| Title: |
John Milton, Age 21 |
| Artist: |
Gardiner, William Nelson (Dublin, 1766 - London, 1814) |
| Date: |
1794 |
| Medium: |
Original Stipple Engraving and Etching |
| Publisher |
John and Josiah Boydell & George Nicol, London |
| Source: |
The Poetical Works of John Milton |
| Note: |
William Nelson Gardiner: An Irish engraver, William Nelson Gardiner studied
art techniques at the Dublin Academy. Around 1790 he came to London and
became a principal assistant to Francesco Bartolozzi. Working under Bartolozzi,
William Gardiner engraved plates for Harding's Shakespeare, De Grammont's Memoirs
and Diana Beauclerk's illustrations to Dryden's Fables. William Gardiner also engraved
important plates after Bunbury, Hamilton and Francis Wheatley. His portraits,
in particular, were highly sought after by major publishers such as Boydell. |
| |
Despite his obvious talents as an engraver, it is reported that William Nelson Gardiner
led a restless life. Near the year 1800 he returned to Dublin and is said
to have squandered all his money. He then studied at Cambridge with the
view of taking orders. When these studies proved unsuccessful, William Gardiner
became a bookseller in London. Finally, in 1814, this once fine engraver
took his life by suicide. |
| |
A Biographical Note: John Boydell is easily
one of England's most remarkable 18th century personalities. Born in poverty,
he began his career as an at best mediocre engraver of small book plates. At
this time England was at a very low ebb as a serious centre for the visual arts
(particularly engraving) and Boydell sought to eradicate this situation by beginning
a second career as a publisher of fine prints. Modest initial experiments in the 1760's
led to a rapid expansion of his business and during the 1770's he published his striking
series of mezzotint engravings, Liber Veritas, engraved by Richard
Earlom after the drawings of Claude Lorrain. This ambitious undertaking
put England back on the printmaking map and was a huge financial success for John Boydell. |
| |
Boydell had now established London as a major centre for the arts and this once poor and struggling engraver/publisher was acknowledged for his efforts by being elected no less than Lord Mayor of London, in 1791. The same year marked the beginning of Boydell's most grandiose undertaking. His new publishing establishment in Pall Mall, the 'Shakspeare Gallery', began by commissioning the most esteemed painters and engravers in the country to create and design large and expensive engravings based upon the plays and life of William Shakespeare. By this time as well John Boydell's nephew, Josiah Boydell (1752-1817), had joined the firm. |
| |
This monumental venture continued until John Boydell's death thirteen years later. By that time, the Shakespeare Gallery had created and published one hundred and seventy engravings on a grand scale. Alas, the expenses for this vast project had been so large that England's foremost publisher of art ended his life the way he began, dying penniless. Note: During that period, William Shakespeare's name was also spelt, 'Shakspeare', thus the spelling for Boydell's (Shakespeare Gallery) appears printed as 'Shakspeare Gallery'. |
| |
At this time England's other great literary giant, John Milton, was
honoured by Boydell. The Poetical Works of John Milton was published in
three parts in 1794, 1795 and 1797. Sparing no expense, Boydell commissioned
George Romney to design a portrait plate and Richard Westall to design
images illustrating each part of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained as
well as the more famous individual poems. The engravers included Richard
Earlom, Thomas Kirk, J. P. Simon, Benjamin Smith, M. Haughton, William
Nelson Gardiner, Dutterau and John Ogborne. |
| |
Unlike the Shakespeare engravings, the Milton prints were constructed
almost solely in the stipple technique. Stippling reached its golden age
in late eighteenth century England. The technique was promoted and taught
by Francesco Bartolozzi (Florence, Italy, 1727 - Lisbon, Portugal, 1815). Many of the above mentioned engravers
were among his finest students. Briefly, stippling was a tonal method where
the image was created not with solid lines but with a multitude of dots
or flicks. Under a master's hand, stippling magnificently captured tonal
values by contrasting areas of light and shade. Unfortunately it was most
laborious and quickly became extinct with advances in aquatint engraving
in the early nineteenth century. Yet to this day some of the most subtle
and sensual engravings in the history of British art belong to the stipple
engravers of the late eighteenth century. |
| |
John Milton (British, 1608 - 1674): John Milton is considered one of England's most significant poets. He created such masterworks as "Paradise Lost", "Samson Agonistes" and "Comus". Milton was first admitted to St. Paul's School and at the age of fifteen, he entered Christ's College with the intention of becoming a priest in the Church of England, a vocation he later rejected. According to the Poetical works of John Milton edited by David Masson, M.A. LL.D., Professor of Rhetoric and English literature in the University of Edinburgh, Volume 1, published by Macmillan and Co., New York 1890, Milton wrote various poems in 1626, such as Elegia Prima, Elegia Tertia, Elegia Secunda, and continued this set with Elegia Quarta (1627), Elegia Quinta (1627), Elegia Septima (1828) , and others. in 1626, two years before receiving his bachelor of arts and master of arts degrees, Milton wrote his first major English poem, On the Death of a Fair Infant, Dying of the Cough. The poem relates to the death of his infant sister's death. On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, was written in 1629. John Milton left Cambridge University in 1632 and that same year, he composed the finest and most classic of his minor English poems. L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, followed by Arcades (1633), Comus (1634), first published under the title, A Masque, Presented at Ludlow Castle, and Lycidas in (1637) written after the death of his former fellow collegian at Cambridge, Edward King. By 1952, Milton was totally blind. Inspired by the biblical story of the Creation, the fall of Adam and Eve, the rebellion of Satan against God and Satan cast out of heaven, John Milton had his great epic, Paradise Lost published in 1667, a masterpiece which tells of the fall of Satan and the rebel angels, and that of Adam and Eve, etc. In 1671, a continuation to Milton's last great work, a shorter epic and supplement to Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, which tells of Satan's temptation of Christ in the desert and the rejection by Jesus of Satan's temptation. John Milton wrote a few more works before his death, they include, Samson Agonistes which is believed to go back to the 1640's or may be one of his last works, Art of Logic (1672), Of True Religion (1673), and the year he died, 1674, he wrote Epistolae Familiares. |
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The British Museum has a portrait of Milton as a young man, Registration number 1895,0617.480. Although the portrait is similar, the etching is not the same as to G. B. Cipriani's Milton portrait originally created for John Toland's Life of Milton published in 1761, surrounded by the oval wreath of oak with the Liberty Bell centered at the bottom, W. N. Gardiner's portrait is displayed within a simple oval frame, lettered with the title by "Aetat 21", and production detail, "W. N. Gardiner Sculpt / From the Original Picture in the Possession of Lord Onslow at Clandon in Surrey / Purchased from the Executor of Milton's Widow by Arthur Onslow Esqr speaker of the House of Commons as certified in his own hand writing on the back of the picture /Published June 4 1794 by John and Josiah Boydell & Geo. Nicol. The Onslow portrait painting of Milton at the age of twenty one was created by an unknown artist. It remained with John Milton's third wife. According to the words of George Vertue, the engraver, "This picture of Milton was painted in oil, had been in the family till the death of Milton's third wife..." It was eventually sold to The Hon. Arthur Onslowe, Speaker of the House of Commons. The whereabouts of the original painting are now unknown. According to the Exhibition Catalogue of the Commemorative of the Tercentenary of the Birth of John Milton 1608-1908, there were several engravings created after that painting, the first was George Virtue (1732), followed by Jacobus Houbraken (1741), Giovanni Battista Cipriani (1760) with some very rare impressions printed on green paper for Thomas Hollis and William Nelson Gardiner's portrait engraving is also listed as published in John and Josiah Boydell's 1794, first edition of The Poetical Works of John Milton. |
| Size: |
10 1/2 X 7 1/2 (Sizes in inches are approximate,
height preceding width of plate-mark or image.) |
| |
Matted with 100% Archival Materials |
| Condition: |
Printed upon late eighteenth century wove paper and with full margins as published by Boydell in London in 1794. It is lettered with the title, "John MIlton, Aetat 21", and includes the production detail, "W. N. Gardiner Sculpt / From the Original Picture in the Possesion of Lord Onslow at Clandon in Surry / Purchased from the Executoer of Milton's Widow by Arthur Onslow Esqr speaker of the House of Commons as certified in his own hand writing on the back of the picture /Published June 4 1794 by John and Josiah Boydell & George Nicol" below the imageContaining slight scuffing and spotting in the outer margins else a fine, early impression and in very good condition throughout. This original etching and stipple engraving, entitled John Milton, Age 21, represents a prime, original example of the eighteenth century portrait art of William Nelson Gardiner. |
| Price: |
Sold - The price is no longer available. |
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