A Note upon Morland Engravings 



colour, realised £127! From 1790 to 1806 there was a steady output of some 

 twenty prints a year ; among the more important engravers, besides those already 

 mentioned, being P. D. Soiron with St. James's Park, A Tea Garden, etc., 

 S. W. Reynolds with Fishermen Going Out, Paying the Horse Seller, etc., E. Bell 

 and VV. Nutter. It is after all to Ward and Smith that Morland owes most. Their 

 mezzotints and stipple engravings are full of sympathy and sweetness. For the 

 lover of coloured prints nothing can surpass a fine proof of Smith's Fishermen or 

 Selling Fish, Ward's Last Litter or The Effects of Youthful Extravagance, but the 

 proofs must have all their first sparkle and life and brilliancy. Beside a genuine 

 original, a copy that has been touched up in the secret atelier of the modern dealer, 

 its every pore clogged with added colour, looks like a painted lady of the town 

 beside a fresh country maid. Like the young lady in the well-known poem, when a 

 colour print is good, it is very, very good, but when it is bad, it is horrid. 



Poor Morland lived before the days of copyright, and it is to be feared that he 

 profited little or nothing by the extensive sale of these engravings. His pictures 

 were sold off the reel for ten, twenty, or thirty pounds down. Their painter took 

 no further interest in them, and the dealer who became their fortunate possessor 

 reaped a handsome profit. Appended to Hassell's Memoirs of the Life of George 

 Morland, published in 1806, is a catalogue of some two hundred engravings, which 

 "are to be had on applying to James Cundee, Ivy Lane, Paternoster Row." The 

 prices range from half-a-crown to a guinea, though the latter price is rare, fifteen 

 shillings being a fair average ; " proofs and coloured prints are always charged 

 double." It makes one's mouth vi^ater to think of coloured proofs of the whole 

 Letitia series for £4 10s., of Delia in Town and Delia in the Country for thirty 

 shillings, of Ward's Aleliouse Door for fifteen 1 Even at this low price the publisher 

 got a noble return for his original investment, for, as we have seen, he could reckon 

 on selling at least five hundred copies with ease. 



While the publisher made large profits, it remains one of the ironies of fate that 

 Morland rarely received above £20 for one of his pictures, a price that now-a-days 

 any good mezzotint after his work would be certain to obtain. Within the last 

 three years the St. jfames's Par/i and A Tea Garden, by Soiron, have fetched 

 £183 15s. for the pair; The Visit to the Boarding School and The Child at Nurse, 

 by W. Ward, £136 10s. ; Children Fishing and Children Gathering Blackberries, by 

 G. Dawe. £105; A Party Angling, by G. Keating, £79 16s.; Contemplation, a very 

 rare print by W. Ward, £252; and the same engraver's Coquette at her Toilet, £126. 

 It is unnecessary to multiply examples. To some extent the low price he received 

 was Morland's own fault. His contemporary, Blagdon, tells us that " as many 

 excellent imitations of his drawings were also engraved at this time by Mr. Orme, 

 they promoted a demand for his works to such a degree that pencil sketches, made 

 in about an hour, were sold at auctions for nine and ten guineas each, but it must 

 be acknowledged that the artist himself did not gain the whole advantage, as he 

 still refused to sell his works to those who would give him a fair price, but only to 

 such as would associate and get drunk with him and his low companions." It is 



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