Old English colour printsSalaman, Malcolm C. (Malcolm Charles)
History
Old English colour prints
Salaman, Malcolm C. (Malcolm Charles)
Color prints, English
Eldest daughter of William
Coke, of Holkham, the famous agriculturist, so long M.P. for Norfolk,
and later Earl of Leicester.
ST. JAMES’S PARK (Plate XIV.). M. Grosley, a Frenchman, describes
this scene in his “Tour of London,” 1772: “Agreeably to this rural
simplicity, most of these cows are driven about noon and evening to
the gate which leads from the park to the quarter of Whitehall. Tied
to posts at the extremity of the grass plots, they swill passengers
with their milk, which, being drawn from their udders upon the spot,
is served, with all the cleanliness peculiar to the English, in
little mugs at the rate of a penny a mug.”--A TEA GARDEN (Plate XV.).
Bagnigge House had been the country residence of Nell Gwyn, and in
1757 the then tenant accidentally discovered a chalybeate spring in
his grounds, which two years later he turned to profit. Bagnigge
Wells then developed a tea garden, with arbours, ponds with fountains
and gold-fish, a bun-house, music, and a reputation for the amorous
rendezvous. The place was very popular, and much favoured, especially
on Sundays, by the would-be fashionable wives of well-to-do city-folk.
In the character of “Madam Fussock” Colman took this off in his
prologue to Garrick’s Drury Lane farce, “Bon Ton; or High Life above
Stairs,” 1776.--THE LASS OF LIVINGSTONE (Plate XVI.). A popular old
Scotch song, words by Allan Ramsay. There is also an older version,
“The Bonnie Lass o’ Liviston,” associated with an actual person who
kept a public-house in the parish of Livingstone.
LADY COCKERELL AS A GIPSY WOMAN (Plate XIX.). One of the beautiful
daughters of Sir John and Lady Rushout, whose miniatures are, perhaps,
Plimer’s masterpieces.--LADY DUNCANNON (Plate XX.). One of the
“Portraits of Four Ladies of Quality,” exhibited by Downman at the
Royal Academy in 1788. There are also colour-prints of Viscountess
Duncannon after Lavinia, Countess Spencer and Cosway, and, with her
more famous sister, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, after Angelica
Kauffman; while they both figure, with other fashionable beauties, in
J. K. Sherwin’s picture “The Finding of Moses,” also in Rowlandson’s
“Vauxhall,” and two prints in which the same artist celebrated their
triumphant share in the Westminster election of 1784, when it was
said that “two such lovely portraits had never before appeared on
a canvass.” The Countess of Bessborough, as she became, was the
mother of Lady Caroline Lamb. Her distinguished grandson, Sir Spencer
Ponsonby-Fane, kindly lent the print reproduced here.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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