88 



THOMAS BEWICK. 



These were undertaken for a small sum, and are not remarkable for brilliancy 

 of execution, but are interesting as being favourable examples of Bewick's 

 work on copper — a method he neither liked nor was familiar with. The 

 workmanship, indeed, is very peculiar, for the prints are not like copper-plate 

 work in the usual sense of the term. A specimen of such a plate, executed 

 for J. Headlam, is given on the next page. The technique is bolder, freer, 

 and less conventional, and more like careful etching than engraving, although 

 the happy phrase which has been attached to them, "wood engraving on 

 copper," describes them best. 



The plates are in some cases unsigned, some are signed by Bewick, and 

 others by Beilby and Bewick. The Reindeer and the Midnight Sun are 

 marked " T. B." The Lapland Girls and the view at Upsal (or Upsala, as 

 it should be, and as it is called in the letterpress, though the last vowel is 

 wanting in the title on the plate) are not signed, while the Birds are signed 

 " B. & B." The birds represented are the Hierpe (female Willow Grouse), 

 the Kader (Wood Grouse), the Orre (Blackcock), and the Snoripa (Willow 

 Grouse). The Lapland girls were brought to England, and lived at Ravens- 

 worth Castle, where Bewick sketched their portraits from life, and they were 

 afterwards sent back to their native land "in comparative opulence." 

 Upsal and the Midnight Sun were taken from pictures at Ravensworth by 

 Martin, a Swedish painter. 



Several interesting details about this tour are given in Fox's " Synopsis of 

 the Newcastle Museum " (1827), where it is said that the most remarkable 

 result of the expedition was the importation from Lapland of five or six 

 reindeer. These lived some time at Eslington Park, near Whittingham, 

 where for a time they throve well and bred — a circumstance contrary to the 

 opinion of Buffon and other naturalists, though the result justified their 

 belief in so far that the young deer died before long. It was one of 

 these reindeer that furnished the figure of the animal for the Tour and 

 for the Quadrupeds, but in the latter case the horns were drawn from a 



