Cicero at his Villa after Wilson may be bought in fine state for £3.
William Sharp, who associated himself with that notorious impostor, Richard Brothers, who founded a peculiar sect of which he was the "Prince," produced some fine plates. His John Kemble, with elbow on table, in fine state, is worth £2 2s. George Washington, proof before letters, sells for slightly more. He also did portraits of Brothers and of Joanna Southcott, a similar religious impostor.
John Keyse Sherwin (1751-1790) was an excellent engraver, and his prints in fine state bring rather high prices. The Fortune Teller after Reynolds, if fine, sells for £7; his Mrs. Abingdon after Reynolds, if open-letter proof, is worth over £12; but some of his lesser known prints, in good condition, may easily be procured for 5s. or a little more.
There is no end to the eighteenth century as a quarry for the poor collector. He wisely leaves mezzotints, and colour prints, and stipple engravings to the world of fashion. Mr. Throgmorton Ghouley buys his mezzotint at a record price, which is duly recorded in the halfpenny press, and Mr. Plantagenet Gorgon makes a corner in colour prints. Sumptuous art magazines live on eighteenth-century illustrations, and enterprising amateurs bring out costly volumes filled with splendid illustrations surrounded with less illuminating letterpress, but there is still a margin of thousands of prints left for the discriminating collector who has to make his tale of bricks, as did the Israelites when in Egypt, without straw.
There are crowds of prints finely executed in line
