Soldiers
London: Ackermann's Gallery, 1798. Item #06734
Thomas Rowlandson's Exceptionally Rare Suite of British Soldiers at Work and Play
Complete with All Five Magnificent Contemporary Hand-Colored Aquatints
Apparently Unrecorded by Grego - No Complete Copy Traced at Auction
ROWLANDSON, Thomas. Engraved by Heinrich Joseph Schütz. [Soldiers.] London: Ackermann's Gallery, 1798.
First edition. Oblong folio (12 x 14 1/4 inches; 311 x 362 mm.). Five magnificent contemporary hand-colored aquatints engraved by Heinrich Joseph Schütz after original drawings by Thomas Rowlandson, each measuring approximately 10 1/2 x 13 inches (268 x 331 mm.) to the plate-mark. Plates I and IV trimmed to the plate-mark and expertly inlaid to later window mounts; Plates II, III and V retaining full margins beyond the plate-mark. Versos with evidence of careful professional conservation, including a few neatly restored marginal tears and creases, occasional minor marginal soiling. Printed on J. Whatman paper (watermarks present, dates not visible). The contemporary hand-coloring exceptionally bright, fresh, and beautifully preserved.
Late nineteenth-century three-quarter red straight-grain morocco over red cloth boards, spine and upper cover lettered in gilt. Early bookseller's printed description mounted to the front paste-down stating: "Of Great Rarity, and unknown to Grego. Plates II, III, and V have full margins, plates I and IV are slightly shorter, and have been skillfully inlaid to size."
An exceptionally rare complete suite of five large military aquatints engraved by Heinrich Joseph Schütz after Thomas Rowlandson and published by Rudolph Ackermann during the early years of his celebrated print-publishing career.
Among Rowlandson's earliest military publications, the series possesses an immediacy and freshness that distinguish it from the artist's later military caricatures. Rather than celebrating battlefield heroics, Rowlandson presents an affectionate and often humorous chronicle of the daily life of the British soldier, recording with extraordinary powers of observation the ordinary routines of camp, drill, recreation, marching, and combat.
The suite comprises:
No. I. Soldiers Cooking — Published April 1, 1798.
No. II. Soldiers Recreating — Published April 1, 1798.
No. III. Soldiers Marching — Published April 1, 1798.
No. IV. Soldiers Attacking — Published April 1, 1798.
No. V. Private Drilling — Published June 1, 1798.
The plates are engraved by Heinrich Joseph Schütz, one of the finest aquatint engravers working in London during the final decade of the eighteenth century. His masterly translation of Rowlandson's wash drawings preserves both the spontaneity of the artist's vigorous draughtsmanship and the richness of the superb contemporary hand-coloring.
Although Rowlandson and Schütz produced several additional military subjects for Ackermann during 1798 - including Soldiers Recruiting, She Will Be a Soldier, He Won't Be a Soldier, and Soldiers Attending Divine Service - those plates were issued separately and do not form part of the present numbered five-plate series.
The rarity of the suite is underscored by its apparent omission from Joseph Grego's standard bibliography of Rowlandson. Grego (Vol. I, p. 349) records only the separately published Soldiers Recruiting, dated August 1, 1798 (misspelled "Recruiting"), engraved by Schütz and published by Ackermann. That composition is entirely different from the present suite, and Grego makes no reference to the five numbered plates offered here.
Research has failed to locate a complete copy of the present suite at auction during the past century. The only related auction record traced is the separate plate Soldiers Recruiting, sold at Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, on April 15, 1948, in the celebrated M. H. Kimball Collection of Important French and English Color Prints. Likewise, institutional holdings appear remarkably limited. OCLC records only a group of four plates - Soldiers Cooking, Soldiers Recreating, Soldiers Marching, and Soldiers Attacking - at the Baltimore Museum of Art, lacking the fifth plate, Private Drilling.
Yale University records only the separately published Soldiers Recruiting, corresponding to the plate listed by Grego and described in the British Museum catalogue.
Large-format Rowlandson aquatints of this early period were intended primarily for display and were frequently framed individually or otherwise dispersed. Complete surviving suites are therefore of the utmost rarity. The present example, retaining all five plates with exceptionally fresh contemporary coloring and complete in its original sequence, ranks among the rarest of Rowlandson's published military print series and represents an outstanding survival of British color-plate printing at the close of the eighteenth century.
Price: $12,500.00