Two volumes of engraved portraits of notable, mostly British, statesmen, academics, churchmen, authors, and actors taken from 18th- and 19th-century publications. Many of the portraits have been carefully trimmed around the figure, with the title mount below and the page annotated with the birth and death dates of the subject. Others have been trimmed carefully to remove the background but preserve the frames. The arrangement of volume one with the spine label “Portraits” is unclear: the first portraits are removed and missing (although some laid in prints may have been removed from their mounts) and some volumes leaves have been cut out, but the first of the surviving approximately 90 portraits is of Robert South S.T.P. by George Vertue (publisher in 1715 by Jonah Bowyer) followed by a portrait of John Tillotson Dean of Canterbury and Archibishop and James Bradley D.D. third astronomer royal (1692– 1762) and then Mrs. Griffith, Mrs. Charlotte Smith, John Bigland (schoolmaster turned author), Richard Chenevix Bishop of Waterford (1698-1779) and other 18th-century figures Included are portraits of Samuel Johnson, David Garrick, Mrs. Oldfield, Mrs. Lessingham, Mrs. Davenport, Madame Mara, Benjamin Franklin, Edmund Burke, and Lord Byron as well as other notable authors and playwrights. Toward the end is a portrait of Joseph Vernet (à la poupée); Grose the antiquarian and a vignette of an artist with a book “Sketches from nature”. The second volume with the spine label “Players” begins with a newspaper clipping “Anecdote of Garrick in the character of Lear” followed by pages from which prints have been removed but the volume contains approximately 50 prints (some with color) of the men and women of the London stage in the 18th and early 19th centuries, mostly in character.
- Creator: Bailly, R. C., collector.
- Title: [Portraits and players] [graphic].
- Production: [England], [not after 1810?]
724 810B
Acquired September 2021
