Hamerton, P.G. [Philip Gilbert].

The Portfolio – Monographs on Artistic Subjects [21 Volumes in 7 with each Volume including three Monographs on a Subject or an Artist’s Life and Work. Volumes include for example include: Josiah Wedgwood / John La Farge / William Blake / Japanese Wood-Engraving / Belgian Sculpture etc. see full List below]. Edited by P.G.Hamerton.

Original / First Edition. 21 Volumes bound in seven Volumes. London, Seeley and Co., 1894-1896. Quarto (19.2 cm wide x 27.2 cm high). c. 1600 pages with a total of 37 Etchings / Engravings. Hardcover / Original, very decorative Art Nouveau-Bindings with gilt lettering and ornament on spine and frontcover. Very good condition with only minor signs of wear.

This collection of 21 Volumes (Bound in seven Volumes] includes:

1894 Volume [3 Volumes in 1]:

I. William Sharp – “Fair Women In Painting and Poetry″
[With Etchings by Alma-Tadema / Sir Peter Lely / Daniel Mytens etc.]

II. C.J.Cornish – “The New Forest″
[Illustrated by Lancelot Speed, Alexander Ansted and John Fullwood]

III. Walter Armstrong – “Thomas Gainsborough″

1894 Volume [another one] [3 Volumes in 1]

I. P.G.Hamerton – “The Etchings of Rembrandt″
[With Plates Etched in Facsimile by Amand Durand]
The four wonderful Rembrandt-Etchings are:
a. Rembrandt with the Broad Hat and Embroiderd Mantle
b. The Rat Killer
c. Johannes Lutma
d. Rembrandt’s Mother, seated, looking to the right

II. Rev. W.K.R.Bedford – “MALTA and the Knights Hospitallers″
With Plates etched:
a. “Isola Point” – Etched by A. Ansted
b. “Rabato, Gozo” – Drawn by T.H.Crawford and Engraved by Walter L. Colls
c. “Citta Vecchia” – Etched by A. Ansted from a drawing by Edward Lear
d. “Chapel of our Lady of Philermos” – Engraved by Walter L. Colls

III. A.H. Church – “Josiah Wedgwood – Master-Potter″
His Precursors / His Early Years / As Master-Potter / His Ceramic Improvements / His Invention of the “Jasper” Body / The BArberini or Portland Vase / [Cameo] His Cameos, Medallions and Plaques / His Portrait Cameos / Vases in the Jasper Body / Miscellaneous Productions in Jasper / Later Years / Position as an Art-Potter / Collections and Collectors //

Illustrations in the Wedgwood-Volume include:

1. Portland Vase / 2. Plaque, Sacrifice of Iphigenia / 3. Two Medallions, A Zephyr / 4. Medallion, Portrait of Flaxman





″The Portfolio” was a British monthly art magazine published in London from 1870 to 1893. It was founded by Philip Gilbert Hamerton and promoted contemporary printmaking, especially etching, and was important in the British Etching Revival. Early contributors included Francis Turner Palgrave (1824–1897) and Sidney Colvin (1845–1927).

The mid-nineteenth century in France and Britain saw a rise in the interest in etching. Hamerton had spent the 1860s in France with his French wife, Eugénie. The impetus for the launch of The Portfolio came in the wake of the foundation in Paris of the Société des aquafortistes in 1862, and to a lesser extent from the longer established Etching Club from 1838. Etchings by many French etchers such as Paul Rajon (1843–1888) and Alfred Brunet-Debaines (1845–1939) were a marked feature of the publication. Indeed, The Standard remarked in 1874 that the publication’s “speciality, as probably most people know, is the etchings with which it is adorned.” Rajon published twelve etchings in the periodical before his untimely death. The New York Times lavished praise on the publication when, in 1875, it remarked that it could not “eulogize too highly the merits of this periodical in all its departments. It is, without question, the most beautiful in regard to illustration which emanates from the press.″

The late nineteenth-century British author George Gissing wrote in his diary for December 1895 (sic.) that he took the magazine for his son, because of its good pictures. In a survey of the etching revival in 1878 the Magazine of Art highlighted the centrality of Hamerton and his monthly magazine which had “so ably and unceasingly pleaded the cause of etching” in Britain. (Wikipedia)

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Philip Gilbert Hamerton (10 September 1834 – 4 November 1894) was an English artist, art critic and author. He was a keen advocate of contemporary printmaking and most of his writings concern the graphic arts. He was an important theorist of the English Etching Revival.

Hamerton was born at Laneside, a hamlet near Shaw and Crompton, Lancashire, England. His mother died giving birth to him, and his father died ten years later. When he was about five, he was sent to live with his two aunts at an estate called the Hollins[1] on the edge of Burnley, where he attended Burnley Grammar School.

Hamerton’s first literary attempt, a volume of poems, was unsuccessful, leading him to devote himself for a time entirely to landscape painting; he camped out in the Scottish Highlands, where he eventually rented the former island of Inistrynich in Loch Awe, upon which he settled with his wife Eugénie Gindriez, the daughter of a French republican magistrate, in 1858.

Discovering after a time that he was more suited to art criticism than painting, he moved to Sens and later to Autun,[3] where he produced his Painter’s Camp in the Highlands (1863), which was very successful and prepared the way for his standard work on Etching and Etchers (1866). In the following year he published Contemporary French Painters, and in 1868 a continuation, Painting in France after the Decline of Classicism.

He had by now become art critic to the Saturday Review, which necessitated frequent visits to England, forcing him to give it up. He proceeded in 1870 to establish and edit an art journal of his own, The Portfolio, a monthly periodical, each number of which included of a monograph upon some artist or group of artists, often written by him. The journal championed printmaking, especially etching. He selected and wrote the accompanying text for Etchings by French and English Artists (London: Seeley, 1874) which included work by Alphonse Legros and Léon Gaucherel. The discontinuation of his painting gave him time for writing, and he successively produced The Intellectual Life (1873), perhaps the best known and most valuable of his writings; Round my House (1876), notes on French society by a resident; and Modern Frenchmen (1879), admirable short biographies. He also wrote two novels, Wenderholme (1870) and Marmorne (1878).

In 1884 Human Intercourse, another volume of essays, was published, and shortly afterwards Hamerton began his autobiography, which he brought down to 1858. In 1882 he issued a finely illustrated work on the technique of the great masters of various arts, under the title of The Graphic Arts, and three years later another splendidly illustrated volume, Landscape, which traces the influence of landscape upon the mind of man. His last books were: Portfolio Papers (1889) and French and English (1889).

In 1891 he removed to Villa Clématis in the Parc des Princes, district of Boulogne-Billancourt in the southwest suburbs of Paris. He died there suddenly on 4 November 1894, aged sixty, occupied to the last with his labours on The Portfolio and other writings on art. In 1897 ‘Philip Gilbert Hamerton: an Autobiography, 1834–1858; and a Memoir by his wife, 1858–1894’ was published. (Wikipedia)

• Keywords: Art · Art – Rare · Art Nouveau Binding · Art of the 19th Century · Arts & Crafts · Arts & Crafts Movement – Rare · Books with Vintage Art · Catalogue Four – International Art · Illustrated Books · Illustrated Books Rare · Original Decorative Art Rare · Original Engraving · Pottery
• Language: English
• Inventory Number: 32183AB

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