1782 Anecdotes of Painting in England

Description

Early Edition, Leather Binding

Volumes I and II only of the five volume third edition of this work.

'Anecdotes of Painting in England' is an interesting history of painting in England, discussing anecdotes of various painters throughout English history.

In this work, the author and editor depict the Georgian social and political scene through memoirs and notes on arts, painting, and engraving, and is a useful primary source of historians despite being "heavily biased".

George Vertue was an engraver and antiquary. He kept notebooks on British art for the first half of the eighteenth century, on which this work was based off. He spent most of his life researching the history of British art, accumulating forty notebooks of research.

Horace Walpole purchased these notebooks and edited them, basing 'Anecdotes of Painting in England' upon these notebooks. Walpole was an art historian and politician, also the writer of the first Gothic novel, 'The Castle of Otranto'.

Bookplate of William Leigh to each front pastedown.

ESTC T63191