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Honnold Library Record: Rowlandson's Color-Plate Books
From the Honnold Library Record, Volume 3, Number 1. Spring 1960:
Dr. Syntax Made Free Of The Cellar
from Rowlandson's Tour of Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque.Rowlandson's Color-Plate Books
Among the more charming and colorful of the books in the Library are the color-plate books of Thomas Rowlandson. During the seventeenth century the Dutch had supplied Europe with caricatures and cartoons, as indeed they had supplied Europe with most articles, but during the latter half of the eighteenth century the great source of pictorial political and social satire was England.
This was the age of Hogarth, James Gillray, and Thomas Rowlandson, as well as that of numerous less talented men. In the drawings of Rowlandson the elegance of the eighteenth century appears less elegant than it does in literature. It was an age of overeating and excessive drinking, the results of which Rowlandson makes completely apparent.
One of the most successful efforts of this artist was The Tour of Doctor Syntax in Search of the Picturesque, a poem written by William Combe and illustrated by Rowlandson. In the preface of the first volume, the author explains that the plates and the poem originally appeared monthly in The Poetical Magazine, that a drawing was sent to him each month, and that he attempted to compose a certain number of lines to go with each drawing.
"When the first print was sent to me," Combe says, "I did not know what would be the subject of the second, and in this manner, in a great measure, the artist continued designing, and 1 continued writing, every month for two years, 'til a work containing near ten thousand lines was produced; the artist and the writer having no personal communication with or knowledge of each other."
Although this way of working did not result in the best poetry, it certainly resulted in some amusing drawings by Rowlandson. In addition to the three volumes of Dr. Syntax, the Library also possesses other Rowlandson books, The English Dance of Death, The Adventures of Johnny Newcome in the Navy, An Academy for Grown Horsemen, and a number of others.
The library has also a number of other color-plate volumes of this period, by artists influenced by Rowlandson or imitators of him. This collection is a valuable addition to the library's materials on both social and art history.
The materials mentioned here are located in Special Collections and are listed in Blais, the online catalog. For more information, contact Special Collections.
What is the Honnold Library Record?
The Honnold Library Record, published from 1958 until 1975, was the publication of the Honnold Library Society, the friends of the library group, founded in 1954. All the issues of the Honnold Library Record are available online in the CCDL in the Honnold Library Record Collection.
— michael | January 17, 2007 01:24 PM | The more you know
