General Portraits

24x37 cm

Simon Lord Lovat | Drawn from the life and Etch’d in Aquafortis by Will.^m Hogarth, | Published according to Act of Parliament August 25^th 1746.
The Works of William Hogarth, from the Original Plates restored by James Heath…London: Printed for Baldwin & Cradock, Paternoster Row, by G. Woodall, Angel Court, Skinner Street.
William Hogarth (1697-1764), apprenticed as an engraver, became the most signifiant artist and printmaker of his time, his satirical caricatures and political cartoons establishing the genre. From 1730 Hogarth established his own business publishing and selling his own prints. After his death his plates passed to his wife Jane who continued issuing his prints until her own death in 1789. The plates were then acquired by publisher John Boydell and sold again, at the Boydell bankruptcy sale in 1818 to Baldwin & Cradock who began selling prints from 1820. Noted engraver James Heath was employed to strengthen some of the engravings and prints from this issue are in their final states. This edition, printed in 1822 on fine quality Whatman  wove paper, is considered the last good printing of Hogarth’s engraved works.
Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, Scottish Jacobite nicknamed ‘The Fox’, drawn by Hogarth in The White Hart Inn at St Albans on his way to trial in London for treason after his defeat at the battle of Culloden in 1746. He is shown counting on his fingers the Highland Chieftans whom he thought would fight the Hanoverian forces. He was convicted and sentenced to death and was the last man in Britain to be executed by beheading.

Large paper (49x63) has some spotting at edges and repaired tear to bottom edge but no closer than 5cm to plate edge which remains clean and crisp.