Tag Archives: Watercolors

Designs for Georgian playing cards

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Three playing cards, or transformation cards, drawn in pen and ink by an unidentified artist, showing caricatured figures using the shape of the pip, only hearts or diamonds (red watercolor) in this incomplete set. One of the cards (two hearts) features two gentlemen meeting. The other two cards (three of diamonds) feature a lady with a fan and two gentleman in one card; the other incomplete, has a lady with a fan and only one gentleman.

 

  • Title: [Designs for Georgian playing cards] [art original].
  • Production: [England], [between 1800 and 1820?]

Catalog Record

Drawings Un58 no. 96

Acquired August 2022

Soldier with an arrow in his chest

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A soldier, possibly from the English Civil War, looks with shock towards an arrow embedded in his chest. He sits, surrounded by foliage, holding a dagger in his right hand.

 

  • Creator: Bunbury, Henry William, 1750-1811, artist.
  • Title: [Soldier with an arrow in his chest] [art original].
  • Production: [England], [1780s?]

Catalog Record

Drawer Drawings B87 no. 31

Acquired November 2022

The one-eyed husband, or, The wife’s dream

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A scene in a chamber with the end of canopy bed visible in the background, left. A woman in her undergarments, a candlestick in the foreground positioned suggestively between her legs, reaches out to cover her husband’s one good eye as he walks through the front door; behind her, her lover escapes undetected with his clothes over his arm. Outside, through the open door, a servant can be seen leading a horse, with a barn across the yard. To the right of the door, a chamber pot sits on a ladder-back chair with a hat and a fiddle hanging off pegs on the wall above.

 

  • Creator: Rowlandson, Thomas, 1756-1827, artist.
  • Title: [The one-eyed husband, or, The wife’s dream] [art original] / T. Rowlandson.
  • Production: [England], [late 18th century?]

Catalog Record

Drawings R79 no. 21 Box D207

Acquired November 2022

Designs for transformation playing cards

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Four drawings, each depicting a different character with their face in the form of a heart: a man drinking; a man with a pipe; a violinist; and an elegant lady.
Eleven drawings, each depicting a different character with their face in the form of a heart: a man playing a flute; a dour-looking cleryman; a coachman; a vendor wearing a turban; a man in a tricorne hat; an obese man in an armchair with medicine on a side table; a man smoking a pipe. Also two cards wtih older woman clutching a blanket around her shoulders; a pretty young women with a highly decorated hat with feathers and her hands in a muff; and, a female ballad sheet vendor.

 

  • Artist: Dubuisson, Elizabeth, artist.
  • Title: [Designs for transformation playing cards] [art original].
  • Production: [England], [approximately 1830]

Catalog Record

Drawings D821 no. 1

Acquired December 2022

Lucy Waters

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Half-length portrait of Lucy Walter, turned slightly left and looking at the viewer; wearing a pearl necklace, pearl earings, and a blue gown adorned with strings of pearls.

 

  • Artist: Harding, G. P. (George Perfect), 1780-1853, artist.
  • Title: Lucy Waters [art original] / G.P.H. delt.
  • Production: [England], [approximately 1800]

Catalog Record

Drawings H263 no. 7 Box D125

Acquired October 2022

High life below stairs

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“Interior of a kitchen showing servants at leisure: a stout woman dances with a black man in the centre accompanied by a man with a wooden leg who sits playing a violin on the left; watched by others on the right, a young woman standing on a chair and supported by a young man, while a seated man wearing a tricorn smiles and points at her and an elderly woman stands with her arms folded under her apron, a dog at her heels; two posters pasted on the wall behind, shelves, bellows and other kitchen implements in the background.”–British Museum online catalogue, description of a print of the same design.

 

  • Artist: Grose, Francis, 1731?-1791, artist.
  • Title: [High life below stairs] [art original].
  • Production: [England], [not after 1767]

Catalog Record

Drawings G877 no. 1 Box D205

Acquired October 2022

View of the Twickenham bank of the Thames

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A view from Richmond of the Twickenham bank of the Thames, showing (left to right) Pope’s villa, Lady Ferrers’ summer house, Cross Deep, and Dr. Batty’s house (later Poulett Lodge).

  • Creator: Heckel, Augustin, approximately 1690-1770, artist.
  • Title: [View of the Twickenham bank of the Thames] [art original].
  • Production: [England], [ca. 1750]

Catalog Record

Drawings H448 no.1

Acquired February 2022

Sir Henry Holland papers, 1805-1868

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handwritten text

Eight manuscript volumes: Essays on various subjects written at Univesity while at Glasgow, 1805-1806; copies of letters from Portugal 1812; Journal in Spain 1813; Journal in Lombardy, Austria, Prussia 1815; Sketchbook 1815; Journal in the north of Italy and France 1816; Journal to Spain1818; Diary 1830-1843. Also with two copies of Holland’s publication, General view of the agriculture of Cheshire (1808) and two issues of his Recollections of past life (1868).

  • Author: Holland, Henry, Sir, 1788-1873, author.
  • Title: Sir Henry Holland papers, 1805-1868 (bulk 1812-1843).

Catalog Record

LWL MSS 41

Acquired September 2021

A set of transformation playing cards

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hand drawn playing cards

A presumably incomplete set of ten transformation playing cards, drawn by Thomas Dyer, with caricatured figures of his family as stated in a 1852 note by William Hylton Dyer Longstaffe mounted to the side of the 3 of hearts. Each figure is drawn to incorporate the shape of a heart, diamond, or spade and then tipped onto brown card. Some of the cards were copied or adapted from the Nixon-Fuller set which was published circa 1811; one, for example, shows two men seated across a table with a candle jug and pipe resting upon it, which according to Longstaffe’s note features a self-portrait by Thomas Dyer (smoking) and a portrait of his father William Charles Dyer (either snoozing or contemplating). Other cards represent a range of subjects: a courtroom drama, guardsmen, two seated women (one of whom is reading to the other), a man with a goatee beard, a clergyman holding a baby and a couple standing on either side of him, and a scene with two people playing cards. Other Longstaffe’s notes provide the provenance and custodial history of the cards; “I beg your acceptance of the enclosed. The drawings on the cards are by the late Thomas Dyer caricaturing his family. Charles Dyer to me, 27 Dec. 1852.” Another note reads: “‘I beg your acceptance of the enclosed cards, which I only found this morning. They belong to the former ones I sent. Thomas Dyer gave them to his Aunt Elizabeth, from thence they descended to my aunt Emma.’ Charles H. Dyer to me, 5 Mr. 1853.”
The set also includes a full-length portrait of a Georgian gentleman, drawn on an oval piece of paper that has been mounted to a rectangular card mount with gold paper.

  • Artist: Dyer, Thomas, approximately 1783-1852, artist.
  • Title: [A set of transformation playing cards] [art original].
  • Production: [England], [between 1815 and 1820?]

Catalog Record

Drawings D996 no.1

Acquired October 2021

Thomas Sutton commonplace book

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manuscript notebook

A commonplace book kept by Thomas Sutton starting on 5 November 1819 in which he records anecdotes, quotations, epigrams, drinking toasts, many directly related to his home Nottingham and indicate the pride he feels in its history and people. He begins with a passage from John Blackner’s “The history of Nottingham” (1815) extolling the virtue of Nottingham men with a passage recounting an episode during the Glorious Revolution of 1688, followed by several passages from a range of sources in praise of Nottingham and its men, prominent political figures — Lord Grafton, Lord Dundas, Thomas Paine — and stories of local personalities. Nottingham ale warrants several pages of discourse. He provides a lengthy account of a canal boat accident, which is illustrated with a line-drawn plan followed by an extract from Christian Ignatiyus Latrobe’s Journal of a visit to South Africa in 1815 and 1816 about the destruction done by wolves at Groenekloof and the attempt of the missionaries and the native people to hunt them down and a confrontation with a tiger. Also included are copies of four letters sent by his uncle Charles Peck relating to his volunteering for an expedition to the Congo with Major Peddie, his trip along the River Gambia to Senegal, and a letter from Sierra Leone announcing his uncle’s death with a discussion of the money due him from the expedition. The remaining bulk of the volume contains excerpts from The Nottingham Review, toasts, poems by Pope, Thomas Paine, Robert Burns, Thomas Moore; comical stories as well as political events including the death of King George III. He provides a detailed, alphabetic list of the towns, boroughs, and remarkable villages in England and Wales. He relates a story about a wager laid by Colly Cibber and Pope; a woman named Jenny Hickling of Nottingham, bedridden for 61 years and other stories that piqued his attention. His interest in Africa continues in 1823 when he copies several pages from Campbell’s Travels in Africa.

  • Author: Sutton, Thomas, author.
  • Title: Thomas Sutton commonplace book : manuscript.
  • Production: Nottingham, England, 1819-1826.

Catalog Record

LWL Mss vol. 266

Acquired July 2021