
Luke Batterham
Senior Valuer
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£1,000 - £1,500
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Senior Valuer
The main run of these plates, with related material, were prepared for Divine and moral songs for children. By Isaac Watts, D.D. Illustrated in the new graphotype engraving process by W. Holman Hunt, W. Cave Thomas, J.D. Watson, G. du Maurier, T. Morten, C. Green, H.K. Brown, Marcus Stone, H. Anelay, Florence Claxton, M.E. Edwards, etc. etc. under the superintendence of H. Fitzcook, published by James Nisbet & Co., London, in about 1867. Holman Hunt's design 'A Morning Song' was based on, although by no means identical to, his well-known painting, The Morning Prayer of 1866, which he had undertaken following Fitzcook's commission (in the painting the maiden is shown kneeling by her bed with a handbag hanging from a chair in the foreground, striking a distinctly worldly even carnal note, while in our engraving she kneels on the bed with the chair in the background); a study that 'explore[s] the effects on young women of contemporary sexual morality' (Judith Bronkhurst, ODNB). We have found no evidence in Copac of publication of Fitzcook's Poems in Pen & Pencil.