Prints from Boydell's History of the River Thames London:

J. & J. Boydell, 1794-6. 8 1/8 x 12 3/8. Aquatint by Joseph Constantine Stadler. Full original hand color. Full margins. Very good condition. John Boydell, a land surveyor in the employment of his father, was inspired by an engraving by W.H. Toms to leave his home in Shropshire about 1750 and walk to London to apprentice himself to Toms. After six years, Boydell set up his own shop and thus began his career as one of the greatest of print publishers. Boydell was much concerned with the French dominance of the European print market at mid-century, and it was mostly by his efforts that by the 1780s it was British engraved prints that were dominant. One of John's later projects, published with Josiah Boydell, was this series of views of the Thames River Valley. These prints, drawn by Joseph Farington, are excellent examples of the art of aquatinting, and they provide an intimate look at the heart of England during the late eighteenth century.

From Peintures des Vases Antiques de la Collection de Son Excellence Mr. Le Chevalier Hamilton. . . . Four volumes in French and Italian. Florence: Società Calcographica, 1802. Hand colored engraving. Sir William Hamilton, after amassing and publishing fine illustrations of his first "Cabinet of Etruscan, Greek and Roman antiquities," sold the renowned collection to the British Museum, and began afresh to develop a second, similar collection. The first collection remains one of the Museum's greatest treasures. Hamilton authored and published his Collection of Engravings from Ancient Vases, based on this second collection, between 1791 and 1795. This publication and Wedgwood's works on ceramics influenced John Flaxman and Henry Fuseli as well as many other European artists. These engravings are illustrations from the first Florentine edition of Collection of Engravings from Ancient Vases. Part of this group of vases was lost during Hamilton's hasty escape from Naples upon the invasion of the French in 1798; the remainder was eventually sold en masse to Englishman, Thomas Hope. Though Hope offered Hamilton less than he planned to receive, he promised to keep the vases together, for the study of artists and students of history, as Hamilton had always intended.