3, 1774, 2. 46 Edward Edwards, Anecdotes of Painters (London: Hansard, 1808) 116. Edwards knew Wale’s historical illustrations very well for he seems to have copied some of them

The historical genre 137













which are found in both the British Museum and National Portrait Gallery collections. Engraved by John Hall, they were apparently printed for George Kearsley and intended as illustrations for an unidentified History of England. 47 See Benjamin West, Oliver Cromwell Dissolving the Long Parliament, 1782, oil on canvas, 153 × 214.6 cm, Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey (1960.5). 48 See John Singleton Copley, Charles I Demanding the Five Impeached Members of the House of Commons, 1782–95, oil on canvas, 233.4 × 312 cm, Public Library, Boston, MA. 49 See the enlightening research carried out on this painting in preparation for the remarkable 2004 exhibition at the Fogg Museum: Kimberly Orcutt, Process and Paradox: The Historical Pictures of John Singleton Copley, exh. cat., (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Art Museums, 2004) 7, 12. 50 See Helmut von Erffa and Allen Staley, The Paintings of Benjamin West (New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 1986) 192–203. 51 Von Erffa and Staley 199. See Benjamin West, The Institution of the Order of the Garter, 1787, oil on canvas, 289.9 × 448.8 cm, Royal Collection Trust (RCIN 407521), on loan at the Palace of Westminster. 52 Lockman, New History of England, 108. 53 See, for instance, The General Evening Post, issue 2802, November 19–21, 1751. 54 See Elias Ashmole, The Institution, Laws & Ceremonies of the Most Noble Order of the Garter. London: Macock and Brooke, 1672, 136–49. 55 West exhibited his composition twice at the Royal Academy, first in the form of a finished sketch in 1787, and then the final painting in 1792. On both occasions, the word “original” was used to describe the subject and the characters depicted. See The Exhibition of the Royal Academy MDCCLXXXVII, The Nineteenth (London: Cadell, 1787) 3 and The Exhibition of the Royal Academy MDCCXCII, The Twenty-Fourth (London: Cadell, 1792) 3. 56 Ashmole 186. 57 Galt 72. 58 On antiquarian John Carter’s criticism of West’s Institution of the Order of the Garter, see Smiles 48–53. 59 See Benjamin West, The Citizens of London Offering the Crown to William the Conqueror, c. 1792–7, oil on canvas, 198 × 152.5 cm, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. 60 Von Erffa and Staley 188. 61 See Charles Mitchell, “Benjamin West’s Death of General Wolfe and the Popular History Piece,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 7:1 (1944) 33. Mitchell reports that Boydell and Woollett earned 15,000 and 7,000 pounds, respectively, from the sales of the Death of the General Wolfe print. 62 See Rosie Dias, Exhibiting Englishness. John Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery and the Formation of a National Aesthetic (New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 2013). 63 Dias 24–5. See also the description of the project in the four-page call for subscriptions published on December 1, 1786: Shakespeare. Mr. Alderman Boydell, Josiah Boydell, and George Nicol, propose to publish by subscription a most magnificent and accurate edition of the plays of Shakespeare in Eight Volumes, etc. (London: n. p., 1786). 64 John Boydell, A Catalogue of the Pictures in the Shakespeare Gallery, Pall-Mall (London: n. p., 1789) v. 65 Stuart Sillars extensively analysed the impact on the visual arts of Garrick’s Shakespeare’s Jubilee of 1769, which confirmed Shakespeare’s place as national bard. See Stuart Sillars, Painting Shakespeare, op.cit., Stuart Sillars, The Illustrated Shakespeare, 1709– 1875 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008) and Stuart Sillars, Shakespeare and the Visual Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015). 66 Robert Bowyer, Elucidation of Mr. Bowyer’s plan for a magnificent edition of Hume’s History of England, with a continuation by G. Gregory, D.D. &c. (London: Bensley, 1795) 11. 67 In the catalogue of the pictures on show at Bowyer’s Historic Gallery, most depictions give very lively accounts of canvases and Philippe de Loutherbourg’s Great Fire of London is described as “the sublimest spectacle that can be imagined,” see Description of the Pictures Painted for Mr. Bowyer, at the Historic Gallery [between 1792 and 1795] 2.

138  The historical genre 68 Mitchell, Picturing the Past, 39. 69 It is also worth recalling that pirated versions of Wale’s illustrations circulated at the time when Bowyer’s Historic Gallery was being assembled, appearing, for example, in George Courtney Lyttleton, History of England (London: Stratford, 1803). These illustrations were copied by former Royal Academy student William Hamilton, seemingly from Cooke’s book plates, for they appear to be either reversed, or slightly amended, from Wale’s designs. 70 See Cynthia E. Roman, “Robert Bowyer’s Historic Gallery and the feminization of the ‘nation’,” in Dana Arnold, ed., Cultural identities and the aesthetics of Britishness (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2004) 21. 71 The Exhibition of the Royal Academy MDCCLXXVI, The Eighth (London: Davies, 1776) 15. 72 The Exhibition of the Royal Academy MDCCXCIII, The Twenty-Fifth (London: Cadell, 1793) 10. 73 See The True Briton, issue 114, Monday, May 13, 1793. 74 For Angelica Kauffman’s catalogue raisonné, see the wonderful AKRP website edited by Bettina Baumgärtel: https://www.angelika-kauffmann.de/en/akrp-home-2/ (consulted on January 3, 2022). 75 Roy Strong, And when did you last see your father? The Victorian Painter and British History (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978) 21–2. 76 John Opie, The Duke of York Resigned by the Queen, 1806, oil on canvas, 235.5 × 168 cm, Stratford-upon-Avon, Royal Shakespeare Theatre. 77 The Exhibition of the Royal Academy MDCCLXXXVI, The Eighteenth (London: Cadell, 1786) 6. See the oval oil on copper by John Francis Rigaud in the collections of the Huntington Museum, San Marino (object number 2008.14) and the stipple engraving made of it by Pietro Bettelini in the British Museum collection (1917,1208.1245). 78 See in the British Museum collection the drawing on paper signed by Richard Westall, dated 1799, (Oo,3.11), and the stipple engraving by the artist, dated 1802 (1871,0812.2837). 79 [Rapin de Thoyras], The History of England. Written originally in French by M. Rapin de Thoyras (1733), vol. 1, 727. The vignette shows the two boys asleep in their canopied bed, one man holding a torch and two others carrying a big pillow. 80 [Rapin de Thoyras], The History of England Written in French by Mr. Rapin de Thoyras (1732) vol. 1, 648–9. 81 Lockman, New History of England, 135. 82 The Exhibition of the Royal Academy MDCCLXXXVI, 8. 83 Dias 110. 84 See James Northcote, The Meeting of Edward V and his Brother Richard, Duke of York, Contemplated by Richard III, 1799, oil on canvas, 178 × 137 cm (NT 486168). 85 In addition to the paintings commissioned by Boydell and Bowyer, the reproductive engravings made of them, and the reissues of Wale’s early visualisations, there were new images circulating in other editions of Shakespeare’s works, see Sillars, The Illustrated Shakespeare, 247–51. 86 The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, vol 2, 142. 87 Bowyer, Elucidation, 14. 88 See Mark Hallett, “Reading the Walls: Pictorial Dialogue at the British Royal Academy,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, 37:4 (2004) 581–604. 89 See Edward Edwards, Edward the Martyr Stabbed by Order of Elfrida, 1776, etching and engraving on paper, 21.3 × 14.5 cm, in the British Museum collection (1870,1008.209). 90 Theophilus Camden, The Imperial History of England, Accurately and concisely compiled from the best Authorities, etc., vol 1 (London: Stratford, 1810) 48–9. 91 Lockman, New History of England, 37. 92 See Historic Gallery, Pall Mall. Exhibition of Pictures, Painted for Bowyer’s Magnificent Edition of the History of England. London: n.p., 1795, 6 and 9.

4

Visual history as a new language

In his pioneering studies of historical representation, Stephen Bann locates in the early nineteenth-century France a watershed in European attitudes to history. Through a wide-ranging visual corpus, he explores how visual media shaped historical culture and how the rise of this visual history marked the popular consciousness of the past. He traced back to the Romantic period, “a remarkable enhancement of the consciousness of history” through the development of the “historical genre” in both literature and the visual arts.1 Although Bann initially assumed that “the French and the English experience of the rise of history in the Romantic period formed an integrated whole,”2 he later qualified his assumption and hinted at slightly different timescale in France and Britain, especially when analysing the inspiration Paul Delaroche (1797–1856) drew from earlier English painters such as James Northcote, John Opie, or Robert Smirke.3 As seen in Chapter 3, Northcote, Opie, and Smirke were all employed by Bowyer to visualise British history decades before Delaroche created his famous canvases. Moreover Northcote painted an earlier version of the “princes in the Tower,” a subject the French painter recurred to and turned into a spectacular human melodrama. In line with the conclusions of the previous chapter, we tend to see further proof of the cultural agency of eighteenth-century English book plates in the fact that they provided a prism through which French history came to be seen. This was the case with Delaroche’s Princes in the Tower or The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, which reminded French viewers of the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of young Louis XVII, or of the execution of Marie Antoinette, as demonstrated by Bann. At odds with the political evolution on both sides of the Channel, Delaroche’s canvases invited viewers to look at distant events that had taken place in the British Isles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and to reflect on recent French upheavals. Our study therefore considers mid-eighteenth-century historical illustrations as a source of historical-mindedness for, to borrow Bann’s words, these pictures did stem from a “novel and irresistible capacity for multiplying and diversifying the representations of the past in such a way that a new code – or even a new language – was learned.”4 As a system of signs and symbols, the historical genre was used throughout Europe in the nineteenth century to communicate new ideas of nationhood. But again, the basic premise of a national visual culture had been formulated before. Anthony D. Smith situates early instances of modern and narrative visual embodiments of the nation in the context of the Dutch revolt against Spanish rule, especially at the conclusion of the war, between 1609 and 1648.5 There, the need to break with the Spanish rule and to materialise the ideal of a Dutch nation found visual DOI: 10.4324/9781003245445-5

140  Visual history as a new language expressions in the works of Dutch artists. The Dutch case analysed by Smith offers clues as to how from the early eighteenth century onward, the consciousness of history was enhanced in visual media in the British Isles. In England, the rejection of a Catholic monarch and the advent of a new regime of the parliamentary monarchy were presented, by those who engineered 1688, not as the sequel to the civil wars and regicide but as the dawning of a new age. As a result, the need for historical rupture and the articulation of a public political discourse around the construction of the nation provided grounds for renewed historiographical activity. And the writing of historical accounts of the British nation invented after 1688, 1707, and 1714 went hand in hand with its imagining. What this study has shown so far is that those new images of British history broke away from the texts they were initially supposed to illustrate and achieved greater visibility, and popularity even, outside books, giving rise to a new pictorial genre. Initially formulated in a British context in which history painting had not proved a viable option for artists, the vernacular historical genre superseded its continental predecessor. The ability of historical pictures to provide visual embodiments of the founding values of new nation states, of events and heroes that could be shared and commemorated widely, explains the quick rise to prominence of the historical genre in the early nineteenth century. At a time when new political regimes increasingly sought popular support, national histories provided grounds for dialogue between rulers and ruled, and the historical style came to be seen as a national language. The vernacular fluency of such historical pictures thus ensured their continued use as tools of nationalist ideology in times when questions were raised regarding the educative role of the arts. In Britain, the Georgian historical scenes we have studied regained currency in Victorian Britain during the planning phase of the decorations of the new Houses of Parliament. The instructive purpose of the historical genre also accounts for its subsequent assignment to children’s literature over the Victorian period and beyond. However, when it ceased to be a relevant medium for the articulation of complex historical analysis and lost its aesthetic appeal at a time when British artistic creation broke away from academic restraint, the historical genre retracted back to smaller formats. So, what was left of the historical genre once British painters had abandoned it? How did images made for the Georgian public keep signifying to the Victorians, the Edwardians, and even to children of the 1970s? This chapter examines the persistence of visual history and the emergence of a national imagery.

The historical genre and the expression of the nation In Britain, artistic education became a topic of intense public debate in the early decades of the nineteenth century as a result of mounting anxiety over the cultural consequences of rapid industrialisation and urbanisation. In the period of deep depression that followed the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the economic and social usefulness of the arts was identified as a new, pressing concern by the ruling class. In 1835, radical MP William Ewart became chair of the select committee on the arts and manufactures he had called for. Including prominent members of Parliament, it was officially “appointed to inquire into the best means of extending a knowledge of the Arts, and of the Principles of Design among the People (especially the Manufacturing Population) of the Country,” and it interviewed nearly 30 witnesses.6 The report of the select committee shows that the discussion was primarily based on an economic

Visual history as a new language 141 rationale, for the majority of questions revolved around the ways to improve the production of manufacturing workmen through artistic education. As it had often been the case in previous discussions of the situation of the arts in Britain, the exchanges involved many comparisons with other European countries – on this occasion with France and Germany. However, behind open questions regarding foreign competition over textile patterns or the design of furniture, nagging problems reappeared. Formulated in the new liberal idiom, the well-worn topic of public support for the arts – or rather the lack of it – resurfaced. The solution of the past, i.e., a self-financed Royal Academy, managed by artists who compensated for the absence of royal pensions by fee-paying exhibitions, had lost its appeal among Radicals, who campaigned for state patronage of the arts. According to some witnesses, not only were the doors of the Royal Academy closed to workmen, who could not afford to pay the entrance fees to see the exhibits, but academicians taught outdated artistic rules and used them to exert their monopoly over the British art world, keeping engravers or other talented artists away.7 Second in the discussions – after the lack of encouragement given to the arts in general – was the British deficiency in historical painting.8 As a successor to history painting in Britain, the historical genre had inherited the same functional qualities. Praised for its didacticism, it seemed that it had to have a prominent part to play in the committee’s general educational project whose aim was to improve the manufacturing output and the artistic taste of the nation. Convening only a few months after a fire had completely destroyed the Houses of Parliament, members of the committee expressed their belief that historical works should be given pride of place in the new building. This was the opinion of Gustav Friedrich Waagen, the first witness the committee heard in August 1835. A German art connoisseur, Waagen had recently been appointed director of the Berlin Museum and was considered as a leading authority on artistic matters.9 To conclude his interview, he suggested that British artists should be employed in public buildings and that historical works would provide “respectable ornaments” for the new Houses of Parliament.10 His suggestion was taken up once sufficient progress had been made with the building six years later, when a new select committee was appointed “to take into consideration the Promotion of the Fine Arts of this Country, in connexion with the Rebuilding of the new Houses of Parliament.”11 In line with Waagen’s remarks, the committee, chaired by Radical MP Benjamin Hawes, recommended in its report a scheme of historical frescoes, a most surprising choice, given that there was hardly any British tradition of this technique, which was primarily used on the Continent in religious art. As previously studied, the counter-intuitive choice of fresco painting was guided by contemporary Bavarian examples.12 The suitability and the durability of fresco paintings as well as the probability of finding British artists capable of producing them were thoroughly discussed by the committee. In addition to the technical aspects, the style and subjects of those decorations were examined during the interviews. As the architect in charge of the rebuilding of Westminster, Charles Barry (1795–1860) declared that, in his view, “the subjects most applicable would be those which refer to great events in English history.”13 When asked to clarify his opinion, he specified that he would decidedly prefer historical to allegorical paintings and agreed to the chairman’s suggestion that the historical genre be chosen “in order that the design and the subject might be intelligible to the people.”14 The common understanding of historical painting as a vernacular language was shared by the President of the Royal Academy, Martin Archer Shee (1769/1770–1850), who added: “A building erected for

142  Visual history as a new language such a purpose as the two Houses of Parliament, and which may be called the palace of the senatorial body, would necessarily require to be adorned by productions illustrative of the history of the country, and the great characters which the country has produced.”15 And the committee’s report recommended that English artists should be preferred to foreign artists because they “would enter into such subjects with more of national feeling and of national character than a foreign artists.”16 Very shortly after the publication of that report, the Royal Commission of Fine Arts was appointed to oversee the decoration of the new Palace of Westminster. Chaired by Prince Albert, with Royal Academician Charles Eastlake (1793–1865) as secretary, and including members from the previous select committees (such as Lord John Russell), this Fine Arts commission organised cartoon competitions to put aspiring fresco painters to the test.17 Artists were invited to submit cartoons with life figures illustrating subjects taken not only from British history but also from Spenser, Shakespeare, or Milton. An exhibition of 140 cartoons selected from the submissions was held in the summer of 1843 in Westminster Hall and people rushed to see it. In a letter to his mother, 15-year-old Dante Gabriele Rossetti (1828–1882) praised “the most interesting exhibition in fact at which I have ever been” and found in it “proof that High Art and high talent are not confined to the Continent.”18 S A specialised author of guides to London art exhibitions, Henry Green Clarke, published both a catalogue (i.e., a mere list with brief comments) and a more substantial critical review of the exhibition. His list shows that the first 63 cartoons were illustrations of Spenser, Shakespeare, or Milton while the remaining 77 were historical, with some of the Shakespearian subjects also potentially falling into that latter category. Praising the arrangement of the exhibits, Clarke congratulates the commissioners who placed the best productions at eye level and informs us that poetic and historical subjects were separated: […] subjects from Spencer are near the door; those from Shakespeare are next to them; and further on, even to the diagonal further corner of the Hall, are those selected from Milton. The other side, and the center screen contain the historical pictures, in periodical groups, commencing with Julius Caesar’s invasion, and terminating with the 17th century.19 What Clarke’s catalogue also shows is that some subjects were particularly successful among artists, namely, the Roman invasion led by Julius Caesar, the fierce resistance of Caratacus, and heroic uprising of Boadicea. Though each of these scenes was illustrated on four cartoons, they were still far behind the absolute favourite, the Christianisation of the British Isles by Augustine, the subject of nine cartoons. Even more remarkable is the fact that the immense majority of the 77 historical subjects already featured in either Cooke’s or Bowyer’s series. 20 The cartoons’ titles in Clarke’s catalogue reveal the firm hold that visual historical sequences had taken on artistic imagination, as hardly over a dozen were new: some only relatively so because they were mere variations on Britons’ resistance to Roman invasion for instance. The real novelty subjects were additions of Scottish episodes (the battle of Stirling for example) or proto-imperial scenes celebrating Sir Philip Sydney or Sebastian Cabot. All in all, the ease with which a set collection of historical illustrations travelled from books and public exhibition in commercial venues to public buildings is astonishing. In the space of a century, a mere list of fifty events had become a sequence of

Visual history as a new language 143 originary scenes used to narrativise a widely-shared vision of the British past. At this early stage of the competition for the decoration of Westminster, no particular selection process was applied. The commission adopted Barry’s opinion that “Any leading event in English history would be a good subject,” and that “There would not be […] any impropriety in adopting any of the great events in our national history, from the earliest periods to the present time.”21. Everywhere they went, historical illustrations saw their metaphoric qualities acknowledged, and their historical effects enhanced by the various ways in which they were displayed, looked at, and discussed. As indicated at the beginning of Clarke’s catalogue, 21 cartoons were awarded premiums and ranked in four classes. The 11 prize-winning cartoons in the first, second, and third classes received greater attention from critics who reviewed the exhibition in the press. Very favourable reviews appeared in The Illustrated London News which had a view of the medieval hall hung with cartoons, thronged with visitors, on its front page (see fig 4.1). 22 Inside the paper, the first 11 prize-winning pieces were assessed: Caesar’s First Invasion of Britain by Edward Armitage (1817–1896), Caractacus led in Triumph through the Streets of Rome by George Frederick Watts (1817–1904), First Trial by Jury by Charles West Cope (1811–1890), St Augustine Preaching to Ethelbert and Bertha, his Christian Queen by John Callcott Horsley (1817–1903), The Cardinal Bourchier Urging the Queen Dowager of Edward IV to give up the Sanctuary of York by John Zephaniah Bell (1794–1883), The Fight for the Beacon by Henry James Townsend (1810–1890), Una Alarmed by the Fauns and Satyrs by William Edward Frost (1810–1877), Joseph of Arimathea converting the Britons by Edmund Thomas Parris (1793–1873), Boadicea haranguing the Iceni by Henry Courtney Selous (1803–1890), Alfred submitting his Code of Laws for the approval of the Witan by John Bridges (active 1818–1854), and Eleanor Saves the Life of her Husband (afterwards Edward I) by sucking the poison from the wound in his arm by Joseph Severn (1793–1879). 23 Considering the supposed factuality of the subjects selected, the reviewer praised the alleged genuineness of the meeting between Cardinal Bourchier and Edward IV’s widow while ridiculing the legendary nature of the episode from the life of Joseph of Arimathea. How were such assessments of the perceived authenticity informed by previous visualisations of the subjects? As seen in Chapter 3, episodes from the lives of Edward IV and his queen had been among the most popular historical illustrations of the past decades, and viewers had been used to looking at them as history visualised. In his treatment of the subject, Bell dresses the queen dowager and her children in black to indicate that they were mourning the death of King Edward IV. Although it was not customary for a fifteenth-century widow to wear black, this show of Victorian decency was highlighted as being particularly truthful by the Illustrated London News review, which praised the costume while dwelling on the emotional aspects that had already informed the reception of earlier versions. This review shows that the Victorian repackaging of a scene staged by Georgian visual artists sufficed to renew its currency. This was all the more remarkable since nearly all the subjects of the prize winners had, in fact, circulated in previous historical series. Some borrowed from sources dating back nearly a hundred years, for a significant proportion of subjects illustrated in the prize-winning cartoons (4 out of 11) featured in the English History Delineated (EHD) list published in the London press in 1749. Tellingly, no reference to any previous historical illustration is made in the press review, which instead of alluding to well-known sequences such as Cooke’s or Bowyer’s, summons Le Brun, the Carracci, Titian, or

144  Visual history as a new language

Figure 4.1  The Illustrated London News for the week ending Saturday, July 8, 1843 (front page) Source:  Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library

Poussin in an effort to situate the endeavours of current British artists in direct line with European tradition. Most of the cartoons examined in this competition have perished, but the 11 prize winners reviewed in the Illustrated London News are still extant in the form of the reproductive lithographs made for a publication by Longman and Co in 1847. 24 One of the cartoons that most impressed the jury was Armitage’s Caesar’s First Invasion of Britain,which includes reused elements found in previous visualisations of the subject (see fig 4.2). Clarke described it as “easily understood and effective” and compared it to Le Brun’s battles, to Géricault’s Wreck of the Medusa but also mentioned that the subject featured on “various embossed dishes and tea urns.”25 His allusion to the circulation of such historical scenes on everyday objects is tantalising but,

Visual history as a new language 145

Figure 4.2  William Linnell (after Edward Armitage), Caesar’s First Invasion of Britain, The Prize Cartoons, 1847, lithograph on paper Source:  ©The Trustees of the British Museum

in the absence of any specific example, it can be taken as a hint at the triteness of the subject. Like Burney’s and Wale’s illustrations, Armitage’s composition focuses on Roman galleys reaching the English shores and depicts the Roman general ordering his troops to disembark with the standard-bearer already in the water, leading the way. A pupil of Delaroche, Armitage made the most of the recommended ten-foot format to produce a sophisticated cartoon with a pyramidal composition that entertains the eye with a tumult of characters: below the commanding figure of Julius Caesar, stands his standard-bearer and, all around them, a spectacular display of muscle power. While some men are pulling the galley, everywhere soldiers are involved in hand-to-hand combat with fierce Britons. Whereas both Burney’s and Wale’s illustrations had relegated the fighting into the background, Armitage actually revives the vision of the scene Nicholas Blakey had produced in 1751 for the EHD (see fig 1.6), namely one which gave centre stage to British resistance. Interestingly, the press review focuses mainly on the valorous defence of the painted, naked “Barbarians” resisting their invaders, and offers a blatant patriotic reading of the scene as a celebration of the “unbeaten defenders of our native land.” Also derived from a previous illustration, Horsley’s St Augustine Preaching to Ethelbert and Bertha, his Christian Queen (see fig 4.3) is an outdoor scene which reiterates the essential elements formulated by Wale: Augustine is brandishing a cross while addressing the royal couple seated in front of him, with their dog next to them; the king looks thoughtful while

146  Visual history as a new language

Figure 4.3  James Thomas Linnell (after John Callcott Horsley, St Augustine Preaching to Ethelbert and Bertha, The Prize Cartoons, 1847, lithograph on paper Source:  ©The Trustees of the British Museum

the queen is touching his arm in order to direct his attention towards the missionary. Though he did not significantly amend the costumes of Wale’s reconstruction (see fig 1.8), Horsley added a prehistoric monument in the background, in a clear attempt at giving the Georgian scene a more accurate archaeological outlook. A year later, this successful show was followed by another similar competition. More accepting of different techniques and genres, the 1844 exhibition included cartoons, frescoes, encaustic and oil paintings as well as a hundred sculpted pieces (some taken from Royal Academy’s recent exhibitions, and others especially made for the competition). Despite being hailed by Clarke as “the most interesting that ever occurred to the Fine Arts in this country,”26 the exhibition did not attract as much interest from the press as the previous one. The greater number of exhibits (183), the variety of techniques but, most of all, the repetitive subjects probably explain the weariness of reviewers. Shortly after the closing of that second exhibition, the Fine Arts Commission announced that they had preselected six painters: Charles West Cope, William Dyce, John Callcott Horsley, Daniel Maclise (1806–1870), Richard Redgrave (1804–1888), and William Cave Thomas (1820–1906) to produce six frescoes for the House of Lords. The subjects named were three allegories (Religion, Justice, and the Spirit of Chivalry) and three histories (Baptism of Ethelbert, Prince Henry acknowledging the authority of Chief Justice Gascoigne and Edward, the Black Prince receiving the Order of the Garter from Edward III). But the commissioners’

Visual history as a new language 147 preselection was not binding, and they announced that a new competition would be open to all artists who wished to submit cartoons for those six chosen subjects. This led to the third exhibition on an even more restricted number of subjects and to other such decisions made by the royal commissioners. The lengthy selection process attracted criticism and, as the decoration project was dragging along, public interest in it waned. Meanwhile, the rationale behind the decoration project – the idea that historical scenes displayed in public buildings could fulfil an educational role conducive to social harmony – came under scrutiny. The overthrow of Ludwig I of Bavaria in 1848 considerably reduced the alleged exemplarity on which the fresco project was based, and continental revolutions caused widespread alarm among the British ruling class. The evolution of the domestic political climate likewise challenged former assumptions about educational methods and contents aimed at the lower classes with Radicals and Chartists getting involved in setting up a national education system. Moreover, despite increasing interest in frescoes in artistic circles, the decorative scheme did not live up to its ambitions and the anticipated revival of fresco painting in Britain did not materialise. The first completed works quickly deteriorated and proved that the choice of frescoes had been hazardous. While the outcome of the decorative scheme for the new Houses of Parliament might have dampened their enthusiasm, by the end of the 1840s, British aesthetic reformers had found a new project that offered more contemporary ways to display the nation. The Great Exhibition, initially intended to promote British industry, had become the new focus of attention for prominent members of the Royal Commission of Fine Arts. The variety of their purposes was eventually showcased on a monumental scale – and with resounding success – in 1851 in Hyde Park. Meanwhile at Westminster, the decoration project, having lost the backing of its most vocal supporters, ceased to be identified as a priority by members of Parliament who reduced its funding. It was finally completed amid relative indifference.

The decline of the historical genre Even in light of the mixed results of the project, it is fair to say that the decorations of the new palace of Westminster placed the historical genre at the centre of public discussions of Britain’s cultural identity. Over a period of nearly 20 years, prominent and aspiring artists pondered over historical subjects while leading political and cultural figures examined and assessed visualisations of history. The workings of the commissions to which they belonged, their meetings, debates, and reports had repercussions in the press and brought the discussion of the historical genre into an ever-widening public domain. The same well-known episodes from British history that kept being reiterated were made to resonate with representations of the nation. Constant references to those subjects rendered commentaries less and less necessary. As tremendous agitation around the decorative scheme sounded like the swan song of the historical genre in Britain, uncomplicated historical images were commonly dropped in conversations or used in political cartoons. Within this context, it is interesting to note that the very term “cartoon” was actually coined in the context of the competition for the decoration of Westminster Hall. Illustrator John Leech (1817–1864) was already a regular contributor to the weekly magazine Punch, or the London Charivari when he started a series of “cartoons” in July 1843, precisely to satirise visually the current Westminster exhibition. His first plate showed hungry children visiting an art

148  Visual history as a new language exhibition in their ragged clothes. It was captioned Substance and Shadow and published on July 15, 1843, alongside an editorial that further stressed the criticism of a government too keen to offer art shows to a crowd who urgently needed bread. Interestingly, Leech went on to illustrate Gilbert Abbott à Beckett’s Comic History of England, where classic historical illustrations were given a new comic twist. 27 Not only did he caricature historical figures (portraying them with funny noses, googly eyes, or in the case of Henry VIII as a roly-poly toy)28, and dressed them in masquerade, or in grossly anachronistic, costumes, but he also turned the situations in which they found themselves into ridicule. The landing of Julius Caesar looked like a street brawl; the courtiers, Canute was supposed to reprove, were getting bored and wet as their king failed to stop the waves. In a scene reminiscent of Wale’s first visualisation of the subject, Leech showed William the Conqueror sprawled on the English shore. 29 He pictured the soldier standing in front of Cromwell unable to hold the grotesquely huge mace, making fun of parliamentarians as they failed to spot Charles thumbing his nose in the oak tree, literally above his pursuers’ heads.30 These comic variations show that the historical episodes referred to had become so well known that, even when burlesqued, they were instantly recognisable. But how could historical paintings that had become so transparent retain any visual appeal? Unsurprisingly, the decorations of the new Westminster Hall, once completed, did include well-known, and well-worn, representations of the preaching of Saint Augustine, Canute reproving his courtiers, the homage of the barons to King William the Conqueror, Eleanor sucking the poison, Philippa and Burghers of Calais, Edward the Black Prince entering London with King John of France, Queen Elizabeth after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the death of General Wolfe, and that of Nelson and other heroes. But in stark contrast to what Henry Green Clarke had predicted in the opening lines of his 1843 guide of the first cartoon exhibition, the event was not “the first chapter of a new edition of British art.”31 Quite the opposite, it was rather the last chapter of the development of the historical genre in Britain. While it was being completed, artists who stubbornly persisted in painting historical subjects, like John Gilbert, for instance, were outshone by those who sought new ways to engage with history. In open rebellion against the Royal Academy, and its professed admiration for Raphael, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt (1827–1910), and John Everett Millais (1829–1896) formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. Inspired by the revivalist style of the German Nazarenes, the Brothers’ aim was to emulate late medieval and early Renaissance painters. Turned towards the past, but not necessarily confining themselves to the national past, they were primarily concerned with historical and literary subjects. Often chosen for their poignancy, the themes favoured by Pre-Raphaelite painters were emotional – moralising even – but not polite. Dealing with love and death, sexual desire, prostitution, or suicide, their works offered sumptuously detailed reconstructions of costumes and interiors, which restored the colours of the past for decorative rather than didactic purposes. Equally colourful were the works of John Martin (1789–1854) who, like Ford Madox Brown (1821–1893), had taken part in the cartoon competitions organised by the Royal Commission of Fine Arts.32 Departing from his habitual Biblical landscapes, Martin submitted a cartoon entitled The Trial of Canute which was favourably reviewed by Clarke who praised it as “A fine subject and splendid display.” Clarke further commented on the portrait of Canute (lacking a little energy), the vast colonnade of Saxon pillars, and on the excellent foreground figures.33 The opportunity

Visual history as a new language 149 offered by the competition led Martin to delve into British history, but his fame lay elsewhere. An unsuccessful candidate for the decoration of Westminster, Martin was already renowned for his spectacular, catastrophic landscapes seen by millions of people across the British Isles.34 Revisiting the standard canonical repertoire of religious history painting, he had considerably expanded the social outreach of art exhibitions through his sensational treatment of Biblical episodes that stirred emotions and excitement. Martin’s formidable paintings were part of a new exhibition trend that had a transformative impact on Victorian visual culture, and on the visualisation of the past. With their huge format, dazzling colour schemes and enhanced theatrical effects, Martin’s apocalyptic scenes belonged to the era of panorama exhibitions. When interviewed by the Select Committee on the Arts and Manufactures in August 1835, Martin himself hinted at the multiplication of such shows and complained that his Belshazzar’s Feast had been pirated and turned into a cheap diorama in Oxford Street.35 As Billie Melman has shown, there was an abundance of spectacular historical shows in nineteenth-century Britain.36 The most popular among those entertainments were large-scale depictions of medieval battles, such as Robert Ker Porter’s Great Historical and Panoramic Picture of the Battle of Agincourt advertised as containing 2807 feet of canvas,37 or Charles Bullock’s “Panstereomachia” which was a large model of the Battle of Poitiers. 38 As anticipated by Samuel Wale, the visualisation of history could bring the past back to life and give viewers the feeling that they could relive it, but his tiny book plate could hardly compare to Porter’s or Bullock’s large-scale, multisensorial, visualisations of English victories. Richard Altick, in his classic study, underlined the affinity between historical shows and large-scale historical paintings such as Benjamin West’s and John Singleton Copley’s.39 Recent studies have underlined the cinematic qualities of Martin’s sublime imaginative recreations and shown how they prefigured the thrill of twentieth-century disaster movies.40 From West’s sensational exhibits to Copley’s personal shows of giant battle pieces and Martin’s awe-inspiring showpieces, the entertaining qualities of visual reconstructions of the past became paramount. Half a century later, the great spectacle of history was a major source of inspiration for early film makers, and pioneers such as British-American Alfred Clark, or Frenchman Georges Hatot, both turned events from British history into movies within a couple of years of each other. Clark’s Execution of Mary Queen of Scots (1895) and Hatot’s Mort de Charles I (1897) adapted well-known historical scenes into cinematic performances. Clark famously used the innovative stop-motion effect to give viewers the illusion of the full-frontal horror of the beheading of young Queen Mary. Hatot had Charles I’s execution preceded by his pathetic farewell to his children, thus linking two scenes previously visualised in illustration sequences to produce an emotional historical drama. Whether enjoyed as a panoramic sequence of printed plates or animated in films, historical scenes visualised for centuries had not lost their evocative power. They had become so tightly woven into the fabric of history that they persisted, carrying on unheeding, despite historiographical changes or technological advances.

Remarkable historical scenes Outdone by less subject-oriented painting or superseded by epic visual spectacles, historical illustrations retreated back to the printed page, and to the books which they had never really left. After being part of Cooke’s rehashed digests of Rapin’s History,

150  Visual history as a new language and Bowyer’s edition of Hume’s, historical plates featured in John Malham’s voluminous Grand National History of England alongside new illustrations.41 Three types of embellishments are advertised on the title page: “whole-length portraits of all the monarchs with their respective dresses and coats of arms,” “exact representations of the great seals and English coins,” and “numerous other engravings illustrative of British History from original designs by artists of the first ability.” The diversification and growing number of illustrations meant that they had to be accommodated less comfortably: portraits of kings were crammed four to a page and framed narrative scenes were paired, forming mini-series: The invasion of Julius Caesar and Caractacus before Claudius, King Alfred in the Danish Camp and King Alfred Burning the Cakes, Canute flattered by his Courtiers and Edward the Martyr Slain, The Murder of Prince Arthur and John signing Magna Carta, The Battle of Cressy and At Poictiers the King of France brought prisoner by the Black Prince, King Henry V defeating the French at Agincourt and Henry V on his death bed, Edward V and his Brother smothered and Richard III slain at the Battle of Bosworth, Mary Queen of Scots Landing and Her Death-Warrant read to her, Queen Elizabeth at Tilbury and The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, Guy Fawkes Seized and Percy and Catesby slain, King Charles I’s Farewell to his Children and Charles I’s Execution, The Plague in London and The Fire of London, The Bill of Rights and The Battle of the Boyne, Admiral Benbow and The Battle of Blenheim, The Death of Wolfe and Captain Elliot’s Defeat of the French, The Death of Abercrombie and The Death Lord Nelson, The Battle of Salamanca and The Battle of Vittoria, The Entrance in Bourdeaux and The Allies entering Paris, Marshal Blücher at the Battle of Ligny and The Earl of Uxbridge at the Battle of Waterloo. Apart from the recent additions celebrating the great heroes of the Napoleonic wars, a topic publisher Thomas Kelly specialised in, the immense majority of Malham’s narrative scenes were derived from previous plates or paintings. However, their remarkably homogeneous style indicates that Kelly had the scenes redrawn and engraved, but neither the name of the copyist nor those of the original “artists of first ability” are elucidated on the pages. The illustrative material in Malham’s History shows that over the course of its many reissues and reformulations, the sequence put together in the first half of the eighteenth century had become stabilised, composed of core scenes and a pool of possible additions (including contemporary creations) created to update it. Within the sequence, the composition of each scene had also become formulaic and thus easier to adapt, imitate, and reproduce. This allowed the sequence to stand the test of time and new industrialised production techniques. Taking advantage of new methods for cheap and rapid reproductions of images such as wood engraving, publisher Charles Knight expanded the use of illustrations in both magazines and books. As a member of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, he was committed to improving the education of the lower classes and intended to do so through visual media. To achieve his aims, he started The Penny Magazine and published many illustrated editions of standard works as well as history books aimed at popularising knowledge. In the 1830s, he employed Scottish writers George Lillie Craik and Charles MacFarlane to write the text for his Pictorial History. The work was advertised on the title page as being “illustrated with many hundred woodcuts” including “remarkable historical scenes.”42 It was through the establishment of a new relationship between text and image on the printed page that Knight was able to produce such copiously illustrated volumes. Whether showing a

Visual history as a new language 151 narrative scene, picturesque ruins, coins, costumes, tools, or weapons, his unframed vignettes with fuzzy borders all crop up amidst written paragraphs. The greater integration of images and texts is a characteristic of a new layout developed in the 1820s, thanks to the use of wood blocks. For example, the visual material of Mrs Markham’s History of England, published in 1826, although less abundant and devoid of narrative scenes, was presented unframed at the beginning of each chapter.43 The blurring of lines and elimination of decorative borders around illustrations formally separate Cooke’s history books, and those that still followed his template such as John Malham’s Grand National History, from the new integrated formula developed in Markham’s History and perfected by Knight. In his autobiographical account, Knight made no secret of the central role he assigned to his history books in enabling him to carry out his plan of “rendering woodcuts real illustrations of the text, instead of fanciful devices – true eye-knowledge, sometimes more instructive than words.”44 His didactic aim is reflected in the methodical selection of visual material detailed in a footnote to his Pictorial History’s substantial list of illustrations: It is to be understood that the Wood-Cuts have in general been copied from drawings, sculptures, coins, or other works of the period which they are employed to illustrate; but, among so great a number of subjects, it has not been possible to adhere to this rule in every instance with perfect strictness. It sometimes happened that no suitable illustration of the custom or other matter described was to be found among the remains of the period under consideration; in a few such cases, a drawing of a subsequent period has been made use of where there was reason to believe that it nevertheless conveyed a sufficiently accurate representation of the thing spoken of.45 Knight’s words highlight his concern for authenticity and the care taken in selecting images of objects that belonged to the periods dealt with on the pages where they were printed. The result of his meticulous research can be observed in the chapter on Roman Britain for instance, which includes: the heads of Julius Caesar, Claudius, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Constantine as well as pictures of galleys and a figure of Britannia sourced from copper coins in the British Museum; sculptures and tombstones from the Newcastle Museum; figures of Roman generals, standard-bearers, and soldiers as well as battle scenes from the Trajan column. This illustrative material emphasises that objects were widely considered as useful components of the study of the past. Brought in as documentary evidence, these woodcuts made the past more tangible and functioned metonymically, pointing to a whole material environment in which the actions narrated could be set. To give a fuller picture, these reproductions of archaeological objects were juxtaposed by Knight with picturesque views of memory sites: the cliffs of Dover (where it all began), the Thames at Coway Stakes (where it was believed that Caesar had crossed the Thames), Duntocher Bridge (believed to be Roman but conjectured to have been erected at a later date), and the Wall of Severus. Directly influenced by picturesque tourism, these small vignettes show historical monuments and landscapes in their modern state, with the castle towering above the town of Dover and fishing boats sailing in the port, with a horse-drawn barge on the Thames at Coway Stakes, and locals or travellers in their nineteenth-century clothes by the mighty ruins of the Roman wall. Picturesque views contextualised objects and directed the gaze onto the national territory. This topographical aesthetic

152  Visual history as a new language had already set travellers on the roads and readers of Knight’s Pictorial History could be encouraged to visualise history not only through the images printed on the pages but by looking out, away from books, at sites of historical interest throughout the British Isles. More immediately, the appearance of those views in between paragraphs triggered imaginative wanderings in both space and time, leading viewers to fill the scenes with the objects and characters in costumes scattered in between paragraphs. Additional visual material explained how certain objects worked or how monuments were built (providing sectional views and dimensions of galleys or walls). They were complemented by reconstructions (showing, for instance, ancient Britons using small circular wicker boats called coracles) that further hinted at stories behind the objects. Finally there were the “remarkable historical scenes” mentioned on the title page, also listed by Knight in his note on the book’s visual material where he wrote: “The copies of modern historical pictures, it will of course be understood, have been given for other reasons altogether than their fidelity in regard to costume and other characteristics.”46 These were indeed copies of paintings, and they were credited as such by a publisher, who was also involved in the transmission of knowledge about art in his Penny Magazine, thanks to reproductive prints of sculptures or canvases. Ranging from a cropped reproduction of Charles I with M. de St Antoine by Van Dyck, to Hogarth’s Lord Lovat and West’s Death of General Wolfe, with a copy of the latter’s Oliver Cromwell Dissolving the Long Parliament unusually presented within rectilinear borders, the paintings reproduced in Knight’s Pictorial History helped popularise Britain’s artistic heritage.47 As these pictures were not of any archaeological interest, they could not fulfil the same didactic aim as the other meticulously chosen woodcuts. Why did Knight include those historical scenes? His words suggest that the reasons for his choice did not need specification, that they were self-evident. Admittedly, reproductions of well-known paintings, like the historiated letters at the beginning of each chapter, enhanced the general decorative quality of the publication. In addition to the works mentioned above, Knight’s gallery included historical pictures reused or inspired from previous series; this was the case with The Landing of Julius Caesar, captioned “after a picture by Blakey,” actually a simplified version of the 1751 engraving made for the EHD and remediated on Armitage’s 1843 cartoon. Apart from this earlier anomaly, most historical scenes were reproduced from original paintings made at the turn of the century: Caractacus before Claudius is copied from Fuseli, Boadicea Haranguing the British Tribes from Stothard, Vortigen and Rowena from Kauffman, Canute Reproving his Courtiers from Smirke, Augustine Preaching Before Ethelbert from Tresham, The Death of Rufus from Burney, with the last three initially commissioned by Bowyer.48 Their juxtaposition with more factual visual ornaments did not seem to diminish their appeal and, for example, neither the pictures of galleys provided nor the accurate sectional views of the Roman vessels led to amending the fanciful boats on Blakey’s original, showing the Romans landing on British shores. In Knight’s own words, these historical scenes were “remarkable,” and the primary reason for selecting them was the sustained attention they had received for over a century. British readers had been used to thinking of history in images with this relatively limited set of illustrations which not only metaphorically replaced actions told in texts, but reiterated visually the same dramatised episodes across formats, techniques, media, and venues. Even the reproductions of the most recent paintings were layered with this historical visual culture. In Knight’s Pictorial History, The Murder of Edward V and the Duke of York in the Tower was copied from a painting

Visual history as a new language 153 by a contemporary German painter, Theodor Hildebrandt (1804-1874) (see fig 4.4).49 Painted in 1835, it nonetheless repurposed Northcote’s earlier representation (see fig 3.13), adopting the exact same perspective on the action with a depiction of the two boys asleep in each other’s arms in the foreground, rosary and prayer book by their side, and their murderers coming from behind the bed. While Northcote’s claustrophobic close-up left viewers no escape, Hildebrandt takes them slightly away from the bed, opens the perspective and paints more hesitant expressions on the murderers’ faces. Without leaving any room for doubting the inescapable conclusion, the added space, and seeming pause in the action, give viewers time to admire the historicist reconstruction of costumes and furniture whose details are visible on the woodcut. The stylistic differences between Northcote’s prototype and Hildebrandt’s version are perfect examples of the constant repackaging of historical scenes to suit new generations of viewers. Without looking as authentic, hence as distant, as the objects reproduced on factual ornaments, historical pictures fulfilled the role ascribed to

Figure 4.4   G eorge Lillie Craik and Charles Mac Farlane, Pictorial History of England, A History of the People as well as a History of the Kingdom, 4 vols. (London: Knight, 1838–1841) and The Murder of Edward V and the Duke of York in the Tower (vol 2, 1839, 125) Source:  Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

154  Visual history as a new language them since the mid-eighteenth century. Constructed as plausible reconstructions, they still allowed Victorian viewers to relate to people they wanted to imagine as their ancestors and the renewed search for this empathic association explains why a vision of the past bequeathed by Georgians lived on well into the nineteenth century. The hold these illustrations had taken on Victorian imagination is further exemplified in Knight’s Popular History of England, also an illustrated history, but with a distinct focus on ordinary people, 50 which inspired other publishers who followed his lead.51 In his Popular History of England, the narrative scenes reproduced from previous plates or paintings were shunned because, as Knight explained in his introduction, they left the broad mass of historical figures in the shadows. But some of the stock episodes nonetheless persisted as small woodcuts integrated with the text. Drawing on a visual metaphor that could aptly refer to the historical illustrations he had previously reproduced, Knight wrote in the introduction: “Striking events and interesting personages have been exhibited in prominent relief, without any great attention to the figures of the back-ground, or the relation of the scene to the multitudinous occurrences and opinions of its own age or previous ages.”52 Drawing from a quote by Lord John Russel, who was reported to have declared in 1854 “We have no other History of England than Hume’s.”, 53 Knight assessed not only Hume’s, but Mrs Markham’s, Goldsmith’s, Smollett’s, and Rapin’s publications to point at the shortcomings of these histories so closely focused on rulers and warriors. Opposing the “history of the English State” to that “of the English Home,” he pledged to bring the “People,” the “Rabble,” the “millions” to the fore.54 The foregrounding of ordinary people led him to add to his Popular History of England more illustrations of everyday objects, as he explained, saying: I have to observe, in conclusion, that the wood engravings have been selected by me, not as mere embellishments but as illustrations of the text. They will have the advantage, in many cases, of presenting a more vivid picture than any description, of localities, of monumental remains, of costume, of works of industry and art, of popular amusements; and, in connection with portraits of the sovereigns engraved on steel, of remarkable persons, in civil, military, ecclesiastical, and literary history.55 In addition to images of objects of archaeological interest found in his previous publication, his profusely illustrated Popular History of England was documented with depictions of anonymous women and children going about their daily activities and with a greater diversity of costumes. However, despite his resolute emphasis on the everyday lives of ordinary people, his narrative still followed the chronological succession of monarchs (whose portraits were recycled from Vertue’s heads and steel-engraved) and it was supported by the same remarkable episodes. Even when he expressed doubts about the veracity of some events, he mentioned them all the same. Although Knight calls the exchange between King Canute and his courtiers a legend, he provides a summary: “The King plants his chair on the sands, commanding the waves to retire, but the waters will not obey; and Canute moralises upon the vanity of earthly rule […].”56 Next to these lines, an elongated uncaptioned vignette shows the basic elements of the visualised story trickling down the page with the chair washed away by the tide, the king sternly pointing to it and the admonished courtier, all arranged as a vertical visual sequence (see fig 4.5). Unrelenting waves wash the text

Visual history as a new language 155

Figure 4.5  Charles Knight, The Popular History of England, An Illustrated History (vol 1, 1856, 157) Source:  Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library

156  Visual history as a new language against the left edge of the page, and this creative form of integration of visual and textual elements points to the overflowing of media boundaries. Elsewhere, even when there is no visual reminder of the episode, Knight gives similarly brief and vivid accounts of previously visualised events. His depictions appear as an ekphrasis of the illustrations he knew well rather than as quotes from former textual sources. This is how he stages the death of King Edward the Martyr: At Corfe, a royal manor, resided Elfrida and Ethelred. Edward had been hunting at Wareham, and became separated from his companions. A dwarf appears out of the forest-coverts, and proposes to guide him to a place of rest and refreshment. He reaches the home of the widowed queen, who meets him at the door with a betraying kiss. She brings out wine to the wearied boy; and as he lifts the goblet to his lips, sitting on his horse, he is stabbed in the back.57 The change from the past to the present tense signals a descriptive pause that interrupts the narrative. As in the summary of Canute’s story, the shift in tenses heightens the immediacy of episodes that are brought closer to readers. In the above quote, the sudden emergence of a dwarf triggers a visual response. His literal apparition turns startled readers into viewers; it makes them stop and look at the quick succession of actions depicted in simple sentences that can be read like stage directions. The curtain is raised on a scene that recalls the elements of its basic visual formula (Corfe castle, Elfrida standing at the door, Edward on horseback drinking, a man stabbing him in the back). Knight’s account of the death of King William Rufus is similarly inserted in the narrative: Dinner comes, with copious draughts of wine; and then [King William Rufus] will ride to the forest. He is alone with Walter Tyrrel. The sun is declining. The king has drawn his bow and wounded a stag; he is shading his eyes from the strong level light, when Walter, aiming at another stag, pierces the king’s breast with a fatal arrow which glances from a tree. Breaking off the shaft of the arrow, William falls from his horse […].58 In these extracts, readers are put right in front of the actions depicted, as they would be in front of a printed plate, a canvas, or a live performance. They are experiencing the actions as if they were happening under their eyes. The immersive use of the present tense is reinforced by semantic choices that enhance the emotional content of the episode (“betraying kiss,” “wearied boy”) or by realistic details (“he is shading his eyes from the strong level light”). In those examples, Knight’s text is pictorialised by memories of well-known remarkable historical scenes. Both the creative layout of the page dedicated to Canute’s story and the persistence of images in the texts recalling the deaths of kings Edward and William are examples of the variety of devices used by Knight to promote “true eye-knowledge.” Another is the use he makes of the Bayeux tapestry – which he calls a “picture-history”59 – to help readers follow the events surrounding the Norman invasion. Knight’s copiously illustrated magazines and books were meant to provide educational contents to adults and children with various levels of literacy. His didactic aim was served by the innovative integration of words and images, common to both his history and literary books. The more comprehensive interplay between text and image in his history books, where

Visual history as a new language 157 woodcuts mingle with words, where the narrative thread is woven in the tapestry, and where basic accounts conjure up full pictures, reveals that Knight and his readers had developed a shared habit of looking at the past. Not only had remarkable historical scenes left their imprint on the imaginations of millions of Victorian Britons but they had also brought the past to light, right in front of them, for them to see and enjoy. From the 1870s, several acts established a new system of public schooling in the British Isles. To cater for the need in new instructional textbooks, Thomas Nelson, a Scottish publisher whose family had been in the bookselling business for at least three generations, launched the Royal Readers, which became his most lucrative series. These small, cheap textbooks provided basic resources for the teaching of the English language but also mathematics, geography and history. History books for different levels were presented like a compilation of reading lessons telling the stories of “leading events in the history of England”.60 The visualisation of those events on the pages, alongside the texts putting them into words, brought once again into focus the episodes imaged in previous educational books, be they Victorian or Georgian. These little volumes were used throughout the British Isles, in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and throughout the territories under British colonial rule from the 1870s until well into the twentieth century. As the wording of their titles implies, the history books celebrated English history and reinforced the exemplary role of a limited set of events. In an era when repetition was at the core of teaching methods and learning practices, it is hardly surprising to find the same set of remarkable historical scenes reiterated. Over nearly two centuries of transmedial voyages, the narrative properties of historical illustrations, their ability to present situations, characters and objects as facts that supposedly took place in the past remained unquestioned. As essential tools for learning history, circulated across the English-speaking world, they were transformed into visual topoi.

The colours of the past In the cheap, ubiquitous, Royal Readers, illustrations were printed in black and white. But over, the same period, new Victorian publications further enlivened the visualisation of history thanks to the use of colour printing. Henry Tyrrell’s History of England for the Young was one of the first to include vibrantly coloured illustrations.61 The added realism brought by colours was appreciated in history books designed for adults too. A landmark publication in this regard was James William Edmund Doyle’s Chronicle of England, originally intended as a Christmas present for his father, the Irish caricaturist and cartoonist John Doyle.62 Although limited chronologically, the book was lavishly illustrated with 80 coloured engravings by Edmund Evans, a publisher who made his name in colour printing. His innovative chromoxylographs reproduced Doyle’s drawings, which again repackaged many remarkable scenes in a style influenced by Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics, combining refined silhouettes with greater attention to the decorative qualities of furniture, interior decoration, and costumes. Doyle, who had excellent antiquarian knowledge, produced his own versions of several essentials: the Roman invasion with the eagle bearer wearing his bear-skin hat and jumping in the water in front of Julius Caesar, Augustine preaching in the open air, facing King Ethelbert and Queen Bertha seated under an oak tree, Elfrida giving a needed drink to King Edward outside Corfe castle while his murderer is drawing near, the death of William Rufus in the forest, with the stag

158  Visual history as a new language escaping behind him, King John signing the Magna Carta at Runnymede, The Black Prince serving the King of France after the Battle of Poitiers, The Battle of Agincourt, and The first encounter between King Edward IV and Lady Elizabeth Grey (see fig 4.6). The latter pictures Elizabeth Woodville and her two young sons kneeling before the king, all dressed in black, with the widow’s parents behind them. Lowering her head respectfully, she is handing out a written petition, her left hand covering her chest. The king is about to take the document he is given. The couple’s figures stand out against a background showing a mural painting (with a battle scene) and are surrounded by Gothic Revival pieces of furniture. Previous sentimental innuendoes seem to be out of place in this display of Victorian propriety, and yet, a sensuous experience of the past is mediated through the intricate wood carvings, luminous colours of the mural and opulent crimson of both seat and footstool. No longer drained of its colours, the past was more alive than ever. Far from retreating into seclusion and falling into oblivion, historical illustrations gathered new strength in Victorian books thanks to the tremendous development of publishing and printing over that period, once again relying on state-of-the-art technology to disseminate historical knowledge. Further evidence of the agency of historical

Figure 4.6  James, William Edmund Doyle, Edward IV and Lady Elizabeth Grey from A Chronicle of England B.C 55–A.D 1485 (1863), colour lithograph, private collection Source:  The Stapleton Collection / Bridgeman Images

Visual history as a new language 159 illustrations is found in their being gathered in books where text was reduced to its smallest share. This was the case in Pictures of English History, which was an album containing 92 historical illustrations printed by Joseph Martin Kronheim, a prolific German-born printer who considerably advanced printing processes.63 Arranged four to a page, illustrations were placed facing corresponding pages of text. Mirroring the images, four short paragraphs of text were printed on each page under a numbered title. The short blocks of text gave some brief elements of context to allow viewers to make sense of the images. In addition to naming the characters and elucidating the situations in which they were portrayed, these notes moralised history, highlighting good and bad examples, pointing censorious fingers at rulers (preferably ancient ones) while praising Britain’s expansion and military prowess. Further improvements in colour printing technology offered historical illustrations renewed opportunities for travels and reinventions. And in the form of small, coloured lithographs, they embarked on a new journey across unchartered territory. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, historical scenes were used to sustain the sales of a new commodity, the prerolled cigarette. Originally invented in the United States, rolled cigarettes were sold in packets stiffened with a rectangle of rigid paper to stop their brittle content from being damaged. Very soon, tobacco companies decorated the useful pieces of strong paper with a series of illustrations ranging from monuments to animals, plants, costumes, weapons, or battles. The list is endless and cigarette cards became widely used for both practical and commercial reasons. With the creation of topical sets, as well as that of albums to sort them out and store them, cigarette cards became collectable and functioned as incentives to encourage people to buy more packets. In Britain, the Bristol-based cigarette manufacturer, W.D. & H.O. Wills, was the first to produce cigarette cards around 1888 in association with the printer Mardon, Son and Hall. Followed by John Player & Sons of Nottingham and Ogdens of Liverpool, Wills started circulating beautifully printed series of cards on any subject fit for serial publication.64 It is therefore not surprising that historical content found its way inside cigarette packets. In 1897, Wills issued a historical set of 50 kings and queens that repurposed George Vertue’s heads or reproduced well-known canvases. In 1912, it was followed by another set of 50 historic eventscomposed mainly of historical scenes that had been in circulation for more than a century and a half: The Landing of the Romans, The Martyrdom of St Alban, Maximus Proclaimed Emperor, St Augustine in England, King Alfred and the Cakes, Eight Princes Rowing King Edgar down the Dee, The Murder of Edward the Martyr, The Death of William Rufus, The Wreck of the “White Ship,” The Murder of Becket, King John Granting the Magna Carta, The First Prince of Wales, Wat Tyler’s Rebellion, The Battle of Agincourt, The Plucking of the Rival Roses, Caxton’s Printing Press, The Murder of the Princes, Cabot Sailing from Bristol, Cardinal Wolsey Dismissed, The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, The Burning of Latimer and Ridley, The Escape of Mary Queen of Scots, Raleigh Smoking, Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh, The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, Drake’s Game of Bowls, The Wreck of the Armada, Shakespeare Reading to Queen Elizabeth, The Arrest of Guy Fawkes, Charles I Demanding the Surrender of Five Members, The Execution of Charles I, Charles II Hiding in the Oak Tree, Cromwell Dissolving the Rump Parliament, The Great Fire of London, The Trial of the Seven Bishops, The Capture of Gibraltar, The South Sea Bubble, The Battle of Dettingen, The Battle of Culloden, Prince Charlie and Flora Macdonald, The Battle of Plassey, The Gordon Riots, The Glorious

160  Visual history as a new language 1st of June, Nelson at the Battle of the Nile, The Battle of Trafalgar, Napoleon on the “Bellophoron,” The Announcement of Queen Victoria’s Accession, The Retreat from Cabul, The Funeral of the Duke of Wellington, and The Funeral of Edward VII. Wills also pioneered in the idea of making use of the back of cards to add short notes that gave background to the monarch or events featured on the front of the cards. For example, the back of “The Murder of Edward the Martyr” read: “Edward’s reign of three years came to an end March, 18, 978. Whilst hunting near Corfe, the residence of Elfrida, his stepmother, he paid her a visit. Declining her invitation to alight, he accepted a draught of wine: and, whilst drinking it, was stabbed. He was succeeded by Ethelred, the son of Elfrida who had planned the murder to make him king.” Given that the amount of information available on those cards was comparable to that found, for instance, on Pictures of English History, it is therefore not surprising that they were dubbed the “poor man’s encyclopaedia.”65 In the early decades of the twentieth century, such cards (which were also found in tea, cocoa, or meat extract packets) brought free pictures of historical events (and many other topics) to the homes of those who did not have books. Moreover, they carried the memory of more ancient historical illustrations: the card showing Cromwell dissolving the Rump Parliament (see fig 4.7) clearly remediates a detail of West’s painting. Focusing on

Figure 4.7  Cromwell Dissolving the Rump Parliament, Wills cigarette card Source:  Private collection

Visual history as a new language 161 the main character, the card portrays Cromwell in a very similar outfit and posture, only with a more lustrous moustache. Behind him, the mace is on the table in front of the speaker who has been straightened to fit into the much narrower format. What is remarkable about this tiny image is that it remediates elements from a painting by West, which remained in the possession of the Earl of Grosvenor’s family and his descendants until the end of the 1950s, when it was sold and entered the collection of the Montclair Museum in New Jersey. Very few people had seen the canvas over the course of the nineteenth century, and yet its memory had persisted through its circulation in printed historical series. The heyday of cigarette cards came in the 1930s, but cheap encyclopaedias had already been disseminated in the less succinct form of children’s educational magazines. In the early 1960s, as copiously illustrated history textbooks became the norm, with R.J. Unstead’s Looking at History ruling over classrooms for decades, the London-based Fleetway Publications issued children’s magazines that placed great emphasis on visual material and contained colour photographs as well as colour illustrations. Thanks to the development of new photomechanical processes of gravure printing, both Look and Learn and its junior companion, Treasure, launched within a year of each other, respectively, in 1962 and 1963, were designed as a feast for the eyes and embellished thanks to the graphic skills of the finest artistic draughtsmen from the United Kingdom, Italy, and Spain.66 Quickly rising to become the most successful educational weeklies on the British market, they remained so until the early 1980s. Since they were designed to provide visual excitement to the page, both publications included historical illustrations among many others. Artists and staff reputedly worked with huge collections of visual archives from which they could draw inspiration for historical designs which could feature on front covers, in series, or in pictures for a particular article. In Look and Learn, Cecil Langley Doughty designed “The Pageant of Kings” series which, over several issues, visualised among others The Standard Bearer of the 10th legion leading the attack, Boadicea in her chariot, Signing the Magna Carta, Edward V handed over to the Duke of Gloucester, Elizabeth I reviewing her troops, or Charles II saying farewell to his children. In Treasure, Peter Jackson illustrated the “Wonderful Story of Britain” series with episodes such as Julius Caesar invading Britain, Augustine preaching before Ethelbert, King Canute, and the waves, The Battle of Agincourt, The Princes in the Tower, The Gunpowder Plot, Charles I arrives in Parliament to arrest five members, The future King Charles II in the Boscobel oak, Cromwell picks up the mace from the table, The Plague, or The Great Fire of London. Although well-known for his Westerncovers, James Edwin McConnell, another leading cover artist on Look and Learn, also produced illustrations of British historical topics. For Look and Learn number 109, issued on February 15, 1964, McConnell’s front cover illustration portrayed a king seated on his throne on a beach, surrounded by a crowd. The arresting gesture from his right hand does not stop his boots from being submerged by the waves. Presented with the caption “King Canute defies the waves… But did it really happen?” the eye-catching cover reiterates once again the main visual components of a scene that had been widely disseminated since the eighteenth century. Adding women in prominent positions, with the queen standing tall behind the throne, above the king, and a female attendant squatting on the beach, this visualisation updates the scene, making it relatable to its 1960s female audience even though the veracity of the anecdote is overtly questioned in the caption.

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A national imagery The repurposing of the figures of King Canute, Oliver Cromwell, and many others on twentieth-century cigarette cards or in illustrations for children’s magazines shows that far from being exhausted by their many travels, historical illustrations had gathered into a potent imagery. With mass circulation, they became a ubiquitous language of shared ancestry, a picturesque repository of dates and events embodied in famous characters and their attitudes, a repertoire of images that were an essential device for manifesting and fixing visual history. Although comparable in terms of circulation to the French Épinal prints, for instance, this corpus of British historical pictures stands out in other respects. Originally designed by renowned visual artists, not by anonymous copyists, and laid out as book pages, these remarkable scenes maintained strong ties with both the art world and the publishing business. They were first engraved on copper, and not on wood like most crude popular prints. Unlike the popular sets of Épinal prints dedicated to the heroic deeds of Napoleon for instance, they were not dedicated to single historic figures but continued being disseminated as a panoramic overview of British history, thus straddling reigns, and centuries. Initially formulated as a creative mix of accuracy and invention, the illustrations studied here were conceived as rhetorical devices aimed at communicating a particular vision of past events and designed as eye-pleasing documents packaged in the latest fashion. Informed by the modern idea of fashion, they showed characters gesturing eloquently, surrounded by objects that were supposed to be particular to the period represented. Their aesthetic underpinning was therefore the idea that each period looked different and, as Ludmilla Jordanova analysed, such periodisation of the past emphasised the connections between objects and periods.67 Our corpus shows that the visualisation of the past in sequences of illustrations reinforced the centrality of a clear-cut periodisation for historical perception. The transformation of history painting into a historical genre further disseminated simple ideas about past times and enhanced the aesthetic appeal of history imaged, and thus imagined. Historical illustrations familiarised viewers with the idea of the look(s) of the past, revealing the powerful effect a visual array of objects and attitudes can have in giving a sense of period. With their accumulation of monuments, costumes, and pieces of furniture organised to evoke a particular period, they anticipated on the period rooms that became popular in nineteenth-century museums. Both book plates and museum displays were designed to garner interest in history while allowing for emotional engagement with the past, and they opened up avenues for a more personalised approach to history, including the possibility to like or dislike the fashion of such or such period. These pictures formed the basic components of a visual language that provided simplified and replicable visions of historical events. Each reiteration reactivated and validated contents that had been deemed believable by previous generations while depositing new traces in the minds of viewers. Over their many reinventions, their very own pastness was reinforced with the passing of time so much so that they have acquired an undeniable historic character. Conversely, the details of their eighteenth-­century debut have faded away, and with them, any notion of bias has been gradually lost. Mainly designed between the mid-1760s and mid-1770s, in the wake of the Seven Years’ war, after the military destruction of Jacobitism, and before the traumatic outcome of the war in America, the prototypes had been calibrated by

Visual history as a new language 163 long years of Whig oligarchy. Whereas nostalgia did become a prevailing component of the historical genre in the nineteenth century, eighteenth-century historical illustrations were not originally produced to bewail the loss of a golden age but to justify recent changes with a selection of past examples manufactured for a present that was to lead to an allegedly glorious future. Wale’s panoramic view of national history was aimed at making Britons feel safer about their past, at expurgating distressing episodes and putting together a selection of memorable events that, even when tragic, could prove neither unpleasant nor unsettling nor even truly challenging. Over two centuries of extensive travels through time and space, small-scale history compositions ingratiating polite audiences to a Whig vision of history acquired a form of comfortable self-evidence, as they fitted into the colonial narrative that was encoded in educational literature. In so doing, they fostered the desire to visit and revisit the same scenes, granting collective access to a national visual past easy to imagine and reimagine, perceived as harmlessly picturesque, and so innocuous that it could feature safely in children’s books. While historical knowledge is built on reinterpretations of the past, these historical illustrations imposed themselves as points of reference that anchored collective memory in the supposedly exceptional accomplishments of past white Britons. These pieces of visual mythmaking were shaped by the ancient idea that noticeably heroic or ethical deeds would inscribe the memory of remarkable people in the minds of others, inspire them, and transcend human mortality. From the start, sequences of historical illustrations favoured more ancient subjects, while contemporary ones, those related to events that could have been recollected by living viewers, never amounted to more than ten per cent of any single sequence. Over the years, revisions, updates, and additions mainly applied to this small fraction of illustrations in which new heroes could replace not so ancient ones. While very few illustrations were related to memories of lived experiences, the bulk of all the sequences studied here were made up of memories that had already gone through some historical sieving. Based on a set of historical facts and characters, these visual sequences originally fitted into a master narrative of progress and heroic defiance, punctuating it with visual recollections that kept particular episodes alive in the minds of people. Not only did visual historical sequences initiate a mode of serial consumption of history but, being discrete, they could easily accommodate the blind spots of the evolving story of a supposedly exceptional island, of a proud Protestant nation with a mission to spread its values throughout the world. Comprehensiveness was not to be expected from historical sequences that were discontinuous by nature, and this is how they proved so easy to integrate into the British imperial narrative. There were so many events and characters that were left out from those sets of illustrations that their absence went unnoticed for centuries. The very notion of omission was constitutive of the visual historical sequence from the start. In the eighteenth century, when the first illustrations were arranged into series, they left out traumatic references to the recent civil wars or to religious or political divisions within the kingdom. Not only did they present a selection of events, but they also brought a very small number of men – and to a lesser extent of women – into the spotlight. Under the guise of imaging words, they provided visual grist to the mill of those who, like Thomas Carlyle, supported “great man” history, helping to circulate the portraits of individuals who were supposed to command admiration. The primacy of visual biography they underscored found monumental developments in an institution like the National Portrait Gallery, but also in the peopling of public spaces with statues.

164  Visual history as a new language Long after historical illustrations went out of fashion and even after history from below, feminist, and postcolonial studies have helped broaden historical research beyond centuries-old galleries of national heroes, visual history continues to enjoy seemingly unabated interest. New approaches, such as history of mentalities, have led to a search for alternative sources to investigate the attitudes of ordinary people of the past towards everyday life, and have triggered an extension of the source material to include an ever-increasing volume of images. In the wake of the significant shift away from text-based historical learning that has taken place since the 1970s and 1980s, new methodologies have been devised to elicit meaning from visual material. With the massive digitisation of archives and museum collections (predominantly in the wealthier countries), the colossal amount of visual historical sources accessible at the click of a mouse is rapidly changing history. And yet, the status of images as historical sources remains blurred. In classrooms, books, online publications, or TV documentaries, there is often great confusion as to whether visual material is used as illustration or historical evidence. Deciphering the meaning of visual sources can be difficult and, without minimal contextual evidence, such an assessment can become very tricky indeed. There is an interesting instance in a history textbook, that is currently in use in French secondary education and intended for the equivalent to Key stage 5 students: in a unit on the evolution of the monarchy in England between seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the set of documents provided includes a chronology, a translated excerpt from the Habeas Corpus, a BBC 4 video on that topic, a few seventeenth-century playing cards showing some of the events related to the “glorious revolution,” and a reproduction of a painting by James Northcote entitled The Bill of Rights.68 The content on playing cards is far from self-evident and could prove rather difficult to use – especially by students who may not have sufficient proficiency in English – without a good amount of contextual knowledge such as that provided on a specific British Museum page dedicated to these cards as sources for teaching.69 In comparison, accounting for Northcote’s painting seems more straightforward. The composition is a group portrait showing William and Mary as monarchs being presented with the Bill of Rights and the Crown. The colour canvas is, in fact, a remediation by Northcote of Wale’s plate for Mortimer entitled The Clerk of the Crown Reading the Bill of Rights to the Prince & Princess of Orange in the Banquetting [sic] House at Whitehall, previous to the Offering the Crown.70 Shifting the protagonists a quarter turn, Northcote adopted a frontal view of William and Mary seated on their canopied thrones and developed the action, showing the moment alluded to in the caption of Wale’s plate, i.e. the offering of the crown that supposedly followed the reading of the Bill of Rights. As a result, both images concur as a pair to the mythology of the presentation ceremony. In the French textbook, the matter-of-fact presentation of the painting recalls the style of the eighteenth-century caption, for it reads: “William of Orange and Mary accepting the Bill of Rights. A courtier on his knees presenting the English crown to William of Orange and his wife Mary. A lawyer holding the Bill of Rights.” The descriptive qualities of the painting are thus emphasised by this brief introduction which takes the students back to a “know that” rather than a “know-how” approach. There is no allusion to the staging of the actions of the main protagonists, nor the mention that canvas was painted nearly a century and a half after the events it is supposed to represent. There are no questions indicating that Northcote’s Bill of Rights has been included in this pedagogic set to be discussed as a visual construct or as a historical reconstruction. While the colour

Visual history as a new language 165 reproduction of the painting undeniably fulfils a decorative purpose, could it still be illuminating for twenty-first-century students? Presented as a mere transposition of facts into visual signs, as the convenient visualisation of an event French students are not very familiar with, this image seems to have regained some of its illustrative force through documentary authority. Again, it has been laid out on the (virtual) page to help viewers become acquainted with historical events and to serve as a memory aid. For all the flaws in its presentation, this image is perhaps even more necessary for a young generation of viewers whose imagination is constantly fed with a multitude of imageries that they personally contribute to create and disseminate. Beyond the weak use of images in textbooks, we can observe the persistence of the cultural framework of a consumption of the past that is based on historical imageries. The search for attractive visual displays of history has become all-pervasive, and it forms an integral part of what has been termed “public history.” Under this problematic umbrella term, scholars have been studying popular cultural manifestations of the past in our twenty-first century present.71 They have surveyed historical novels and their film adaptations, movies, TV documentaries, TV series, computer games, re-enactments and showed that they all play a part in transmitting historical knowledge, sometimes with the expert help of academics involved in reaching out to wider audiences.72 Surprisingly enough, new popular historical displays often recycle the old imagery, and many of the historical illustrations studied here have been remediated on screen. They likewise haunt historical sites (churches, cathedrals, castles, palaces, battle fields, etc.), where cultural tourism often revolves around the retelling of simplified tales of how people lived in the past, and of how those sites can be related to famous historic figures. Even at a time when the problematic legacy of individuals memorialised in bronze or stone is being debated, popular historical culture has not tilted away from the idea of individual greatness, not in the heritage, nor in the book or movie industries where images of men and women who have allegedly changed the course of history are being produced, magnified, and globally circulated. Images of past figures presented as symbols, icons, and role models are not in short supply, least of all in the current craze for “real-life drama” in TV series. Setting aside the worst instances of political heritagisation, when views of the past are made congruent with nationalist agendas, even the most benign recreational activities singling out individuals and reconstructing some of their actions are sources of historical remembrance. They bring back the past via images that have the peculiar ability to fuse with individual memories. As embodiments of historical events and characters in a relatively reduced set of visual instances, they straddle history and memory and allow the past to grow in our minds. In response to the longing to relive the past, visual representations have provided a means to reclaim the past for the present. Despite their distorting effects, they keep producing what Jay Winter calls the “thrill of contact with a mythic past.”73 They can be seen as traces of wanderings through a territory that can only be inhabited mentally, but that is integral to our sense of identity. From the start, visual history spatialised the past, displaying it in the form of perspective boxes opening up spaces which viewers could easily project themselves into and which they could roam. At a time when cartographic records of expansion in space through overseas conquests, commercial ventures, or discoveries were being issued, visual reconstructions of a pristine past, dusted off and redressed, could foster a form of imaginary expansion in time. Looming large in eighteenth-century visual culture was the exploration of

166  Visual history as a new language new territories and, interestingly, Thomas Astley, the publisher who ordered the first set of illustrations from Wale, for Lockman’s History, specialised in both travel narratives and history books.74 Like charts and maps, images that helped to identify the various degrees of remoteness of past events and to situate them on a timeline gave viewers the confidence to navigate through history. Optically consistent with views in perspective, such as those Wale made for Dodsley’s London and its Environs for instance, visualisations of history were given a rational outlook that allowed viewers to consider them as visual traces with informational content. Just like views of foreign territories, historical illustrations served as material anchors for imaginary wanderings and offered renewed possibilities of motionless journeying. Mediating the otherness of the past, they could fulfil the same cognitive processes as charts, maps, or views and trigger comparative reflection on old and new values conducive to changing the viewers’ perspective on their own present. The fantasy of time travelling persistently haunts our contemporary historical culture, even historians cater to this taste in formats such as radio, TV programs, or podcasts offering “travels through time.” The past has never seemed so liveable in a world where the future looks so uninviting. The more we feel we have lost the narrative of history, the more we cling to well-known plots and familiar characters. Ancestors in their historicised costumes are not only summoned in movies, TV series, video games, graphic novels, and adverts but also in the various experiential uses of re-enactment from theme parks to art galleries. Everywhere, the commodification of history heavily relies on the visual appeal of the past which has become an aesthetics in its own right. Centuries of imagining the past at its most pristine, fresh, and new have made it irresistibly beautiful.

Conclusion Retracing the whole network of relationships underlying the formulation, the circulation and the transmediation of historical illustrations, this book has argued that eighteenth-century book plates were expressive of a modern desire to know the past and constitutive of a new visual awareness of history. Emphasising the recreational modes of appropriating history, they shaped the illusion that the past still exists somewhere and can be seen. Over the decades and centuries, visual material has become key to the presentation of the past and to the acquisition of historical knowledge. The sequence of historical illustrations studied here singled out a number of events which elicited responses from viewers over a long period of time and across diverse territories. Many of these acts of reception (feelings, discussions, debates, interpretations, imaginings, etc.) are impossible to retrieve or have been lost, but the trace of this viewing community can be found in the powerful and enduring visual culture which originated in those images. Beyond shifting prescriptions of nationhood, they have fostered a sense of imaginative participation in national history, and this had a lasting impact on cultural memory and practices. This study has followed the paths uncovered by historical illustrations through to current forms of imaginative engagement with the past. Whether in intimate surroundings, in public places, in the media, in academia or entertainment, images have become the main gateway to elsewhere. The past proves to be no exception. Just as in the contemporary world, our entire lives are on show, so are those of our ancestors. Our need to visualise everything even leads us to cast eyes on visual materials that have been hidden for centuries. The corpus of eighteenth-century historical

Visual history as a new language 167 illustrations at the starting point of this study comes in the form of yellowed, brittle, smelly sheets of paper printed with records of rather unimpressive artworks. Beyond those affected by persistent bouts of archive fever, twenty-first century viewers, used to the proliferation of moving images, whose daily lives are being constantly shaped by interactive media, have little appetite for such dusty, two-dimensional sources. Yet, these images and their spin-off products have been experiencing digital rebirth. Digital technologies have allowed libraries and museums to scan their collections and transform them into online databases. From institutional websites and databases, files in which images have been converted into grids of pixels can be accessed almost anywhere. They can be viewed, downloaded, uploaded, shared, used, sold, copied, and amended endlessly. Moreover, the development of digital commerce and the generalisation of e-commerce platforms have also enabled private businesses and individuals to display the image files of pictures, ancient prints, or books they wish to sell. Both the recent advance in digital technologies and our contemporary need to have images of everything have given a new visibility to our corpus of historical illustrations. Any basic keyword search using Wale’s or Cooke’s names, the names of those who authored the history books, or the names of the events represented will bring up historical illustrations that can be accessed on institutional and commercial websites alike. This has undeniably expanded the digital footprint of Samuel Wale and of eighteenth-century publishing. Even if entrepreneurial John Cooke could never have foreseen the current circulation of his printed products in digital format, in reality the production, reproduction, and dissemination of nonmaterial images of eighteenth-century historical illustrations is not altogether surprising for plates that were primarily created as reproductible media. While the online appearance of historical illustrations have certainly made them more visible, they have not always made them more easily identifiable. Digitisation induces new challenges to our understanding of history. Whereas the historical illustrations in our corpus can be accurately attributed, captioned, and dated when accessed on institutional websites, they can also appear stripped of any detail regarding their provenance on commercial platforms or online encyclopaedias. With no background on the conditions in which these images were produced, they are again presented as historical sources. Even to the undiscerning eye, these plates look old. But how old are they exactly? What can they tell us about the events and characters they represent? Can they help us understand how the past has been seen and constructed? This study argues that if appropriately captioned and dated, illustrations can themselves become authentic historical sources detailing the slow construction of the past. Beyond the invention of the genealogy of polite Georgian Britain, and of a lasting popular imagery, this study of visual history raises issues that are relevant for our day and age. In our postmodern imagination, history has become an endless source of visions and revisions, from the most thoroughly researched and comprehensive academic surveys to globally popular time-travelling fantasies. Clearly the creation of historical visual fictions is not unique to our contemporary world, and the link between visualisation and memory was well explored before the advent of neurology. The modern period, however, with the advent of print culture, the establishment of the “historical” as a major epistemological category, and the development of historiography can be seen as a watershed. In Britain, visual historical culture was given one of its earliest forms in historical sequences of printed images that have persisted for centuries and can still help us reflect on how we have come to believe that we can actually look at the past.

168  Visual history as a new language

Notes 1 Stephen Bann, Romanticism and the Rise of History (New York, NY: Twayne, 1995) 4. 2 Bann, Romanticism and the Rise of History, 111–2. 3 See Stephen Bann, Paul Delaroche. History Painted (London: Reaktion 1997) 90–7, 119–21, and “Paul Delaroche’s Early Work in the Context of English History Painting”, Oxford Art Journal, 29:3 (2006) 341–9. 4 Bann, Romanticism and the Rise of History, 6. 5 Anthony D. Smith, The Nation Made Real. Art and National Identity in Western Europe, 1600–1850 (Oxford: OUP, 2013) 35. 6 See Report from Select Committee on Arts and Manufactures Together with the Minutes of Evidence, and Appendix, Ordered by the House of Commons, to be printed, September 4, 1835 [London] iii. 7 Report from Select Committee on Arts and Manufactures 8. 8 The wording of the report confirms the disuse of the terms “history painting” and “history painter”, the currency of the neologisms “historical painting” and “historical painter” among the members of the committee and their interviewees, see Report from Select Committee on Arts and Manufactures 9, 46, 66. 9 For a thorough historical analysis of how German examples guided discussions of British art in the first half of the 19th century, see Emma L. Winter, “German Fresco Painting and the New Houses of Parliament at Westminster, 1834–1851”, The Historical Journal 47:2 (2004) 291–329. 10 Report from Select Committee on Arts and Manufactures 9. 11 Report from the Select Committee on Fine Arts Together with the Minutes of Evidence, Appendix, and Index. Ordered by the House of Commons, to be printed, June 18, 1841 [London] ii. 12 Winter 299–302. 13 Report from the Select Committee on Fine Arts 5. 14 Ibid. 15 Report from the Select Committee on Fine Arts 11. 16 Report from the Select Committee on Fine Arts 18. 17 See the detailed account of the workings of the Royal Commission of Fine Arts in T. S. R. Boase, “The Decoration of the New Palace of Westminster, 1841–1863”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. 17, No. 3/4 (1954) 319–58. 18 David Robertson, Sir Charles Eastlake and the Victorian Art World (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1978) 328. 19 Henry G. Clarke, A Hand-Book Guide to the Cartoons now Exhibiting in Westminster Hall, etc. (London: Clarke and Co., 1843) vii. 20 Boase pointed to the many echoes of the Bowyer’s Gallery in the Victorian project, see “The Decoration of the New Palace of Westminster, 1841–1863”, 337. 21 Report from the Select Committee on Fine Arts 6. 22 Illustrated London News 62, vol III, for the week ending, on July 8, 1843. 23 Illustrated London News 62, vol III, for the week ending, on July 8, 1843, 18. All subsequent quotes from the review of the 11 cartoons are taken from this article. 24 See The Prize Cartoons: Being the Eleven Designs to Which the Premiums Were Awarded by the Royal Commission of the Fine Arts in the Year 1843 (London: Longman et al., 1847). 25 Clarke, Hand-Book Guide to the Cartoons (1843) 23. 26 Henry G. Clarke, A Hand-Book Guide to the Cartoons, Frescos, and Sculpture, etc. (London: Clarke and Co, 1844) iii. 27 Gilbert Abbott à Beckett, Comic History of England, 2 vols (London: Bradbury and Evans, 1847–1848). The steel engravings were coloured. 28 Abbott à Beckett, vol 2 (1848) woodcut illustration 17. 29 Abbott à Beckett, vol 1 (1847) unpaginated steel engraving placed before page 1, woodcut illustrations 47 and 53. 30 Abbott à Beckett, vol 2 (1848) unpaginated steel engravings between pages 188–9 and 212–3.

Visual history as a new language 169 31 Clarke, Hand-Book Guide to the Cartoons (1843) iii. 32 Boase, “The Decoration of the New Palace of Westminster, 1841–1863”, 333. 33 Clarke, A Hand-Book Guide to the Cartoons, Frescos, and Sculpture, etc. (1844) 14. 34 See Martin Myrone, “John Martin: art, taste and the spectacle of culture,” in Martin Myrone, ed., John Martin Apocalypse (London: Tate Publishings, 2011) 11. 35 Report from Select Committee on Arts and Manufactures 66. 36 Billie Melman, The Culture of History (Oxford: OUP, 2006) 73–5. 37 See the key to the show, The Great Historical and Panoramic Picture of the Battle of Agincourt painted by Robert Ker Porter, 40 × 14 cm, hand-coloured wood-engraving (London: Glendinning, c. 1800–1850) in the British Museum collection (2010,7081.7446). 38 Barbara Gribling, “The Panstereomachia, Madame Tussaud’s and the Heraldic Exhibition: the art and science of displaying the medieval past in nineteenth-century London”, Science Museum Groupe Journal, issue 10 (2018) http://journal.sciencemuseum.org.uk/ browse/issue-10/the-panstereomachia/ (consulted on March 6, 2022). 39 Richard D. Altick, The Shows of London (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1978) 136. 40 See Julie Milne, “The abyss that abides,” in Martin Myrone, ed., John Martin Apocalypse (London: Tate Publishings, 2011) 53–9. 41 See John Malham, The Grand National History of England, etc. (London: Kelly, 1815). 42 George Lillie Craik and Charles Mac Farlane, Pictorial History of England, A History of the People as well as a History of the Kingdom, 4 vols. (London: Knight, 1838–41). 43 [Elizabeth Penrose] Mrs Markham, A History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans to the End of the Reign of George III (London: Murray, 1826). First published by Archibald Constable in Edinburgh in 1823; this book, primarily intended for children, became a success when republished by John Murray in a revised and illustrated edition. 44 Charles Knight, Passages of a Working Life During Half a Century, 3 vols (London: Bradbury and Evans, 1864–1865), vol. 2 (1864) 262. He uses again the expression “eye-knowledge” in the third volume (1865) 19. 45 Craik and Mac Farlane, vol 1 (1838) viii. 46 Ibid. 47 See Craik and Mac Farlane, vol 3 (1840) 225, 411, and vol 4 (1841) 552, 610. 48 See Craik and Mac Farlane, vol 1 (1838) 28, 44, 141,185, 231, and 402. 49 See Craik and Mac Farlane, vol 2 (1839) 125. 50 Charles Knight, The Popular History of England, An Illustrated History, 8 vols (London: Bradbury and Evans, 1856–1862). 51 This was the case of John Cassel, who shared Knight’s enthusiasm for the education of the working classes, and whose Illustrated History of England achieved even greater success. See John Cassel, Illustrated History of England, 8 vols (London: Kent and Co., 1856–1864) 52 Knight, Popular History of England, vol 1 (1856) v. 53 Knight, Popular History of England, vol 1 (1856) i. 54 Knight, Popular History of England, vol 1 (1856) iv. 55 Knight, Popular History of England, vol 1 (1856) viii. 56 Knight, Popular History of England, vol 1 (1856) 157. 57 Knight, Popular History of England, vol 1 (1856) 148. 58 Knight, Popular History of England, vol 1 (1856) 231. 59 Knight, Popular History of England, vol 1 (1856) 178. 60 Stories from English History Simply Told. A Reading Book for the Standard III (London: Nelson and Sons, 1883) preface. 61 Henry Tyrrell, History of England for the Young, 2 vols (London and NY: London Printing and Publishing Co, 1853–1856). 62 James William Edmund Doyle, A Chronicle of England B.C 55-A.D 1485 (London: Longman and Green, 1864). 63 Pictures of English History (London: Routledge & Sons, [1868]). 64 Frank Doggett, Cigarette Cards and Novelties (London: Joseph, 1981) 9. 65 See Gordon Howsden, “Introduction,” in The (new) World Tobacco Issues Index (London: The Cartophilic Society of Great Britain, 2000).

170  Visual history as a new language 66 See Steve Holland, Look and Learn. A History of the Classic Children’s Magazine (London: Look and Learn, 2006) 4–6, published online on www.lookandlearn.com (accessed on February 22, 2022). 67 Jordanova, Look of the Past, 107. 68 This set of documents is accessible online as part of the digital textbook that corresponds to Aude Chamouard et David Colon, dir., Histoire 2nde (Paris: Belin, 2019). https://manuelnumeriquemax.belin.education/histoire-seconde/topics/hist2-ch06204-a_dossier-1679-et-1689-l-habeas-corpus-et-le-bill-of-rights-limitent-le-pouvoirroyal (accessed on February 26, 2022). 69 http://teachinghistory100.org/objects/about_the_object/glorious_revolution_playing_ cards (accessed on February 26, 2022). 70 See James Northcote, The Bill of Rights, 1827, oil on canvas, 43.2 × 60.4 cm, London, Parliamentary Art Collection (WOA 900). 71 For a definition and discussion of public history, see Ludmila Jordanova, History in Practice (2000; London: Bloomsbury, 2019) 167–96. For a comprehensive survey of contemporary popular historical culture, see Jerome De Groot, Consuming History. Historians and Heritage in Contemporary Popular Culture (2009, Oxon/New York, NY: Routledge, 2016). 72 For an analysis of the part played by those “presenters of the past”, see Peter J. Beck, Presenting History: Past and Present (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 73 See Jay Winter, “The performance of the past: memory, history, identity,” in Karin Tilmans, Frank van Vree and Jay Winter, eds., Performing the Past. Memory, History, and Identity in Modern Europe (Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 2010) 18. 74 See Books printed for Tho. Astley, at the Rose over against the north door of St. Paul’s (London, n.d.).

Appendix

Combined list of 117 historical subjects Titles may vary over time with the subsequent reissues of plates or with new visualisations. The following initials are added to refer to the works in which those subjects can be found: JL: John Lockman’s New History of England (1747) EHD: English History Delineated (1748–1749) TM: Thomas Mortimer’s New History of England (1764–1766) WM: William H. Mountague’s New and Universal History of England (1771–1772) TS: Temple Sydney’s New and Complete History of England (1773) WR: William A. Russel’s New and Authentic History of England (1777) GR: George F. Raymond’s New, Universal and Impartial History of England, (1787–1790) JM: John Malham’s Grand National History of England (1815) LC: George Lillie Craik and Charles Mac Farlane, Pictorial History of England (1838–1841) ED: James William Edmund Doyle, A Chronicle of England (1864)

Roman Britain 1 2 3 4

The Landing of Julius Caesar, EHD, WM, TS, JM, LC, ED Cassivellaunus and other British Princes sueing for Peace to Julius Caesar, WR The Britons Submitting to Claudius, TS, WR Caractacus Betrayed into the Hands of the Romans by Cartismandua, WM, TS, WR, GR, JM, LC, ED 5 Murdering the Druids and Burning their Groves, WM, TS

Anglo-Saxon England 6 Hengist and Horsa meeting King Vortigern in the Isle of Thanet, TS, GR 7 St Austin Preaching to King Ethelbert and Queen Bertha in the Isle of Thanet, EHD, TM, WM, TS, WR, LC, ED 8 Berinus Converting the Saxons to Christianity, WM, TS 9 The Monks of Bangor put to the sword by Order of Ethelfrid, WM, TS

172  Appendix 10 Paulinus baptizing Edwin, the first Christian King of Northumberland, at York, TS, GR 11 The Abbess of Coldingham Monastery & her Nuns cutting of their Noses & upper Lips to prevent being Ravished by the Danes, WM, TS 12 Pope Adrian the IInd Crowns King Alfred at Rome, JL 13 Alfred disguised in the character of a harper, viewing the Danish camp, TS, JM 14 Alfred [Odun, Earl of Devon] taking the Danish Standard, WM, TS 15 Alfred makes a Collection of Laws and divides the Kingdom into Counties, TM, WM, TS, WR, GR 16 Athelstan Saves his Father’s Life by Taking Leofrid the Dane Prisoner, WM, TS, GR 17 Athelstan ordering the Bible to be translated into the Saxon Language, WR 18 Guy of Warwick Overcomes Colbrand, the Danish Champion, JL 19 Edmund I Stabbed by Leolf the Robber, WM, TS, WR, GR 20 The Insolent Behaviour of Dunstan to K. Edwy on the Day of his Coronation, TM, WM, TS 21 The First interview of Edgar and Elfrida, TS, GR 22 King Edgar rowed down the River Dee by Eight Tributary Kings attended by his principal Nobility, WR 23 Edward the Martyr Stabb’d by Order of his Mother in Law, JL, WM, TS, WR, GR, JM, ED 24 The Massacre of the Danes, TM 25 Canute Commands the Waves of the Sea not to Wet him, JL, JM, LC 26 Combat between Edmund Ironside and Canute the Great, WM, TS 27 Queen Emma’s Chastity Tried by Ordeal of Fire, WM, TS

Normans 28 The Landing of William the Conqueror, EHD, TM, WR 29 Deputies from London present ye Keys to William the Conqueror or Some Bishops and Eminent Citizens of London Swearing Fealty to William the Conqueror at Berkhamstead, JL, TM, ED 30 William the Conqueror Seizing his Brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux and Earl of Kent, WM, TS, GR 31 Robert, Son of William the Conqueror saving his father’s life at the Battle of Gerberoy, TS 32 The Governor of Rouen in Normandy thrown from the Battlements of the Castle by order of Robert, Son of William the Conqueror, WR 33 Anselm Fitz-Arthur claiming the Ground wherein William the Conqueror was going to be Buried, WM, TS, GR 34 The Death of William Rufus, JL, TM, WM, WR, GR, LC, ED

Plantagenets 35 Becket’s haughty Entrance in the Presence of Henry II, EHD, TM, WM, WR 36 Henry II Scourged at Becket’s Tomb, JL, LC 37 Henry II Serving the First Dish to his Son Henry’s Table, WM, TS, GR

Appendix 173 38 Despreaux taken by the Saracens for Richard ye First, and brought before Saladine, TM, WM, WR 39 Richard I Taken in Disguise by Leopold, Duke of Austria, JL, TM, WM 40 The Armour of the Bishop of Beauvais presented to the Pope in order of Richard I, TS 41 Richard I Mortally Wounded by an Arrow, WM, TS, WR 42 The Murder of Prince Arthur by King John, WM, TS, WR, GR, JM 43 King John Resigns his Crown to the Pope’s Nuncio, EHD, JL 44 King John Signing the Magna Carta, EHD, TM, WM, WR, JM, ED 45 Henry III preaching to the Monks of Winchester, WR 46 Edward I while Prince of Wales, killing the Assassin who wounded him with a poison’d Dagger in the Holy Land, TS, GR 47 The Head of Llewellyn the last reigning Prince of Wales, publickly exposed on a pole in Cheapside, London, EHD, WR 48 Baliol’s submission to Edward I, EHD, WR, LC 49 Lady Mary Bruce exposed as a public spectacle at Roxburgh Castle, by order of Edward the first, TS, WR 50 Edward, First Prince of Wales, Born at Carnarvan Castle, JL 51 Edward II resigns the Ensigns of Royalty, EHD, TM, WM, WR 52 Mortimer, Earl of Marche seized in Nottingham Castle, EHD, WR, ED 53 The Tragical Death of Jacob van Ardevelt, WM, TS, GR 54 The Battle of Cressy, TM, WM, JM 55 Queen Philippa interceding for the Burghers of Calais, WR, LC 56 Institution of the Order of the Garter, JL 57 The Black Prince waiting on ye King of France, his Prisoner, EHD, TM, WM, TS, GR, JM, ED 58 Edward the Black Prince making his Entry into London with the King of France his prisoner, WM 59 Sir John Dimmock Performing the Ceremony of the Champion’s Challenge at the Coronation of Richard II in Westminster Hall, WM 60 Wat Tyler Killed by the Lord Mayor in Smithfield, JL, TM, TS, WR, GR, LC 61 Henry, Prince of Wales Striking the Judge on the Bench, EHD, TM, WM 62 Henry Prince of Wales taking the crown from the pillow of his Father Henry IV, WM, TS, WR 63 Henry 5th Defeats the French at Agincourt, EHD, JL, TM, WM, TS, WR, JM 64 The Governor of Meaux Executed on the Tree whereon he used to hang his English Prisoners, WM, TS, GR 65 The Maid of Orleans receiving the sword of St Catherine, WM, TS, GR 66 Coronation of Henry VIth at Paris, WM, TS, WR 67 The Duke of Suffolk beheaded in a long boat near Dover, WM, TS 68 Jack Cade declaring himself Lord of the City of London, WM, TS 69 Elizabeth Woodville at the Feet of Edward ye 4th, EHD, TM, WR, GR, ED 70 The Duke of Somerset Killing Lord Wenlock, WM, TS 71 King Edward the 4th striking Edward Prince of Wales with his Gauntlet, TM, WM, WR 72 The Queen Dowager of King Edward 4th Parting with the Duke of York, EHD, TM, WM

174  Appendix 73 Richard Duke of Gloucester Accusing the Queen of Edward IVth with Witchcraft, WM, TS, GR 74 Death of Lord Hastings, WM, TS 75 Edward 5th and his Brother Smother’d, JL, WM, TS, WR, JM, LC 76 Death of Richard 3rd or the Battle of Bosworth Filed, EHD, JL, WM, TS, JM, ED 77 Lord Stanley puts ye crown of Richard 3rd on ye Earl of Richmond, TM, WM, WR 78 Jane Shore does Penance in St Paul’s Church, JL

Tudors 79 Lambert Simnel who aspired to the English Throne reduced to the Character of a Turnspit in the Kitchen of Henry VII, WR 80 Henry VII and his Queen visiting the Earl of Surry in the Tower of London, WR 81 The Wife of Perkin Warbeck at the feet of Henry VII soliciting him to pardon her Husband, WR 82 Cardinal Wolsey Resigning the Great Seal to the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, WM, TS, WR 83 Marriage of Anne Bullen to Henry VIII, JL 84 The First Translation of the Bible presented to Henry VIII, EHD, TM, WM, LC 85 Thomas Lord Cromwell presenting the Picture of Anne of Cleves to Henry VIII, WR 86 Bishop Gardiner coming with a Guard to Seize Catherine Parr who was walking in the Garden with Henry VIII, WM, TS 87 Ket the Tanner setting [sic] beneath the Oak of Reformation, assuming Regal Authority, WR 88 Mean Submission of the Duke of Northumberland to the Earl of Arundel, TM, WM, TS 89 Death of Lady Jane Grey and L. Dudley, EHD, JL, WM, TS, GR 90 Bishops Burnt in Smithfield or The Burning Archbishop Cranmer, JL, TM, LC 91 Dutch Ambassadors implore assistance of Queen Elizabeth, EHD, TM, WM, WR, GR 92 The Death Warrant Read to Mary Queen of Scots in the Hall wherein she was Beheaded, WM, TS, JM 93 Defeat of the Spanish Armada, EHD, JL, WM, TS, JM, LC 94 Queen Elizabeth Striking the Earl of Essex, WM, TS

Stuarts 95 Gunpowder Plot Discovered or Guy Fawkes Seized by Order of Sr Tho.s Knevet, EHD, JL, WM, TS, GR, JM, LC 96 The Duke of Buckingham Stabb’d by Felton, EHD, JL, TM, WM, TS, WR, GR 97 King Charles I in the House of Commons, demanding the Five Members, EHD, TM, WM, TS, WR, GR 98 Charles I Ordering his Standard to be erected on Nottingham Castle, TS, GR 99 Charles I taking leave of his Children, EHD, TM, WM, JM

Appendix 175 100 Charles I Beheaded, JL, JM 101 Charles II in Disguise in the Oak sees his Pursuers under him, EHD, JL, TM, WM, TS, WR 102 Oliver Cromwell dissolves the Parliament, EHD, TM, WM, TS, GR, LC 103 The Inauguration of Oliver Cromwell, WR 104 King Charles the Second’s Public Entry into London at the time of his Restoration, WR 105 Plague in 1665, JL, WM, JM 106 Blood and his Accomplices Escaping after stealing the crown from the Tower, WM 107 Kirk’s Cruelty to a Young Woman who begged her Brother’s Life, EHD, TM, WM, TS, WR 108 Judge Jeffries in the Disguise of a Sailor seized at Wapping, WR, GR 109 King James Embarks in a Frigate for France, JL 110 The Clerk of the Crown Reading the Bill of Rights to the Prince and Princess of Orange, in the Banqueting House at Whitehall, previous to the Offering of the Crown, EHD, TM, WM, JM 111 Pendergrass delivering to William III a List of the Conspirators concerned in the Assassination plot, TS 112 Battle of Blenheim, JL, JM 113 The Duke of Queensberry and Dover Presenting the Act of Union to Queen Anne, WM, TS, WR, GR

Hanoverians 114 The Manilla Galeon taken by Admiral Anson, WM, TS 115 The Orphan House at Zell in Hanover set on Fire by order of the Duke of Richlieu [sic], WR 116 General Wolfe Expiring in the Arms of a Grenadier and Volunteer at the Siege of Quebec, WM, TS, JM 117 The British Troops entering the Breach of the Moro Castle, WM

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178  Select bibliography The Children Picture-Book of English History Illustrated with Fifty Engravings. London: Bell and Daldy, 1859. CHINNERY, William. Writing and Drawing Made Easy, Amusing and Instructive. Kingstonupon-Thames, Bellamy, 1750. CLARENDON, Hugh. New and Authentic History of England, from the Remotest Period of Intelligence to the Close of the Year 1767. 2 vols. London: Cooke, 1770. CLARKE, Henry G. A Hand-Book Guide to the Cartoons Now Exhibiting in Westminster Hall, etc. London: Clarke and Co., 1843. ———. A Hand-Book Guide to the Cartoons, Frescos, and Sculpture, etc. London: Clarke and Co, 1844. COURTNEY LYTTLETON, George. The History of England from the Earliest Dawn of Authentic Record, to the Ultimate Ratification of the General Peace of Amiens in 1802, 3 vols. London: Stratford, 1803. COWLEY, Charlotte. The Ladies History of England; from the Descent of Julius Cæsar, to the Summer of 1780. Calculated for the Use of the Ladies of Great-Britain and Ireland; and Likewise Adapted to General Use, Entertainment, and Instruction. London: Bladon, 1780. CRAIK, George Lillie and Charles MAC FARLANE. Pictorial History of England, A History of the People as Well as a History of the Kingdom. 4 vols. London: Knight, 1838–1841. DODSLEY, Robert. London and Its Environs Described. Containing an Account of Whatever Is Most Remarkable for Grandeur, Elegance, Curiosity or Use, in the City and in the Country Twenty Miles Round It. Comprehending Also Whatever Is Most Material in the History and Antiquities of This Great Metropolis. Decorated and Illustrated with a Great Number of Views in Perspective, Engraved from Original Drawings, Taken on Purpose for This Work. Together with a Plan of London, a Map of the Environs, and Several Other Useful Cuts. 6 vols. London: Dodsley, 1761. DOYLE, James William Edmund. A Chronicle of England B.C 55-A.D. 1485. London: Longman and Green, 1864. Ecclesiae Anglicanae Trophaea. Rome: Bartholomæi Grassi, 1584. EDGEWORTH, Maria and Richard Lovell EDGEWORTH. Practical Education. 2 vols. London: Johnson, 1798. EDWARDS, Edward. Anecdotes of Painters. London: Hansard, 1808. The Exhibition of the Royal Academy, MDCCLXXI, The Third. London: Griffin, 1771. The Exhibition of the Royal Academy MDCCLXXVI, The Eighth. London: Davies, 1776. The Exhibition of the Royal Academy MDCCLXXXVI, The Eighteenth. London: Cadell, 1786. The Exhibition of the Royal Academy MDCCLXXXVII, The Nineteenth. London: Cadell, 1787. The Exhibition of the Royal Academy MDCCXCII, The Twenty-Fourth. London: Cadell, 1792. The Exhibition of the Royal Academy MDCCXCIII, The Twenty-Fifth. London: Cadell, 1793. GALT, John, Esq. The Life, Studies and Works of Benjamin West, Esq., President of the Royal Academy of London. London: Cadell and Davies, 1820. GARLICK, Kenneth and Angus MACINTYRE. Eds. The Diary of Joseph Farington. 16 vols. New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 1978–1984. GAY, [John]. Trivia: or the Art of Walking the Streets of London. London: Lintott, 1716. GILPIN, William. An Essay upon Prints. London: Robson, 1768. GOUGH, Richard. Anecdotes of British Topography or, an Historical Account of What Has Been Done for Illustrating the Topographical Antiquities of Great Britain and Ireland. London: Richardson and Clark, 1768. GUTHRIE, William. A Complete History of the English Peerage; from the Best Authorities. Illustrated with Elegant Copper-Plates of the Arms of the Nobility, Blazoned in the HeraldsOffice, by the Proper Officers; Copper-Plates of the Premiers, in Their Parliamentary Robes; and at the Conclusion of the History of Each Family, Vignets, and Other Ornaments, Proper for the Subject. 2 vols. London: Dryden Leach, 1763.

Select bibliography 179 [GWYNN, John]. An Essay on Design: Including Proposals for Erecting a Public Academy to be Supported by Voluntary Subscription (till a Royal Foundation Can Be obtain’d) for Educating the British Youth in Drawing and the Several Arts Depending Thereon. London: Brindley, Harding, Payne 1749. [HANMER, Thomas]. The Works of Shakespeare in Six Volumes. Carefully Revised and Corrected by the Former Editions, and Adorned with Sculptures Designed and Executed by the Best Hands. 6 vols. Oxford: The Theatre, 1743. HARRISON, Walter. A New and Universal History, Description and Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, and Their Adjacent Parts. London: Cooke, 1775. HOGARTH, William. The Analysis of Beauty. Edited by Joseph Burke. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955 [1753]. HOPE, Thomas. Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, Executed from Designs by Thomas Hope. London: Longman, 1807. JEFFERYS, Thomas. A Collection of the Dresses of Different Nations, Antient and Modern. Particularly Old English Dresses after the Designs of Holbein, Vandyke, Hollar and Others. With an Account of the Authorities, from Which the Figures Are Taken; and Some Short Historical Remarks on the Subject. To Which Are Added the Habits of the Principal Characters on the English Stage. 4 vols. London: Thomas Jefferys, 1757–1772. JOHNSON, Richard. A New History of England from the Earliest Period to the Present Time. On a Plan Recommended by the Earl of Chesterfield. London: Newbery, 1785. KIRBY, Joshua. Dr Brook Taylor’s Method of Perspective Made Easy, Both in Theory and Practice. Ipswich: Craighton, 1754. KNIGHT, Charles. The Popular History of England, An Illustrated History. 8 vols. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1856–1862. ———. Passages of a Working Life During Half a Century. 3 vols. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1864–1865. LANGLEY, Batty and Thomas. Ancient Architecture, Restored and Improved by a Great Variety of Grand and Useful Designs, Entirely New in the Gothick Mode for the Ornamenting of Buildings and Gardens. Exceeding Every Thing Extant. London: Langley, 1741–1742. LENGLET du FRESNOY, Nicolas. A New Method for Studying History. Translated by Richard Rawlinson. 2 vols. London: Burton, 1728. ———. Chronological Tables of Universal History, Sacred and Profane, Ecclesiastical and Civil; from the Creation of the World, to the Year One Thousand Seven Hundred and Forty-Three. 2 vols. London: A. Millar, 1762. LLOYD, Mr [Thomas]. The General History of England: From the Earliest Accounts, to the Summer of the Year 1764. London: Pottinger, 1764. [LOCKMAN, John]. A New Roman History, by Question and Answer. In a Method Much More Comprehensive than Any of the Kind Extant. Extracted from Ancient Authors, and the Most Celebrated Among the Modern. And Interspers’d with Such Customs as Serve to Illustrate the History. With a Complete Index. Designed Principally for Schools. By the Author of the History of England by Question and Answer. And Adorned with Sixteen Copper-Plates Representing the Most Remarkable Occurrences. London: Astley and Baldwin, 1747. ———. A New History of England, by Question and Answer. Extracted from the Most Celebrated English Historians, Particularly Mr Rapin De Thoyras, for the Entertainment of Our Youth of Both Sexes. The Sixth Edition, Corrected and Improved. Adorned with Thirty-Two Copper-Plates, Representing the Most Remarkable Occurrences, and the Heads of All the Kings and Queens. London: Astley and Baldwin, 1747. ———. A Sketch of Spring Gardens in a Letter to a Noble Lord. London: Woodfall, 1750. LYTTLETON, George Courtney. History of England. London: Stratford, 1803. MACAULAY, Thomas Babington. The History of England from the Accession of James II. 5 vols. London: Longman et al., 1848.

180  Select bibliography MACPHERSON, James. Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem, in Six Books: Together With Several Other Poems, Composed by Ossian the Son of Fingal. Translated from the Galic Language. London: Beckett and De Hondt, 1762. MAITLAND, William. The History of London, from Its Foundation to the Present Time. London: Richardson, 1739. MALHAM, John. The Grand National History of England, etc. London: Kelly, 1815. MALLET, David. Alfred: a Masque. Acted at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane by His Majesty’s Servants. London: Millar, 1751. MARKHAM, Mrs [Elizabeth Penrose]. A History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans to the End of the Reign of George III. London: Murray, 1826. MARSDEN, William Edward. The School Textbook. Geography, History and Social Studies. Oxon/New York, NY: Routledge, 2001. MARTIN, Benjamin. Miscellaneous Correspondence. 4 vols. London: Owen, 1759. MORTIMER, Mr. [Thomas]. The Universal Director; or, the Nobleman and Gentleman’s True Guide to the Masters and Professors of the Liberal and Polite Arts and Sciences; and of the Mechanic Arts, Manufactures, and Trades, Established in London and Westminster, and Their Environs. In Three Parts. To Which Is Added, a Distinct List of the Booksellers, Distinguishing the Particular Branches of Their Trade. London: Coote, 1763. ———. A New History of England, from the Earliest Accounts of Britain, to the Ratification of the Peace of Versailles, 1763. Humbly Inscribed to the Queen. 3 vols. London: Wilson and Fell, 1764–1766. MOUNTAGUE, William Henry. A New and Universal History of England, from the Earliest Authentic Accounts, to the End of the Year 1770. Embellished and Illustrated with a Great Number of Curious Copper-Plates, from Original Drawings Made on Purpose for This Work, by the Celebrated Wale, and Engraved by Those Eminent Artists, Grignion and Walker. 2 vols. London: Cooke, 1771–1772. PERCY, Thomas. Reliques of Ancient English Poetry: Consisting of Old Heroic Ballads, Songs, and Other Pieces of Our Earlier Poets, (chiefly of the Lyric Kind.) Together with Some Few of Later Date. 3 vols. London: Dodsley, 1765. Pictures of English History. London: Routledge & Son, [1868]. POCOCKE, Richard. A Description of the East, and Some Other Countries. 2 vols. London: Bowyer, 1745. RAPIN de THOYRAS, [Paul]. Histoire d’Angleterre. 8 vols. La Haye: Alexandre de Rogissart, 1724–1725. ———. The History of England as Well Ecclesiastical as Civil. Done into English from the French with Large and Useful Notes mark’d With an * by Tindal A. M. Vicar of Great Waltham in Essex. 15 vols. London: James and John Knapton, 1725–1731. ———. The History of England Written in French by Mr. Rapin De Thoyras. Translated into English with Additional Notes by N. Tindal M. A. Vicar of Great Waltham in Essex. The Second Edition, 2 vols. London: James, John and Paul Knapton, 1732–1733. ———. The History of England. Written Originally in French by M. Rapin De Thoyras. 3 vols. London: Mechell 1733. ———. The History of England. Written in French by Mr De Rapin Thoyas. Translated into English, with Additional Notes, by N. Tindal M. A. Rector of Alverstoke in Hampshire, and Chaplain to the Royal Hospital at Greenwich. The Third Edition. Illustrated with Maps, Genealogical Tables, and the Heads and Monuments of the Kings, Engraven on Seventy-Seven Copper Plates. 2 vols. London: John and Paul Knapton, 1743. ———. The History of England by Mr Rapin De Thoyras Continued from the Revolution to the Accession of King George II by Mr Tindal, M.A. Rector of Alverstoke in Hampshire and Chaplain to the Royal Hospital Greenwich. Illustrated with the Heads of the Queens and Kings, and Several Eminent Persons; Also with Maps, Medals and Other Copper Plates. 2 vols. London: John and Paul Knapton, 1744–1747.

Select bibliography 181 ———. An Abridgement of the History of England. Being a Summary of Mr. Rapin’s History and Mr. Tindal’s Continuation. 3 vols. London: John and Paul Knapton, 1747. ———. A Summary of the History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Death of King George Ist in the History of England by Mr Rapin de Thoyras Continued from the Revolution to the Accession of King George II by Mr Tindal, M.A. Rector of Alverstoke in Hampshire and Chaplain to the Royal Hospital Greenwich. Illustrated with the Heads of the Queens and Kings, and Several Eminent Persons; Also with Maps, Medals and Other Copper Plates. London: John and Paul Knapton, 1747. RAYMOND, George Frederick Raymond. A New, Universal and Impartial History of England, from the Earliest Authentic Records, and Most Genuine Historical Evidence, to the End of the Present Year. London: Cooke, n.d. [1787]. Report from Select Committee on Arts and Manufactures Together with the Minutes of Evidence, and Appendix, Ordered by the House of Commons, to be printed, September 4, 1835 [London]. Report from the Select Committee on Fine Arts Together with the Minutes of Evidence, Appendix, and Index. Ordered by the House of Commons, to be printed, June 18, 1841 [London]. REYNOLDS, Joshua. Discourses. Edited by Pat Rogers. London: Penguin, 1992 [1798]. RICHARDSON, Jonathan. Essay on the Theory of Painting. London: Bowyer, 1715. ROCQUE, John. A New and Accurate Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, etc. London: Rocque, 1746. ROLLIN, Charles. Method of Teaching and Studying the Belles Lettres. 4 vols. London: Bettesworth, 1734. ROWE, [Nicholas]. The Works of Mr. William Shakespear; in Six Volumes. Adorn’d with Cuts. 6 vols. London: Tonson, 1709. ———. The Tragedy of Jane Shore. Written in Imitation of Shakespear’s Style. London: Lintott, 1714. ———. The Life and Character of Jane Shore. Collected from Our Best Historians, Chiefly from the Writings of Sir Thomas More; Who Was Her Contemporary and Personally Knew Her. Humbly offer’d to the Readers and Spectators of Her Tragedy Written by Mr. Rowe. Inscrib’d to Mrs Oldfield. London: Morphew and Dodd, 1714. ———. The Life and Character of Jane Shore. Collected from Our Best Historians, Chiefly from the Writings of Sir Thomas More; Who Was Her Contemporary and Personally Knew Her. Humbly offer’d to the Readers and Spectators of Her Tragedy Written by Mr. Rowe. Inscrib’d to Mrs Oldfield, the third edition. London: Lewis et al., 1714 RUSSEL, William Augustus. A New and Authentic History of England, from the Most Remote Period of Genuine Historical Evidence, to the Present Important Crisis. London: Cooke, 1777. SALMON, Thomas. The Chronological Historian. London: Mears, 1723. SANDFORD, Francis. History of the Coronation of the Most High, Most Mighty and Most Excellent Monarch James II. London: Newcomb, 1687. SPENCER, Nathaniel [aka Robert Sanders]. The Complete English Traveller, or a New Survey of England and Wales. London: Cooke, 1771. Stories from English History Simply Told. A Reading Book for the Standard III. London: Nelson and Sons, 1883. STRUTT, Joseph. The Original Drawings made by Joseph Strutt for Regal Ecclesiastical Antiquities of England, copied from Illuminated M.S.S in the British Museum [1773]. ———. A Biographical Dictionary of Engravers etc. To Which Is Prefixed An Essay on the Rise and Progress of the Art of Engravings Both on Copper and Wood. 2 vols. London: Davies and Faulder, 1785. SYDNEY, Temple. A New and Complete History of England, from the Earliest Period of Authentic Intelligence to the Present Time. London: Cooke, 1773.

182  Select bibliography The Unabridged Acts and Monuments Online or TAMO. HRI Online Publications, Sheffield, 2011. https://www.johnfoxe.org TRIMMER, Sarah. A Series of Prints of English History. London: Marshall, [1792]. ———. A Description of a Set of Prints of English History: Contained in a Set of Easy Lessons. 2 vols. London: Marshall, [1792]. TURNBULL, George. A Treatise on Ancient Painting. London: n.p., 1740. TYRRELL, Henry. History of England for the Young. 2 vols. London and New York: London Printing and Publishing Co, 1853–1856. [VERSTEGAN, Richard]. A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence: In Antiquities. Concerning the Most Noble and Renowned English Nation. Antwerp: Bruney, 1605. VERTUE, George. The Heads of the Kings of England, Proper for Mr. Rapin’s History, Translated by N. Tindal M. Viz. Egbert First Monarch of England, Alfred the Great, Canute the Dane, William the Conqueror, First of the Norman Line, and All the Succeeding Kings and Sovereign Queens, to the Revolution; with Some of the Most Illustrious Princes of the Royal Family. Collected, Drawn, and Engraven, with Ornaments and Decorations, by George Vertue. To Which Are Added, the Heads of Mr. Rapin and N. Tindal, M.A. and an Account of the Several Heads, of the Antiquities that Have Been Followed, and of the Pictures Copied for Engraving Them. Also, Twenty-Two Plates of the Monuments of the Kings of England, with Their Epitaphs and Inscriptions, and a Brief Historical Account of Them. London: James, John and Paul Knapton, 1736. WALTON, Izaak. The Complete Angler: or, Contemplative Man’s Recreation. Being a Discourse on Rivers, Fish-Ponds, Fish, and Fishing. In Two Parts. London: Hope, 1760. WARTON, Thomas. Observations on the Fairy Queen of Spenser. 2 vols. London: Dodsley, 1762. WILLIAM, Shirley. Edward the Black Prince; or the Battle of Poictiers: An Historical Tragedy Attempted after the Manner of Shakespeare. London: Tonson, 1750. WORNUM, Ralph N. Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the Pictures in the National Gallery with Biographical Notices of the Painters. London: Clowes and sons, 1847.

Secondary works ALLEN, Brian. Francis Hayman. New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 1987. ALTICK, Richard D. The Shows of London. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1978. ANDERSON, Benedict. Imagined Communities. Reflections of the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. Revised edition. London: Verso, 2016. ARNOLD, Dana. Ed. Cultural Identities and the Aesthetics of Britishness. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2004. BANN, Stephen. The Clothing of Clio. A Study of the Representation of History in Nineteenth-Century Britain and France. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984. ———. Romanticism and the Rise of History. New York, NY: Twayne, 1995. ———. Paul Delaroche. History Painted. London: Reaktion 1997. ———. “Paul Delaroche’s Early Work in the Context of English History Painting.” Oxford Art Journal 29:3 (2006) 341–9. BARCHAS, Janine. Graphic Design, Print Culture and the Eighteenth-Century Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003. BARKER-BENFIELD, G. J. The Culture of Sensibility. Sex and Society in EighteenthCentury Britain. Chicago, IL: U of Chicago Press, 1992. BARTHES, Roland. The Rustle of Language. Translated by Richard Howard. Berkeley, CA: U of California Press, 1989. BATE, J., John M. BULLITT and L.F. POWELL. The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson. 20 vols. New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 1963. BAUDINO, Isabelle. “Samuel Wale (1714–1786), a Foundation Member of the Royal Academy.” The British Art Journal, XVIII:3 (2017) 60–72.

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184  Select bibliography GRIFFITHS, Antony. Prints for Book: Book Illustration in France: 1760–1800. London: The British Library, 2004. GRIBLING, Barbara. “The Panstereomachia, Madame Tussaud’s and the Heraldic Exhibition: the Art and Science of Displaying the Medieval Past in Nineteenth-Century London.” Science Museum Groupe Journal, issue 10 (2018) http://journal.sciencemuseum.org.uk/ browse/issue-10/the-panstereomachia/ GROOM. Nick. Ed. Thomas Chatterton and Romantic Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999. HALLETT, Mark. “Reading the Walls: Pictorial Dialogue at the British Royal Academy.” Eighteenth-Century Studies. 37:4 (2004) 581–604. ———. Reynolds. Portraiture in Action. New Haven, CT and London: 2014. HALLETT, Mark, Nigel LLEWELYN and Martin MYRONE. Court, Country, City: British Art and Architecture, 1660–1735. Studies in British Art 24. New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 2016. HAMLETT, Lydia Hamlett. Mural Painting in Britain 1630–1730: Experiencing Histories. London: Taylor and Francis, 2020. HARGRAVES, Matthew. Candidates for Fame. The Society of Artists of Great Britain. 1760–91. New Haven, CT and London: 2005. HASKELL, Francis. History and Its Images. Art and the Interpretation of the Past. New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 1993. HICKS, Philip. Neoclassical History and English Culture. From Clarendon to Hume. Houndmills: Macmillan, 1996. HOLLAND, Steve. Look and Learn. A History of the Classic Children’s Magazine. London: Look and Learn, 2006. Published online: www.lookandlearn.com HUHTAMO, Erkki. Illusions in Motion. Media Archaeology of the Moving Panorama and Related Spectacles. Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 2013. HYDE, Ralph. London Displayed. Headpieces from the Stationers’ Almanacks. London: London Topographical Society, 2010. IONESCU, Christina. Book Illustration in the Long Eighteenth Century. Reconfiguring the Visual Periphery of the Text. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011. JORDANOVA, Ludmilla. History in Practice. London: Bloomsbury, 2019 [2000]. ———. The Look of the Past. Visual and Material Evidence in Historical Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2012. KEWES, Paulina. Ed. The Uses of History in Early Modern England. San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 2006. KLEIN, Lawrence E. “Politeness and the Interpretation of the British Eighteenth Century.” The Historical Journal 45:4 (2002) 869–98. KNAPP, James A. Illustrating the Past in Early Modern England: The Representation of History in Printed Books. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. LAPIDGE, Michael. Ed. Anglo Saxon England 28. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. LEVINE, Joseph M. Humanism and History. Origins of Modern English Historiography. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell UP, 1987. LEVINE, Philippa. The Amateur and the Professional. Antiquarians, Historians and Archaeologists in Victorian England 1838–1886. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986. LINDFIELD, Peter. Georgian Gothic. Medievalist Architecture, Furniture and Interiors 1730–1840. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2016. LINDFIELD, Peter and Christie MARGRAVE. Rule Britannia? Britain and Britishness 1707–1901. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015. MARIN, Louis. On Representation. Translated by Catherine Porter. Stanford, CA: U of California Press, 2001 [1994]. McNAIRN, Alan. Behold the Hero. General Wolfe and the Arts in the Eighteenth Century. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s UP, 1997. MELMAN, Billie. The Culture of History. Oxford: OUP, 2006.

Select bibliography 185 MILLER, Peter N. Ed. Momigliano and Antiquarianism: Foundations of the Modern Cultural Sciences. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. MINICI ZOTTI, Carlo Alberto. Il Mondo Nuovo: Le Meraviglie Della Visione dall’ 700 Alla Nascita Del Cinema. Milano: Mazzotta, 1988. MITCHELL, Charles. “Benjamin West’s Death of General Wolfe and the Popular History Piece.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 7:1 (1944) 20–33. MITCHELL, Rosemary. Picturing the Past: English History in Text and Image, 1830–1870. Oxford: OUP, 2000. MOMIGLIANO, Arnaldo. “Ancient History and the Antiquarian.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13:¾ (1950) 285–315. MYRONE, Martin. Ed. John Martin Apocalypse. London: Tate Publishings, 2011. MYRONE, Martin and Lucy PELTZ. Producing the Past. Aspects of Antiquarian Culture and Practice 1700–1850. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999. ORCUTT, Kimberly. Process and Paradox: The Historical Pictures of John Singleton Copley. Exh. cat. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Art Museums, 2004. PAULSON, Ronald. Hogarth. 3 vols. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1992. PEARCE, Susan. Ed. Visions of Antiquity. The Society of Antiquaries of London 1707–2007. London: The Society of Antiquaries, 2007. PELTZ, Lucy. Facing the Text: Extra-Illustration, Print Culture and Society in Britain 1769–1840. San Marino, CA: Huntington Library Press, 2017. PETTER, Helen Mary. The Oxford Almanacks. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974. POSTLE, Martin Postle. Ed. Johan Zoffany RA. Society Observed. New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 2011. RAINES, Robert Raines and Kenneth SHARPE. “The Story of King Charles I, Part I.” The Connoisseur 184 (1973) 38–46. ———. “The Story of King Charles I, Part II. The Paintings and the 1728 Engravings.” The Connoisseur 186 (1974) 192–5. RAVEN, James. The Business of Books. New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 2007. READMAN, Paul. Storied Ground. Landscape and the Shaping of English National Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2018. RETFORD, Kate. The Conversation Piece: Making Modern Art in Eighteenth-Century Britain. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2017. RIBEIRO, Aileen. “Antiquarian Attitudes – Some Early Dress Studies in the History of Dress.” Costume 28: 1 (1994) 60–70. ———. The Art of Dress. New Haven, CT and London: YaleUP, 1995. RIVERS, Isabel. Ed. Books and Their Readers in Eighteenth-Century England: New Essays. London and New York, CT: Continuum, 2003 [2001]. ROBERTSON, David. Sir Charles Eastlake and the Victorian Art World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1978. SALBER PHILLIPS, Mark. Society and Sentiment: Genres of Historical Writing in Britain, 1740–1820. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Press, 2000. ———. On Historical Distance. New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 2013. SHAPIN, Stephen. A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England. Chicago, IL and London: U of Chicago Press, 1994. SHAPIRO, Barbara J. A Culture of Fact. England 1550–1720. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell UP, 2003 [2000]. SILLARS, Stuart. Painting Shakespeare. The Artist as Critic 1720–1820. Cambridge and New York, NY: Cambridge UP, 2006. ———. The Illustrated Shakespeare, 1709–1875. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008. ———. Shakespeare and the Visual Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015. SMILES, Sam. Eye Witness. Artists and Visual Documentation in Britain, 1770–1830. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000.

186  Select bibliography SMITH, Anthony D. Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism. Oxon/New York, NY: Routledge, 1998. ———. The Nation Made Real. Art and National Identity in Western Europe, 1600–1850. Oxford: OUP, 2013. SMITH, R[oger]. J[ohn]. The Gothic Bequest. Medieval institutions in British Thought, 1688–1863. Cambridge UP, 1987. SOLKIN, David. Painting for Money: The Visual Arts and the Public Sphere in 18th-Century England. New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 1993. ———. “Isaac Fuller’s Escape of Charles II: A Restoration Tragicomedy.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 62 (1999) 199–240. ———. Ed. Art on the Line. The Royal Academy Exhibitions at Somerset House 1780–1836. New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 2001. ———. Art in Britain 1660–1815. New Haven, CT and London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art: Yale UP, 2015. SPONGBERG, Mary. Writing Women’s History Since the Renaissance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. STRONG, Roy. And When Did You Last See Your Father? The Victorian Painter and British History. London: Thames and Hudson, 1978. SUAREZ, Michael S.J. and Michael L. TURNER. The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain. 6 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. SULLIVAN, Greg. Ed. Fighting History. 250 Years of British History Painting. London: Tate, 2015. SUNDERLAND, John. “Mortimer, Pine and Some Political Aspects of English History Painting.” The Burlington Magazine 116:855 (1974) 317–26. ———. “John Hamilton, Mortimer: His Life and Works.” Walpole Society 52 (1985) 1–270. SWEET, Rosemary. “Antiquaries and Antiquities in Eighteenth-Century England.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 34:2 (2001) 181–206. ———. Antiquaries. The Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth-Century Britain. London and New York, NY: Hambledon and London, 2004. TILMANS, Karin, Frank van VREE and Jay WINTER. Eds. Performing the Past. Memory, History, and Identity in Modern Europe. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 2010. TOWSEY, Mark. Reading History in Britain and America, c. 1750- c. 1840. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2019. Von ERFFA, Helmut and Allen STALEY. The Paintings of Benjamin West. New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 1986. WIND, Edgar. “The Revolution of History Painting.” Journal of the Warburg Institute 2:2 (October 1938) 116–127. WINTER. Emma L. “German Fresco Painting and the New Houses of Parliament at Westminster, 1834–1851.” The Historical Journal 47:2 (2004) 291–329. WOOLF, Daniel R. The Social Circulation of the Past. English Historical Culture 1500– 1730. Oxford: OUP, 2003. ———. “From Hystories to the Historical: Five Transitions in Thinking About the Past, 1500–1700.” Huntington Library Quarterly, 68:1–2 (2005). The (New) World Tobacco Issues Index. London: The Cartophilic Society of Great Britain, 2000.

Index

Academic standards 3, 57, 96–7; Hierarchy of genre 7, 97; Liberal status of artists 4, 6–7, 15n15, 54–5 Act of Union vi, 58–9, 71, 175 Addison, Joseph 20 Agency (of images) 14, 130, 135, 139, 158 Albert, prince consort to Queen Victoria 142 Alberti, Leone Battista 7, 97, 100–101 Aliamet, François 102 Almanacs 6, 15n19, 33, 56, 113–114 Anson, George, Admiral, 1st Baron Anson 175 Antiquarianism 3, 13, 48n6, 54, 55–7, 62–3, 65, 72, 91n8, 91n11, 92n17, 114, 128, 137n58, 157 Armitage, Edward viii, 143–5, 152 Art academies 3, 7, 97; Academy of Great Queen Street 21; Royal Academy 3, 6–7, 16n29, 67, 83, 98–9, 101, 108–110, 114, 116–117, 122–4, 128, 130, 135, 137n55, 138n69, 141, 146, 148, 176; St Martin’s Lane Academy 3, 7, 13, 18, 32, 55–6, 89, 97, 106; see also Academic standards Art exhibitions 97–99, 102, 106–110, 115–117, 122, 141–2, 149 Art market 6, 48 Artevelde (Ardevelt), Jacob van 173 Astley, Thomas 2, 86, 166 Austin (Saint Augustine): Preaching to King Ethelbert and Queen Bertha vi, 35, 42–43, 75, 87, 109–110, 171 Baliol, John, King of Scots: His submission to Edward I 35, 79, 173 Bann, Stephen 11, 17n40–1, 56, 72, 91n12, 93n40, 139, 168n1–4 Barry, Charles 141, 143 Barthes, Roland 72 Bartolozzi, Francesco 109, 125 Basire, James 56 Beaufort, Edmund, 4th Duke of Somerset: killing Lord Wenlock 173 Becket, Thomas 77, 148

Bell, John Zephaniah 143 Berinus (Saint Birinus): Converting the Saxons to Christianity 171 Bermingham, Ann 12, 52n78 Bertha, queen consort to King Æthelberht vi, viii, 42–3, 75, 87, 109–110, 117, 143, 145–6, 157, 171 Bignamini, Ilaria 18, 48n2 Blake, William 3 Blakey, Nicholas vi, 36–7, 145, 152 Blenheim, battle of 28, 82, 150, 175 Blood, Thomas, Colonel: Stealing the crown from the Tower of London 175 Boitard, François 63 Boleyn, Anne (or Bullen), queen consort to Henry VIII: Her marriage to Henry VIII 45, 60–1, 174 Book trade 3–4, 19, 34; Binders 2, 38; Booksellers 2, 6, 19, 36, 67; Publishers 2–3, 10, 12, 21, 32, 34, 39, 51n47, 74, 116, 135, 154 Bowles, John (and brothers) 48, 58, 80 Bowyer, Robert vii, viii, 2, 115–118, 121–2, 124, 128, 130–5, 139, 142–3, 150, 152, 168n20 Boydell, John 137n61; Shakespeare Gallery 115–117, 128, 130, 135, Brewer, John 12 Bridges, John 143 Brown, Ford Madox 148 Burgh, Henry 62 Burnet, Gilbert 19 Burney, Edward Francis vii, 117–118, 145, 152 Cade, Jack: declaring himself Lord of the City of London 173 Caesar, Julius: The Landing of vi–viii, 35, 36–7, 75, 117–119, 142, 145, 148, 151–2, 157, 161, 171 Cards 160; Cigarettes cards 159, 161–162; Playing cards 2, 11, 14n8, 17n42, 164 Caratacus (Caractacus): Betrayed into the hands of the Romans 35–6, 75, 142–3, 150, 152

188  Index Casali, Andrea vii, 102–3, 105–106, 132–3 Cassivellaunus: suing for peace to Julius Caesar 171 Chescham, Francis 32 Chronology 37, 62, 89, 164 Cipriani, Giovanni Battista 102, 124 Circignani, Niccolò (il Pomarancio) 31 Clarendon, Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of 19 Clark, Henry Green 142–4, 146, 148 Claudius: The Britons submitting to 35, 150–2, 171 Cleves, Anne of, queen consort to Henry VIII; Lord Cromwell showing her picture to King Henry VIII 60, 174 Coldingham, the Abbess of: and her nuns cutting their noses and upper lips 31, 172 Colley, Linda 2, 10, 17n36, 45 Collyer, Joseph 116 Cooke, John 2–3, 8–10, 12, 37–8, 67, 81, 89–90, 94n71, 102, 116–117, 124, 130, 132, 138n69, 142–3, 149, 151, 167, Cope, Charles West 143, 146 Copley, John Singleton 112–113, 137n48, 149 Costume and period dress 1, 41, 54–5, 57, 58, 60–7, 72–3, 76, 80, 82, 89, 92n29, 95n84, 103, 107–108, 115, 117, 124, 128, 130, 143, 152, 154, 173 Cranmer, Thomas, archbishop: burning of 23–4, 174 Cressy (Crécy), battle of 39, 65, 77, 82, 150, 173 Cromwell, Oliver 36, 58, 71, 101, 110–112, 116, 132, 148, 161–2; Dissolving the Parliament vii, viii, 110–112, 113, 116, 130, 132, 137n47, 148, 152, 159–61, 175; Inauguration of 175 Cromwell, Thomas 60–6; Showing a picture of Anne of Cleves to Henry VIII 60, 174 Curiosity 20 Danes, The massacre of 23, 27, 81, 172 De Bolla, Peter 12–13, 17n45, 20 De’Cavalieri, Giovanni Battista 31, 102–103, 133 Decorum 54–55, 80, 107–108 Delaroche, Paul 139, 145 Devereux, Robert, 2nd Earl of Essex: Struck by Queen Elizabeth I vi, 5, 41, 174 Digitisation 4, 164, 167 Dimmock, John: performing the ceremony of the champion’s challenge at the coronation of Richard II 65, 173 Dodd, David 116 Dodsley, Robert 34, 37, 51n49, 67, 73, 99, 166 Doyle, James William Edmund viii, 157, 158, 169n62, 171

Druids, Murdering of the 36, 171 Dudley, John, 1st Duke of Northumberland 69–70; Submission to Henry Fitzalan, 12th Earl of Arundel 174 Duguernier, Louis 28, 44, 63 Eastlake, Charles 142 Echard, Laurence 19 Edgeworth, Maria 46, 52n75, 86, Edmund Ironside: combat with King Canute (Cnut) 94n71, 172 Edward, prince of Wales, (the Black Prince) 82, 85, 90, 95n84, 146; Making his entry into London 148, 173; Waiting on the King of France 35, 83–5, 113, 158, 173 Edwards, Edward 110, 132–3, 136n46, 138n89 Elfrida (Ælfthryth), queen consort to King Edgar 102, 133, 156–7, 160; and Edward the Martyr vii, 94n71, 102–104, 132–3, 138n89, 150, 156–7, 172; First interview with King Edgar viii, 133–4, 172 Elizabeth Woodville, queen consort to King Edward IV vii, 88, 117, 122–4, 133, 158; At the feet of King Edward IV vii, 35, 88, 117, 120, 122–4, 158, 173; (as Queen Dowager) Parting with the Duke of York 89, 124, 173 Emma of Normandy, queen consort to King Æthelred II, the Unready, and to King Canute (Cnut) 89; Her chastity tried by ordeal of fire 94n71, 172 English History Delineated (EHD) 34, 36–9, 76, 99, 101, 120, 143, 145, 152 Épinal prints 162 Evans, Edmund 157 Farington, Joseph 109 Fashion 13, 21, 31–2, 44, 48, 54, 57, 61–2, 65, 79, 98, 162, 164 Fawkes, Guy 65, 159; Seized by order of Thomas Knevet vi, 65–6, 150, 174 Fell, Isaac 2, 8, 50n40 Felton, John: Stabbing George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham 36, 41, 174 Fitzalan, Henry, 12th Earl of Arundel: Arresting John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland 174 Foundling Hospital 18, 55, 98, 106 Foxe, John 23–4, 31, 49n17 Frost, William Edward 143 Fuller, Isaac vi, 30–1, Furniture 13, 57, 71–2, 75, 110, 124, 141, 153, 157–8, 162 Gainsborough, Thomas 18, 46 Gardiner, Stephen, bishop: Coming to seize Catherine Parr 60–1, 174

Index 189 Garter, order of 86, 113–114, 137n51, 146, 173 Golbey, William 6 Great Exhibition 147 Grey, Lady Jane: Death of vii, 35, 68–9, 89, 139, 159, 174 Grignion, Charles 22, 32, 36 Gravelot, Bourguignon, Hubert-François, known as 32, 63, 71 Gunpowder plot 23, 36, 65, 89, 161, 174; see also Guy Fawkes Guthrie, William (history of peerage) 61, 71, 92n28, 93n44 Guy of Warwick: overcoming Colbrand, the Danish champion 73, 86, 172 Gwynn, John 4, 15n14, 47, 51n45 Hamilton, William viii, 16n29, 133–4 Hanway, Jonas 6 Hayman, Francis 4, 7, 17n47, 36, 39, 45–6, 55, 63, 65, 76, 82, 85, 93n36, 106–107, 109 Haskell, Francis 2, 14n7, 56 Hastings, William, 1st Baron Hastings: Death of 174 Hawes, Benjamin 141 Hawkins, John 62, Haytley, Edward 18 Heads (historical portraits) 2, 20, 21, 23, 25, 50n42, 61, 73, 151, 154, 159 Hengist and Horsa meeting King Vortigen 171 Hildebrandt, Theodor 153, Historical consciousness 7, 14, 72, 92n27, 139, 166 Historicism 66 History: and national identity 55, 79; Historical reconstruction 164; Philosophical history 9; Pictorial history 6–7, 55, 57, 67, 71, 74, 89, 90, 97, 114, 116, 150–3; Picturesque history 34, 78–9; Popularising history 9, 79, 150; Public history 165, 170n71; Reading history i, 1–3, 6, 8, 10–14, 17n43, 20–21, 28, 31, 33, 41, 51n52, 53–7, 61–2, 73–4, 78, 85–7, 89, 95n86, 101, 105, 110, 125, 134–5, 139–40, 149, 151–2, 156–7, 166–7; Visual consumption of 2, 20, 46–8, 52n78, 75, 89, 116, 149, 163, 165; Whig history 1, 9, 19, 55, 74–5, 77, 79, 82, 132, 163 Hogarth, William 3, 18, 21, 25, 45–7, 52n71, 55, 98, 100, 106–107, 152 Horsley, John Callcott viii, 143, 145–6 Houbraken, Jacob 21 Hume, David 9, 80, 116, 122, 125 Hunt, William Holman 148 Huysmans, Jacob 62, 92n30 Imagery 14, 86, 133, 140, 162, 165, 167 Interpictoriality 46, 71, 125 Ionescu, Christina 3, 15n12

Jefferys, Thomas 62, 66, 93n33 Jeffries, George, 1st Baron Jeffreys: seized at Wapping 175 Joan of Arc (Maid of Orleans), receiving the sword of St Catherine 89, 173 Johnson, Samuel 100–102, 108, 110, 116, 130, 132, 135 Jordanova, Ludmilla 17n49, 162 Kauffman, Angelica vii, 109, 122–3, 133–4, 138n74, 152 Kett, Robert (Ket the Tanner) 4; under the oak of reformation, assuming regal authority 174 King Æthelberht (Ethelbert) vi, viii, 23, 34, 42–3, 75, 87, 109–110, 117, 143, 145–6, 152, 157, 161, 171 King Æthelfrith (Ethelfrid) 171 King Æthelred II, the Unready 27 King Æthelstan 86; Ordering the Bible to be translated into the Saxon language 172; Saving his father by taking Leofrid the Dane prisoner 172 King Alfred 1, 34, 61, 75–6, 94n65, 150, 159; Crowned by Pope Adrian 172; Disguised as a harper in the Danish camp 75, 150, 172; Making a collection of laws 109–110; Taking the Danish standard 75, 172 King Canute (Cnut): Combat with Edmund Ironside 94n71, 172; Commanding the waves 1, 23, 89, 102, 107, 150, 152, 154, 156, 161–2, 172 King Charles I 80, 152; Death of vii, 21, 68, 80, 149, 159, 175; In the House of Commons, demanding five members 36, 112, 137n48, 159, 161, 174; Ordering the standard to be erected on Nottingham Castle 174; Taking leave of his children vi, 36, 58, 60, 80, 150, 161, 174 King Charles II vi, 36, 60, 112, 128; Hiding in the oak tree 1, 30, 42, 89, 159, 161, 175; Public entry into London after the Restoration 175 King Edgar 133; First interview with Elfrida (Ælfthryth) viii, 133–4, 172; Rowed down the river Dee by eight tributary kings 159, 172 King Edmund I: stabbed by Leolf the robber 172 King Edward the Martyr: stabbed by order of his mother-in-law (Elfrida) vii, 39, 94n71, 103–104, 132–3, 150, 156, 159–60, 172 King Edward I 99, 143; Baliol’s submission to 23, 35, 79, 173; First Prince of Wales 86, 159, 173; Lady Mary Bruce exposed by order of 79, 89, 173; While Prince of

190  Index Wales, killing the assassin who wounded him with a dagger 173 King Edward II, resigns the ensigns of royalty 42, 77, 80, 173 King Edward III 21, 35, 65, 72–3, 86, 95n84, 113–114, 146 King Edward IV vii, viii, 35, 45, 73, 88, 117, 119–25, 130, 143; His encounter with Elizabeth Woodville vii, 35, 88, 117, 119, 120, 122–24, 128, 133, 158, 173; Striking Edward, Prince of Wales, with his gauntlet 45, 65, 173 King Edward V viii, 124–125, 130–1, 138n84, 152–3, 161; And his brother smothered (Princes in the Tower) vii, viii, 124–30, 139, 150, 152–3, 161, 174 King Edward VI 38 King Edwy: The insolent behaviour of Dunstan to 42, 77, 172 King Henry I 38 King Henry II 35, 77, 79, 172; And Thomas Becket 35, 77; Scourged at Becket’s tomb 72, 172; Serving the first dish to his son Henry 172 King Henry III, preaching to the monks at Winchester 173 King Henry IV 44, 79, 173 King Henry V 63, 65; As prince of Wales, striking the Judge 35, 45, 173; As prince of Wales, taking his father’s crown 44, 173; Defeats the French at Agincourt 150, 173 King Henry VI: coronation of 173 King Henry VI 35, 130 King Henry VII 23, 73, 109; And his queen, visiting the Earl of Surrey in the Tower of London 174; As Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, crowned by Lord Stanley 80, 174; The Wife of Perkin Warbeck at his feet 174 King Henry VIII 45, 58, 60–1, 72, 92n23, 148; First translation of the Bible presented to him 35, 60–1, 174; His marriage to Anne Boleyn 45, 174; In the garden where Bishop Gardiner came to seize Catherine Parr 60–1, 174; Picture of Anne of Cleves presented to him 60, 174 King James I 71 King James II 14, 81–2; Embarking on a frigate for France 134, 175 King John 49n17, 77, 83, 113, 148; Murdering Prince Arthur 78, 173; Resigning his crown to the Pope’s nuncio 23, 35, 173; Signing the Magna Carta 77–8, 158–9, 173 King Llewellyn the Great, the last reigning prince of Wales 79, 173

King Ludwig I of Bavaria 147 King Richard I 35, 72, 80, 106; Mortally wounded by an arrow 173; Taken in disguise by Leopold, Duke of Austria 173; The armour of the Bishop of Beauvais presented to the Pope by order of 173 King Richard III 124–5, 130, 138n84; Accusing the Queen of Edward IV of witchcraft 174; Death at Bosworth Fields 80–1, 150, 174 King Stephen 38 King Sweyn Forkbeard 27 King Vortigen, meeting with Hengist and Horsa 35–36, 134, 152 King William I (the conqueror) 25, 41, 77; Anselm Fitz-Arthur claiming his burial ground 77, 172; Deputies from London presenting the keys to 76, 172; Landing of vi, 40, 76, 172; Saved by his son Robert 172; Seizing his brother Odo 41, 77, 172 King William II (Rufus) 35; Death of vi, 22–3, 27, 26–5, 80, 152, 156–7, 159, 172 King William III: Bill of Right read to 36, 150, 164, 175; Pendergrass (Thomas Prendergast) delivering to him the list of conspirators concerned with the assassination plot 175 King, Giles 21 Kirby, Joshua 89 Kirkall, Elisha 63 Kirke, Percy, Colonel: his cruelty 81–2, 89 Klein, Lawrence 79, 94n75 Knaptons, (James, John and Paul) 21–3, 32, 34, 36–7, 39, 51n49, 128 Knight, Charles viii, 150–6, 169n44 Kronheim, Joseph Martin 159 Laguerre, Louis 28, 50n32 Langley, Batty 73–5, 93n50 Leech, John 147–8 Lenglet du Fresnoy, Nicolas 51n52, 86, 95n87 Lépicié, Nicolas-Bernard 40, 51n60 Lockman, John 9–10, 46, 85–7; New History of England 8, 24–5, 28–9, 31, 34, 36, 41, 44–5, 47, 61, 63, 65, 68–70, 75–7, 80–2, 86, 98, 102–103, 105, 113, 115, 125 Look and Learn 161 Loutherbourg, Philippe de 46, 137n67 Maclise, Daniel 146 Macpherson, James 6, 73, 94n55 Marin, Louis 32, 50n43 Markham, Mrs 151, 154 Martin, John 148–9 Mary, Queen of Scots 123–4, 150, 159; Death warrant read to 150, 174; Execution of 149, 124

Index 191 Matteis, Paolo de 27, 50n31 Meaux, Governor of: Execution 173 Mechell, James 21 Metz, Conrad Martin 116 Millais, John Everett 148 Mitchell, Rosemary 78, 94n69, Morellon de La Cave, François 21, 23, 27, 42, 61, 79 Mortimer, Roger, 1st Earl of March, seized in Nottingham Castle 35, 173 Mortimer, Thomas 7, 9–10, 31, 39, 50n40, 76, 109; New History of England 7–10, 17n34, 17n42, 24–5, 27–31, 34, 36, 38–42, 45, 51n54, 53, 63, 73, 75–8, 81–4, 87, 94n65, 95n86, 110, 115, 119, 122, 124, 133, 164; Universal Director 7 Mountague, William Henry: New and Universal History 8, 10, 17n33, 17n34, 25, 38, 34, 36, 41, 44, 49n7, 53, 63, 65, 70–1, 75, 77–8, 80–1, 83–4, 117, 125, 128 Novelty 12, 19–20, 23, 31, 53, 67, 108, 142 Northcote, James viii, 128–9, 138n84, 164, 170n70 Opie, John vii, 117, 120, 122–4, 138n76 Painting 3, 27–8, 39, 61, 63, 99–100, 106; Conversation piece 18, 44, 63, 71, 87, 108; Estate portraiture 18; Fresco painting 141, 147; Historical painting 14, 97, 100, 108–109, 114–116, 122–3, 132, 139–41, 147–8, 162–3; History painting 7, 14, 18–19, 27, 30–1, 85, 90, 96–9, 100–1, 106–7,108–9, 122–3, 140, 149, 162; Vernacular history painting 101, 107 Parker, James viii, 130–1 Parris, Edmund Thomas 143 Paulinus (Saint Paulinus of York): baptizing the King of Northumberland 99, 172 Penny, Edward 83, 107–108, 136n32, 150 Percy, Thomas 6, 73–4, 81, 94n56–7, 150, 176 Philippa, queen consort to King Edward III: And the burghers of Calais 113, 148, 173 Picart, Bernard 21 Pine, John 6, 32, 71, 82 Pine, Robert Edge 102, 107 Plague 81, 150, 161, 175 Pococke, Richard 56, 92n16 Pole, William de la, 1st Duke of Suffolk: beheaded in a small boat 173 Politeness 6–7, 11–13, 79, 83–90, 112, 125, 163, 167 Pope Adrian, crowning King Alfred 76, 172 Prendergast (Pendergrass), Sir Thomas, 1st Baronet: delivering to William III a List of the Conspirators concerned in the Assassination plot 175

Queen Anne: Presented with the Act of Union vi, 58–9, 71, 89, 175 Queen Elizabeth I 71–2, 90 161; And Dutch ambassadors 36, 58, 60, 92n20, 174; Striking the Earl of Essex vi, 5, 41, 174 Queen Mary I 23–4 Queen Mary II: Bill of Rights read to 36, 150, 164, 170n70, 175 Raoux, Jean vi, 58, 60 Raphael 24–25, 55, 109–110, 148 Rapin de Thoyras, Paul: History of England 2, 9, 12, 16–17n30, 19–21, 32, 34, 40, 45, 74–5, 83, 102, 138n79–80 Raven, James 4, 14n4, 17n35 Ravenet, Simon Francis vi, 37 Raymond, George Frederick: New, Universal, and Impartial History 8, 16n28, 38, 116, 132 Realism 57–8, 65, 72, 93n40, 105, 157; and authenticity 54–5, 63, 65–7, 72, 74, 90, 143, 151; and reality effect 47, 72, 124; and verisimilitude 57–8, 61–2, 65, 71–2, 128 Rebecca, Biagio 123 Redgrave, Richard 146 Rennoldson, Martin 32 Reynolds, Joshua 17n47, 55, 97–8, 100, 108–109 Richard, Duke of York vii, viii, 35, 89, 109, 124–5, 127–8, 130–1, 152–3, 173–4 Richardson, Jonathan 6, 15n15, 25, 31, 54–5, 97, 101, 136n17 Richardson, Samuel 6, 57 Rigaud, Jacques 47 Rigaud, John Francis 124, 128, 138n77 Robert II, Duke of Normandy 41, 76 Rocque, John 15n18 Rogers, John 117 Rollin, Charles 56, 78, 91, 94n70 Romney, George 102, 107–8 Rossetti, Dante Gabriele 142, 148 Rowe, Nicholas 44, 51n67, 52n69, 93n34 Russel, Lord John 154 Russel, William Augustus: New and Authentic History 8, 10, 17n33, 17n34, 32, 34, 36, 38, 53, 94n63 Ryland, William Wynne vii, 50n41, 62, 92n29, 123 Salmon, Thomas 37, 51n51 Scotin, Gérard, Jean-Baptiste 36 Selous, Henry Courtney 143 Sentiments 19, 42, 58, 80, 90, 99, 102, 123, 130, 132–4, 158 Serres, Dominic 82 Seven Years’ War 2, 9, 11–12, 38–9, 55, 82–3, 91, 100, 162

192  Index Severn, Joseph 143 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of 27–8, 100–101 Shakespeare, William 44–5, 63, 79–80, 116, 125, 128, 142, 159 Shee, Martin Archer 141 Sheppard, Robert 21, 45 Shipley, William 98 Shore, Jane: penance in St Paul’s church 44, 89, 174 Simnel, Lambert: reduced to the character of a turnspit in Henry VII’s kitchen 23, 174 Smirke, Robert 133, 139, 152 Smith, Anker vii, 117–118, Smith, Anthony D. 55, 91n7, 139–40 Smollett, Tobias 9, 76 Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge 150 Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in Great Britain (Society of Arts) 7, 98–102, 106–107, 110, 132–3 Society of Antiquaries 21, 56 Solkin, David 12, 17n44, 50n35, 92n19, 97–8, 107–108, 135–6 Spanish Armada: defeat of 23, 32, 36, 39, 71, 82, 148, 150, 174 Steele, Richard 20 Stothard, Thomas viii, 116–117, 130–1, 152 Strutt, Joseph 62 Styles (in architecture) 2, 12, 46, 48, 54, 57–8, 67, 74, 93n49, 97–8; Gothic 72–5, 78, 93n49–51, 94n58, 113–114, 122, 133, 158; Tudor 34, 38, 57–8, 61, 67, 71–2, 80 Sydney, Temple: New and Complete History 8, 10, 17n33, 17n34, 25, 38, 51n54, 53, 66, 76, 79, 84, 92n18, 94n63, 95n82, 133 Swift, Graham 1 Taylor, Isaac 32, 130 Teerlinc, Levina 58 Thomas, William Cave 146 Thornhill, James 25 Time-travel 48, 79, 167 Toms, William Henry 67 Tourism 165; Picturesque tourism 151 Townsend, Henry James 143 Towsey, Mark 17n43, 85, 87 Tresham, Henry vii, 117, 119, 121–3, 130, 152 Tyler, Wat: death of 42, 173 Ut Pictura Poesis 7, 11, 96, 101, 109 Variety 3, 11, 20, 23, 25, 38–9, 47–78, 56, 67, 73, 101, 107, 111, 113, 146–7, 156 Vauxhall gardens 13, 18, 45, 48, 55, 61, 63, 67, 85, 95n84, 98, 106–107 Vertue, George vi, 18, 21–2, 30, 32, 48, 56, 60–2, 75–6, 92n21, 94n61, 102, 128, 176

Villiers, George, 1st Duke of Buckingham: stabbed by John Felton 41, 174 Visual culture 3–4, 12–14, 20, 30, 58, 61, 120, 139, 149, 152, 165–6 Visual studies 3 Waagen, Gustav Friedrich 141 Wale, Samuel: Appearance 6; Apprenticeship and career 3–4, 6–8, 13, 14n9, 18, 22–3, 109–110, 136n24; Dates 2; Death 8; Decorative schemes 4; Digital presence 4, 167; Gwynn (partnership with) 4, 47, 51n45; Hayman’s influence 4, 63; Oil paintings 4, 18; Royal Academy (founding member of) 67, 109–110; St Martin’s Lane Academy (member of) 6–7, 13, 18, 56, 89, 106 Wale, Samuel, printed works (other than his illustrations for history books) 6; Complete Section of St Paul’s Cathedral 33, 51n45, 67; Cooke’s Tyburn Chronicle and Newgate Calendar 81; Dodsley’s London and its Environs 67; Macpherson’s Fingal 73; Percy’s Reliques of Ancient Poetry 73–4; Pococke’s Description of the East 56; Rapin de Thoyras’s History of England 22–3; Rocque’s Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster 6; Six Perspective Views 47–8; St Stephen Walbrook 67; Tewkesbury Abbey (monument) 48n6, 56; Views of the Foundling Hospital with figures 18; Views of Vauxhall Gardens 45–6, 67; Walpole’s ancient eagle 56–7 Walker, William 32 Walpole, Horace 6, 56, 94n54 Walton, Izaak (Compleat Angler) 61–2, 92n29–31 Warton, Thomas 73–4, 93n51–3, 94n59 Watts, George Frederick 143 West, Benjamin vii, 83, 107–117, 143, 146, 149, 152, 160–1 Westall, Richard 122, 125, 138n78 Westminster, Palace of 32, 65, 71–2, 93, 140–3, 146–9, 173 Wilson Jacob 2, 8 Wilson, Richard 17n47, 18 Wolfe, James, general: Death of 83, 102, 107, 108, 112, 116, 148, 150, 152, 175 Wolsey, Thomas, cardinal: resigning the Great Seal 35, 72, 159, 174 Woolf, Daniel 7, 15n21 Woollett, William 116, 137n61 Wren, Christopher 128 Wren, Stephen 19–20 Yeates, Nicholas 64 Zoffany, Johann 6 Zograscopes 47–8