Extremely Rare Pattern Book with a Suite of Eight Etchings by Hollar
BARLOW, [Francis].
Barlow’s Birds and Beasts, in sixty-seven excellent and useful Prints, being a Collection of the chief Works of that eminent Master, and engraved by Himself, Hollar, Place, &c., all drawn from the Life, shewing in their natural and peculiar Attitudes a vast Variety of Birds, Fowls, and Beasts [engraved title: Various Birds and Beasts, drawn from the Life]. London, Carington Bowles, [John Bowles, and Robert Sayer], [1775].
Oblong folio, f. [1 (title)], with 67 numbered plates; pl. 1 an engraved title, pll. 17, 29, and 41 engraved part-titles; date neatly erased, very small marginal paperflaw to pl. 1, light foxing and spotting to a few plates, otherwise an excellent copy; bound in modern mottled calf to period style, spine richly gilt in compartments with gilt green morocco lettering-piece, edges gilt, marbled endpapers; hieroglyphic booklabel (‘𓃭𓄿𓈖𓎡’) to front free endpaper.
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Barlow’s Birds and Beasts, in sixty-seven excellent and useful Prints, being a Collection of the chief Works of that eminent Master, and engraved by Himself, Hollar, Place, &c., all drawn from the Life, shewing in their natural and peculiar Attitudes a vast Variety of Birds, Fowls, and Beasts [engraved title: Various Birds and Beasts, drawn from the Life].
An extremely rare edition of this drawing-book collecting several suites of plates by or after Francis Barlow, with a particularly fine suite of etchings by Wenceslaus Hollar.
Barlow (1626–c. 1704) was famed in his own day for his depictions of nature, though his reputation has suffered since, probably because he left no recognisable ‘school’ behind him. In his lifetime he attracted the attention of Pepys, that ‘ardent connoisseur’ of English art, and Evelyn records visiting Barlow ‘the famous paynter of fowle beasts and birds’ in his diary for 16 February 1656, though he later denied Barlow’s requests for patronage.
Barlow’s works are advertised in the Bowles catalogue under ‘drawing books’, thus serving a functional purpose as part of a long-established tradition of pattern-books. These were designed for journeyman artists and artisans, including engravers, goldsmiths, sculptors, embroiderers, and ceramicists, providing them with examples of species both mundane and quite exotic, faithfully copied from life. The third series, Animals of various Species accurately drawn, sees two instances of Barlow doing his own etching, for which he was often apologetic, after paintings by the Dutch Old Masters Roelandt Savery and Frans Snyders.
This edition is a reissue of an earlier edition of sixty-seven plates published c. 1760 (ESTC N37423, recording three copies only, of which one defective), also by Carington Bowles but under the aegis of his father, as ‘John Bowles and Son’, alongside his uncle Thomas Bowles and Robert Sayer. Most of the plates collected here would have been in Sayer’s possession (the second suite, Diversae avium species, has been partially erased and re-engraved with his name alone) through his connection with the Overton family, for whom he had worked as general manager and into which his brother James had married in 1747; his father-in-law John Overton had published certain of Barlow’s works in the artist’s lifetime, likewise etched by Hollar, including an edition of Diversae avium species issued in 1666. The general engraved title-page, which had previously been used by John Bowles for the first suite of plates, Various Birds and Beasts (listed in his catalogue of 1753 as ‘eight large plates’), is taken from a series originally published in 1686 by Edward Cooper, entitled Illustrissimo heroi Richardo Domino Maitland for its dedicatee. It has been partially erased and here re-engraved to reflect the new commercial partnership of Carington and John Bowles (now at separate addresses) and Robert Sayer.
ESTC B32668, recording three copies only (Natural History Museum, Beinecke, and University of Kansas).