Page:Chats on old prints (IA chatsonoldprints00haydiala).pdf/261

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classicism was in the air, and we heartily thank Benjamin West, the American Quaker, for painting for the first time in his Death of General Wolfe, British soldiers in modern uniforms. It is not then to be wondered that most of the line engravings betray this keynote. In the illustration we reproduce of The Embarkment after De Loutherbourg, engraved by Victor M. Picot, a French engraver whom Ryland recruited to join Boydell's school of interpreters; this taste is fully exhibited. The ruined temple never left art till after Wilson's day; it is as pronounced as the grim figure of Death, the Jester, in sixteenth-century masters, the white horse of Wouvermans, or the brown tree of the landscape school prior to Constable.

William Hogarth (1697-1764) stands in the forefront of the eighteenth century as a painter in depicting its manners and satirising its vices. Himself a line engraver of no ordinary power, he has left some fine prints as a record of his skill with the graver. Morning and Noon, from the series, The Four Times of the Day; the set of four, first states, is worth £2 5s. Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn is another of his line engravings: it may be bought in fair condition for less than half a sovereign. His portraits of John Wilkes and Simon, Lord Lovat, are both etchings. It was not long before Hogarth called in a group of French engravers to work on his plates. At first, as in Chairing the Members, he assisted himself with F. Aviline, and in The Roast Beef of Old England with Charles Mosley; but the March of the Guards towards Scotland, 1745, known