Description
Below the engraving are Moncrieff’s verses:
The Game secured, the Sportsman’s end is gain’d,
Each toil and care, with joy, he has sustain’d.
To win her cheering smiles, that Buxom Lass,
Whose roadside House he never fails to pass;
The rustic Lout, awake, with jealous eye
The Gallant Stranger sees, and breathes a sigh,
In vain! the Bird received, ensnared for life,
The Damsel yields, the Sportsman’s willing Wife.
E.F. Lambert was a British history painter and engraver. He exhibited in London between 1823 and 1846.
G. & C. Hunt were George (act. 1820s-1840s) and Charles Hunt (1803-1877), both British engravers active in London. George Hunt produced humorous engravings after the work of M. Egerton for the publisher Thomas McLean. Charles Hunt engraved horse and sporting subjects and was noted for his fine engravings after Pollard, Alken, Herring and other painters working in the genre. His son Charles Hunt Jr. was also an engraver as well as a painter.
J. Moore was a London print publisher active from at least 1829 to 1846. In addition to this print, he published other sporting prints engraved by George and Charles Hunt.
William Thomas (W.T.) Moncreiff (1794-1857) was an English playwright and theater manager in London. He was an important figure in early 19th-century popular culture whose plays were popular throughout England. Many were written for the Royal Surrey, the Olympic and at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. He often dramatized popular novels, such as Tom and Jerry, an adaptation of Pierce Egan’s Life in London. During the 1820s and 1830s he also managed theaters. Extremely prolific, he produced some 170 theatrical works as well as articles, theatrical reminiscences and poetry, and edited Richardson’s four-volume New Minor Drama, with Remarks Biographical and Critical (1828-30). He gradually lost his eyesight between 1835 and 1843, but continued writing. Many of his papers are in the collection of the University of Rochester.
Full publication information: To the Admirers of Field Sports, this Print is most respectfully dedicated, by their obliged Servant, J. Moore.
References:
Bénézit, E. Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs. France: Librairie Gründ, 1966. Vol. 5, p. 30 (Hunt).
Gould, Marty. Nineteenth-Century Theatre and the Imperial Encounter. New York: Routledge, 2012. pp. 57-58. Online at Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=xwytAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT57 (6 March 2015).
“Moncrieff, William Thomas.” University of Rochester River Campus Libraries. http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?page=995 (6 March 2015).
