Sartain's Original Engraved Steel Plate Of Charlotte Brontë Portrait Comes To Market

by Stephen J. Gertz

The plate.
(Image surrounding engraved oval is a reflection off the plate while photographed).

The original steel plate of the mezzotint portrait of Charlotte Brontë engraved by John Sartain has surfaced.

Sartain (1808-1897), known as the "father of mezzotint engraving" in the U.S., produced the portrait, engraved after George Richmond's famous portrait in chalk, in Philadelphia c. 1857.

The 10 1/4 x 7 inch beveled steel plate, engraved with Sartain's signature (verso with dagger-and-S mark of John Sellers & Sons Sheffield, an English manufacturer of steel and copper plates for engravers, amongst other goods, with an office in New York), appears to have been made to accompany the long review essay, The Life of Charlotte Bronte, in the October 1857 issue of The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, which Sartain had an early financial interest in. 

A print struck from the plate.

John Sartain was arguably the foremost American engraver of his time and inarguably the pioneer of the mezzotint process in this country. He popularized the intricate printmaking process when he emigrated to the United States from England in 1830. His mezzotint prints possess a strong and rich texture that heightens and intensifies their aesthetic character.

Sartain was born in London in 1808. Left fatherless at the age of eight, he became responsible for the support of his family.  At age eleven, he took a job as assistant scene painter to an Italian pyrotechnist working at Covent Garden under Charles Kemble’s management and at Vauxhall Gardens in London. 

John Sartain.

In 1823, Sartain became an apprentice to engraver John Swaine (1775-1860), with whom he studied and worked for seven years.  Sartain also learned to paint, studying miniature painting with Henry Richter (1772-1857). He moved to Philadelphia in 1830.

He then produced engravings for various American periodicals including Gentleman’s Magazine, The Casket, and Godey’s Lady’s Magazine.  Sartain, beginning 1841, made quite a few  engravings for Graham’s Magazine, and, in 1849, he, along with William Sloanaker, bought the magazine for $5,000.  They changed the title to Sartain’s Union Magazine of Literature and Art. Among Graham's noted contributors were Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Edgar Allan Poe (an assistant editor there, as well), who became a close, personal friend of Sartain.

Charlotte Brontë by George Richmond, 1850.

George Richmond (1809-1896), in his youth a disciple of William Blake, was a painter and draftsman with 326 portraits to his credit.

Brontë's publisher, George Smith of Smith Elder & Co., commissioned this portrait in chalk of the novelist from Richmond as a gift for Brontë's father, who saw in it "strong indications of the genius of the author." Novelist Elizabeth Gaskell recalled seeing the portrait hung in the parlour of the Haworth parsonage, and a copy of it appeared in her biography of Brontë.

Only a handful of likenesses of Charlotte Bronte have survived,  Richmond's portrait is by far the most celebrated, and Sartain's mezzotint is the finest engraving based upon it.

The plate exhibits the mezzotint (half-tone) process very well. Mezzotint achieves tone variations by working the plate with thousands of little dots made by a metal tool with small teeth called a "rocker." In printing, the tiny pits in the plate hold the ink when the face of the plate is wiped clean.  Subtle gradations of light and shade and richness in the print can be accomplished in skilled hands, and Sartain was a master of mezzotint, the first tonal process used in engraving, with aquatint to follow. Previously, tone and shading were possible only by employing hatching, cross-hatching, or stipple engraving, line or dot-based techniques that left a lot to be desired for nuanced effects.

There is no truth to the rumor I started that the Van Morrison-penned song, Mystic Eyes (recorded by Them, 1965), was inspired by the Richmond-Sartain portrait of Charlotte Brontë.

The plate is being offered by The 19th Century Rare Book & Photography Shop, of Maryland and New York.

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[BRONTE, Charlotte]. SARTAIN, John. Charlotte Bronte mezzotint portrait. Original steel plate, signed in the plate by John Sartain after George Richmond. N.P., [Philadelphia], c. 1857.

Original beveled steel plate (7 x 10 ¼ in.),  Light surface wear, a small tarnish mark.

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Brontë plate and print images courtesy of the 19th Century Rare Book & Photography Shop, with our thanks.

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The Elegantly Macabre Anatomical Plates Of Gautier-D'Agoty

by Stephen J. Gertz

A rare, stunning first edition, first issue copy of Jacques-Fabien Gautier-D'Agoty's  unsettlingly beautiful, elegantly macabre and disarming color-printed book, Anatomie des parties de la génération de l'homme et de la femme, published in 1773, has come to market. Within, what might best be described as fashionably attractive and eroticized living cadavers as still-life subjects depict the  reproductive as well as the musculatory, circulatory and nervous systems of man and woman.

Comprised of eight color mezzotints forming four pairs of figures with accompanying text, the plates are often found joined together, as reproduced here. Colin Franklin, in A Catalogue of Early Colour Printing From Chiaroscuro to Aquatint (1977), provides a spirited and enthusiastic description of the book:

"The Anatomie des Parties de la Génération begins with tall plates of a man and woman, each formed from two sheets and folding out from the book. All the old art is here, with a new discretion and moderation of tones. These first plates showing muscles, arteries and the nervous system are worked out and tabulated in detail. Behind the man is a ghostly arm and shoulder showing the patterns of veins. Among other adjuncts by his foot is an elegant wine-glass meant to demonstrate the texture of male semen mixed with water 'dans le moment de l'ejaculation.' Anyone may make this experiment, he says encouragingly, and repeat it several times.

"The female figure is a typical Gautier plate, stripped and dissected but with healthy head and throat, charming classical face and hair in perfect order, standing poised as a dancer. Indeed, a Gautier ballet might be devised with dancers in such disguise."

I'm thinking Saint-Saëns Danse Macabre, performed in Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol.

Franklin continues: "These later learned works have longer descriptive and discursive texts than the merely explanatory sheets with accompanied the early plates [he produced in 1745-46, 1748, 1752 and 1754]. Gautier became fascinated by his subject. In the next folding illustration we find a fair instance of his semi-erotic treatment of a scientific theme - one woman standing in profile, her living head looking back to us above a naked breast; the womb open, with folded figure of a foetus. At her feet and knees, almost in a lesbian attitude, a nude figure finely modeled sits to show the 'parties de la génération' and from the front her dissected womb.

"The final folding illustration is of a similar sort, two figures of which the lower seems a curious relaxed classical nude with impeccable hair, her child just born and resting on her lap, the umbilical cord still uncut. Woman and child are in open dissection. At the mother's feet is a debris of palcenta and cords as if they have not yet been cleared from last night's party.

"That Gautier found the whole theme a fascinating one is clear from his text, which ranges from moral and physical distinctions on the nature of virginity, to an anecdote about Mary Queen of Scots" (pp. 47-48).

Jacques-­Fabien Gautier d’Agoty (1717–1785) studied briefly with Jacob Christoph Le Blon, the "inventor" of color printing, before embarking on his own career with a series of anatomical and natural history illustrations that successfully exploited the potential of color printing. Gautier worked with an anatomist, Guichard Joseph Duverney, lecturer in anat­omy at the Jardin du Roi. Duverney prepared the corpses, Gautier drew them, and then transferred each drawing  to four mezzotint plates, yellow, blue, red, and black, that were printed in succession to achieve the desired result. This printing technique demanded precision in registration, often absent in the images but present here. Many of the larger plates were then covered in varnish, in part to hide the imperfections in registration, as well as to give them the glossy look of varnished paintings. In this copy with sharp registration varnish was unnecessary and the plates (the first dated 1771, the remainder 1773) are far more attractive. 

No copies have come to auction within the last thirty-six years. The asking price is £16,500 ($26,070).

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GAUTIER D'AGOTY, Jacques-Fabien. Anatomie des parties de la génération de l'homme at de la femme: représentés avec leur couleurs naturelles, selon le nouvel art, jointe a l'angéologie de tout le corps humain, et ce qui concerne la grossesse et les accouchements. Paris: J.B. Brunet and Demonville, 1773. First edition, first issue. Folio (422 x 273 mm). [ii], 34, [4]. Eight color-printed mezzotint plates. Publisher's card portfolio with plates loose in pocket at rear as issued.

Wellcome III, p. 97. Blake, J., NLM 18th cent.,p. 169. Roberts and Tomlinson, Fabric of the Body n111.

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Images courtesy of William Patrick Watson Antiquarian Books, currently offering this volume, with our thanks.

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18th C. Mezzotints Provide Moral to Rep. Weiner's Twitter Fiasco

by Stephen J. Gertz

If Congressman Anthony Weiner had, at the very least,  used this:

LADMIRAL, Jan. Brain of an Unborn Child (1738).

...he would not have caused inflammation and molto agita for all concerned in this:

LADMIRAL, Jan. Muscularis mucosae of the intestine (1736).

...by Tweeting this:

LADMIRAL, Jan. Human penis (1741).

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Jan Ladmiral (1698 - 1773) was a pupil and assistant to the great anatomical illustrator Jacob Christoph Le Blon (1670 - 1741). Afterward, Ladmiral, apparently, presumed ownership of Le Blon's secret invention for coloring mezzotint engravings, a process using three different impressions of primary colors (blue, yellow, and red) for one image and thus able to produce different color values without the use of black.

"Ladmiral offered his services in the making of colored anatomical representations to the famous anatomist, Albinus in Leyden. This anatomist put his (Ladmiral's] invention to the test and even permitted him to use two posthumous drawings by Ruysch…" (Choulant and Streeter, History and Bibliography of Anatomic Illustration, p. 267).

Between 1736 and 1741 Ladmiral created six colored mezzotints of anatomical subjects that made his reputation and remain highly regarded as amongst the finest examples ever produced. Three of those mezzotints are seen here. The initial print in the series, Muscularis mucosae of the intestine, from 1736, is a milestone, the first use of color printing in a medical or scientific book.

Of Ladmiral's colored mezzotint of the human intestine's lining, Albinus wrote:

"It happened that that excellent and industrious painter John Ladmiral came to me and offered his services for making pictures colored after life in a sort of short-hand kind of painting. To see what he could do in this line I have had a picture made which I have added to the dissertation…words fail me to express the incredible variety of twisting of these branches, as the artist had rendered it on the plate" (as  cited by Choulant and Streeter).

And, so, too, words failed Rep. Weiner to adequately express the incredible variety of twisting that ultimately had himself and his libido splayed-out and pinned-down as an anatomical specimen laid bare for public dissection in the media theater.

Recent news, however, suggests interesting possibilities. The Congressman is seeking professional help. His problem is generally considered to be intractable and unresponsive to treatment, so it appears that he is in the vanguard for a new modality, one that heralds a golden age in psychotherapy and the potential for a hit reality-TV show that, with an endless supply of qualified participants, promises to run forever: Rehab For Putzes, the Yiddish epithet appropriate whether used in its strict or casual sense.

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LADMIRAL, Jan and Frederik RUYSCH. Icon Durae Matris in concave Superfice visae, ex capite foetus humani… Leiden: Dirk Haak; Amsterdam: Jacob Graal and Hendrik de Leth, 1738. Quarto. Franklin, Color Printing pp. 41-42. Lanwehr, Color Plates 108. Lilly 101. Wellcome II, p. 428.

[LADMIRAL, Jan]. ALBINI, Bernardi Siegfried. Dissertatio de arteriis et venis intestinorum hominis. Leiden: Dirk Haak; Amsterdam: Jacob Graal and Hendrik de Leth, 1736. Quarto. Franklin, Color Printing pp. 41-42. Lanwehr, Color Plates 3. Lilly 101. Wellcome I, p. 26.

LADMIRAL, Jan. Effigies penis humani. Leiden: Cornelis Haak; Amsterdam: Jacob Graal and Hendrik de Leth, 1741. Quarto. Franklin, Color Printing pp. 41-42. Lanwehr, Color Plates 109. Lilly 101. Wellcome II, p. 428.

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Mezzotint images courtesy of Asher Rare Books/Antiquariat Forum. Title pages courtesy of University of Iowa Digital Library. Our thanks to both.

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View Ladmiral's other three extraordinary anatomical mezzotints here.
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