Description
Trained at the Royal Academy in London, Edward Dayes was an English painter, draughtsman and printmaker. He is best known for his topographical watercolors, which he made for publications in the 1790s. However, he also produced drawings, oil paintings, etchings and aquatints ranging from large-scale history paintings to miniatures. Dayes was trained by his father in engraving and studied in the schools of the Royal Academy, where he began to exhibit in 1786, continuing to participate in exhibitions until his death. He became an exhibitor at the Society of British Artists and was elected a member in 1830. His mezzotints were highly esteemed, and he made engravings after the works of prominent contemporaries including Joshua Reynolds and J.M.W. Turner. He was also quite successful with his own compositions, including portraits and genre scenes. His sketches of the British landscape influenced the development of the English school of watercolor and Turner’s early drawings. He also served as draughtsman to the Duke of York. Dayes is also known for architectural views incorporating elegant figures, tinted over an assured pen-and-ink outline. Such works are in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum and the South Kensington Museum.
Thomas Gaugain was born in France but attended the Royal Academy in London and pursued his artistic career in England. He began by publishing engravings of his own paintings but gradually built up a successful business buying pictures and drawings to engrave as decorative stipples by artists such as George Morland, and selling them for export.
Francois David Soiron, was a Swiss-born printmaker who spent a few years working in London, where he made this print.
Condition: Generally in very good condition with the usual light toning, wear, soiling. Some pencil notations and glue residue in margins, easily matted out.
Reference:
Redgrave, Samuel. A Dictionary of Artists of the English School: Painters, Sculptors, Architects, Engravers and Ornamentists. London: Longmans, Green, and Col., 1874. (Dayes, 114)
