The Volumes:
Howitt's 'A New Work of Animals', a series of copper engravings “principally designed from the fables of Aesop, Gay and Phaedrus”, an album of animal portraits is presented in a prefatory note as a new venture that “strange as it may appear, has never before been done by any British artist”.
Howitt “has preferred representing most of the animals in fables, as allowing more scope for delineating the expression, the character and the passions,” and he hopes that, by being "studious to attain correctness, he may deserve the approbation of the natural historian" and instruct fellow painters. This will explain why, out of a hundred plates, only 56 illustrate fables, the rest being of other animals.
The collection was published in 1811, but some of the individual etchings are dated from 1809, suggesting that he may have sold them as individual works of art prior to Orme's publishing.
It as much-beloved series of wonderful etchings, with copies held by important museums.
The Author:
William Curtis (11 January 1746 – 7 July 1799) was an English botanist and entomologist, who was born at Alton, Hampshire, site of the Curtis Museum. Curtis began as an apothecary, before turning his attention to botany and other natural history. He was demonstrator of plants and Praefectus Horti at the Chelsea Physic Garden from 1771 to 1777. He established his own London Botanic Garden at Lambeth in 1779, moving to Brompton in 1789. He published the Flora Londinensis (6 volumes, 1777–1798), a pioneering work. he went on the publish The Botanical Magazine in 1787, a work that would also feature beautiful hand colored octavo-sized plates by artists such as James Sowerby and Sydenham Edwards. The Botanical Magazine was & remains immensely popular.
The Artists:
Samuel Howitt (1756/57–1822) was an English painter, illustrator and etcher of animals, hunting, horse-racing and landscape scenes. He worked in both oils and watercolors. Coming to London, he was for a time a drawing master at Samuel Goodenough's school in Ealing. In 1783, he exhibited 3 coloured drawings of hunting subjects with the Incorporated Society of Artists. From time to time he continued to exhibit there and at the Royal Academy. His etchings from this volume became some of his most classic works.
The Prints & Technique:
In traditional pure etching, a metal plate (usually of copper) is covered with a waxy ground which is resistant to acid. The artist then scibes the drawing by hand with a pointed etching needle where the artist wants a line to appear in the finished piece, exposing the bare metal.
The plate is then dipped in a bath of acid, known as the mordant (French for "biting") or etchant, or has acid washed over it. The acid then "bites" into the metal to a depth depending on time and acid strength, leaving behind the drawing (as carved into the wax) on the metal plate. The remaining ground is then cleaned off the plate.
For first and renewed uses the plate is inked in any chosen non-corrosive ink all over and the surface ink drained and wiped clean, leaving ink in the etched forms. The plate is then put through a high-pressure printing press together with a sheet of paper The paper picks up the ink from the etched lines, making a print.
Condition:
Appears to be in Superb condition for a centuries-old engraving. The paper is in near excellent shape, about as clean as these go, the gorgeous wove cotton handmade paper has very little age-toning at the edjes, a hint of faint foxing outside the image, & the typical minor artifacts from its life as a beloved bookplate.
These prints are very old & may have imperfections expected with age, such as age-toning of the paper, spots, text-offsetting, artifacts from having been bound into a book, etc. Please examine the photos & details carefully.
Text Page(s):
This one comes without its original page of text.
Size:
8-1/2 x 11 inches approximately.
Combined Shipping:
Yes! Multiple prints combine into one package. Ebay's shopping cart should auto-combine shipping if you put all your selections in your cart & chack-out at once. If you purchase multiple prints & are assessed more than one shipping, or if the cart check-out doesn't auto-combine, I'll endeavor to refund any overage asap.
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Please note: The information I've included in this listing is based on my best research as an enthusiast of these works, not a professional historian of antiquarian books & prints. I like to research & offer some background information about these works which is readily available to me, but I make no claims of total accuracy. Any corrections or further information you might offer would certainly appreciated! The scans in the images are my best efforts to accurately show the item. Antique prints & old paper are notoriously tricky to scan accurately. In my experience, scanners tend to be thrown off by the off-whites & gradations in age-toned paper. If the scanner produces a scan that's too dark or the colors are off, etc, I'll often try to reasonably color-correct to represent the print more as accurately as I'm reasonably able, although I'm not a professional in color-correcting images. I also find that different monitors show colors differently, & eBay's system can sometimes throw off the colors a bit in the uploaded jpeg images as they appear on their site. Thank you!