Two Exquisitely Detailed Drawings perhaps by Louis - Phillipe Boitard (fl. 1733 - 67).
The Perruquirs and the Merchant Taylors.
Although the Merchant Taylors drawing seems to have been signed by Hubert Gravelot.
Louis-Phillipe Boitard.
He was first noted by George Vertue in 1742: ‘Boitard engraver, lately come from Paris—some merit—good stock of assurance ’ (Vertue, Note books), although it seems that he had been in London from at least 1733.
Boitard may have spent some time again in France between 1741 and 1743.
His father Francois (c. 1667 - 1719) was born in Toulouse and pupil of La Fage
(1656-1690); to London for a few years c.1709, died after 1717; father of Louis
Philippe. Mariette calls him 'homme inquiet et debauche', notorious for a set
of postures? Returned to Holland after London and died in The Hague.
May have acted as agent to purchase pictures for Dr. Meade's
collection.
Signature of Boitard inv. on frontispieces in earliest
illustrated edition of Beaumont and Fletcher's Plays, possible early
illustrator of Shakespeare? (see H.A. Hammelman article in Country Life,
September 24th, 1959).
The British Museum website states
"at the Golden Pineapple in Durham Yard in the Strand, London
Louis Philippe Boitard,sometimes incorrectly called Louis
Pierre Boitard. Draughtsman and engraver; son of François Boitard (1667-1719),
born in France; based in London 1709 to 1712 and with whom he probably trained;
during 1740s he worked as a journeyman in the studio of the engraver, William
Henry Toms, alongside the young John Boydell who recorded that he was addicted
to snuff, always indigent and drowned in the New River (Autobiography, p.84).
Attracted notice of Vertue in 1742. Designer and engraver of
satirical prints, book illustrations, theatrical portraits, political satires,
(including The Covent Garden Frolick and The Present Age BM); also portraits
representing 'Remarkable Persons' including Thomas Brown, Elizabeth Canning,
Maria Gunning, James Maclean (highwayman) and Hannah Snell ('the female
soldier'); in 1753-4 supplied designs, engraved by Robert Hancock to the
Battersea enamel factory; his designs also transferred to Worcester porcelain;
married Englishwoman and had a son and daughter; surviving sketches and
drawings display his observations on the street life of London; his handling of
pen and wash has affinities with Hogarth, combined with rococo of his
countryman Gravelot.
An album containing 65 drawings by Boitard evidently
compiled in the workshop of the print-publisher John Bowles was in the
possession of L. G. Duke in the 1950s, but was subsequently broken up and its
contents dispersed".
At the Perruquiers.
This sheet is a preparatory drawing for an (unpublished) engraving.
The Perruquier was also a Hairdresser and Barber.
Fascinating depiction of a Georgian shop interior - with an early illustration of a dated lead water cistern of 1733, initialed HWM in situ over a lead lined sink (containing a barbers shaving bowl).
Bonhams. London. Lot 7, 23 Sept 2008.
Pen and ink and wash.
22.5 x 31cm (8 7/8 x 12 3/16in).
This superb drawing of the interior of a Perruquier shows the making of wigs and the very interesting detail of a lead cistern with brass spiggot, with the date of 1753 and initials HWM above what appears to be a tilting wash basin/barbers bowl.
Prepared for engraving. Although no engraving is known - Perhaps one of a series certainly a pair to the drawing below.
Robert Campbell's The London Tradesman of 1747, was intended to guide potential apprentices and employees.
1747 Edition available online at the Wellcome Trust website
https://wellcomecollection.org/works/pbn9ru59/items
The Third edition of 1757 available online at Google Books.
https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_London_Tradesman.html?id=nNoHAAAAQAAJ&redir_esc=y
Campbell states that the
peruke maker 'has his fashions from Paris, like all other tradesmen, and the
nearer he can approach to the patterns of that fickle trade, the better chance
he has to succeed with his English customers.'
...................................
The Merchant Taylors
The sheet is a preparatory drawing for an engraving by George Bickham entitled 'The Merchant Taylors', published 29 June 1749.
Bickham was working at Mays Buildings, a court on the East side of St Martin's Lane.
Image from the Royal Collection.
https://www.rct.uk/collection/913279/a-tailors-shop
What appears to have been missed is the signature of Hubert Gravelot in the bottom left corner of this drawing .
..................
The Merchant Taylors.
Engraved and Published by George Bickham (1706 - 71) at May's Buildings (off St Martin's Lane).
1749.
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_G-12-111
Info below from BM website
George Bickham was at the Blackmoor's Head over against Surrey Street in the Strand (c.1740-1).
May's Buildings, Covent Garden by 1741.
In an advertisement in the Daily Post, 13 April 1741,
Bickham gives both the above addresses.
Printmaker and publisher; son of George Bickham the Elder a prolific publisher of a very wide range of prints; first major publication, a series of engraved song sheets entitled 'The Musical Entertainer' (1737).
Apprentices: William Austin (1747), and his nephew Thomas Butcher (1759).
Some prints published by Bickham seem also to have been engraved/etched by him although lettered with pseudonyms.
Announced his
retirement on 25 April 1767 (Public Advertiser) stating that his business would
be continued by Thomas Butcher (q.v.). Died in Richmond, Surrey, on 21 June
1771, leaving his property to his widow, Elizabeth; sale of his copper plates
and rolling press advertised in the Public Advertiser, 9 January 1772.
Collaborated with his father, and many of their prints have
not been properly identified; when there is any doubt, prints have been placed
under George Bickham the Younger.
A broadside dated 1745 (1898,0520.166) describes Bickham's
trade: 'Where all Sorts of Picture-Work, as well as Writing and Shopkeeper's
Bills, are exectued in a neat Manner, and at the most reasonaable Rates.
Authors and Booksellers may have Frontispieces and Cuts, for Books, design'd,
drawn, and engraved in the best Taste, and printed in the cleanest Manner, to
produce a beautiful Impression, at the lowest Prices: As also Pictures neatly
framed and glazed: Where all Gentlemen, Merchants, City and Country Shopkeepers,
and Chapmen, may be furnished at the best Hand.'
The rioting that destroyed a bawdy house on the Strand.
Lasting from July 1st through July 3rd, the London neighborhood was the site of
continuous violence. It began when a sailor was robbed by a prostitute.
Her pimp, assaulted the sailor who returned with a group of
his shipmates that night.
Boitard depicts "The Sailor's Revenge" on that
establishment in this print.
The Strand Riot of 1749 is remembered for the wig maker Bosavaren
Penlez who was executed for his role. Penlez was caught looting the “tavern”or
Bawdy House of Peter Wood on the third night of the riots and became a
scapegoat.
Henry Fielding defended the court's sentence, though many
were appalled by it. Politics played a significant role in the city's response
to the riot, and the failure to indict any sailors may be a reflection of that.
Makes the case for this drawing being "A portrait of Andrew Bell and his friends, in his tenement flat in Edinburgh, painted between 1745 and 1752".
The central figure is the artist, Boitard who has depicted himself as the quintessentially neat Frenchman in fashionable clothes and powdered wig.
The gentleman on the right looks very like the later portraits of the antiquarian, Gavin Hamilton (1723-98) and it may be him, as he was in Edinburgh in 1750-52 on family business.
The figure on the left is almost certainly Andrew Bell with his deformed legs spread-eagled, in a manner that he could not avoid. His face may be compared with the portrait of him playing the fiddle, by Paul Sandby, now at Windsor and inscribed, 'Mr. Bell, engraver of Edinburgh, del 1758'.
Holbein's Gateway and Jones's Banqueting House, Whitehall.
12.1 x 16.5 cms
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:1663
...................................
Cyril Cook, 'Louis P. Boitard and his designs on Battersea
enamels', Apollo March 1953 p72-5. Madeleine Blondel, 'Loius-Philippe.
Boitard, Illustrateur Du Fantastique', Gazette des
Beaux-Arts, Paris 1987, vol CX, pp165-72.
