JOHN WEBBER: ETCHINGS AND AQUATINTS

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 October 1975, Page 25

JOHN WEBBER: ETCHINGS AND AQUATINTS

Douglas Cole

Mr A. A. St. C. M. Murray-Oliver’s excellent research on John Webber’s prints, the fruits of which appeared several years ago in The Turnbull Library Record / deserves the commendation of amplification and emendation. The details of Webber’s life contained in the Dictionary of National Biography can usefully be supplemented by the Schweizerisches KunstlerLexikon, 2 although his birthdate should be corrected to read 6 October 1751. 3 He died of diseased kidneys on 29 April 1793 in his Oxford Street lodgings. It might also be noted that the Swiss surname was Waber, not the usually reported ‘Weber’. Mr Murray-Oliver’s comments upon the prints are excellent, although a later researcher, profiting from that work, is able to make both caveats and additions. The common statement, for example, that Webber published a series of sixteen aquatints of Pacific views between 1788 and 1792 is, in fact, quite wrong. None of the sixteen prints between those dates are aquatints; all are soft-ground etchings with handcoloured washes added.

Although Webber must have learned etching from his mentors in Bern and Paris, respectively Johann Ludwig Aberli and Johann Georg Wille, he employed the relatively new soft-ground method, one which required little skill but was particularly suited to a draughtsman like Webber. In the soft-ground process a needle is unnecessary; one need only draw the impression on paper laid over a softly-waxed plate. 4 These prints are, it seems, entirely Webber’s production: drawn, etched, published and coloured by him. 5 The Boydell folio of letterpress and prints is a more difficult matter. The prints are Webber’s sixteen soft-ground etchings, aquatinted and then coloured by unknown hands. Mr Murray-Oliver believed them to be redrawn plates; I think they are Webber’s plates, perhaps touched up where worn, overlaid with a crude aquatint tone and coarsely coloured by anonymous brushes.

It was Mr Murray-Oliver who first raised the puzzle of when these views were actually put before the public. The title-page bears an 1808 date but, as he noted, all the plates are dated 1 April 1809. Much more puzzling, some of the paper is watermarked 1819 or 1820. In his article, Mr Murray-Oliver posited two editions, one in 1809 and another ca. 1820-21. In a recent conversation, he seems persuaded that none were published until the later date, since he has located no set without some 1819/1820 watermarks. The Boydell firm of print publishers was founded by the etcher John

Boydell (1719-1804), Alderman, one-time Lord Mayor of London, and ‘commercial Maecenas’ of the English art and publishing world. 6 By at least 1803, ten years after Webber’s death, Boydell was selling Webber’s Pacific views. A catalogue of that year reports that the ‘l6 beautifully coloured Prints, in Imitation of Mr Webber’s Original Drawings, are printed on a Paper uniform with the Volume of Prints to Captain Cooke’s [sic] last Voyage, which they are calculated to illustrate.’ Each sold for 10s 6d. 7

In 1808, it seems, the Boydell firm, now directed by nephew Josiah Boydell (1752-1817), decided to issue a new edition of the Webber prints as a folio with text taken from the published Cook journals. The re-issue may have been made easier by the expiry in 1807 of copyright. The text and title page were probably printed in 1808, the plates relettered in 1809 to carry the Boydell name. At least some, those bearing an 1807 watermark, were printed. The next we know of the Boydell prints is with the liquidation of the firm by auction. Josiah Boydell died in 1817 and the entire business—plates, prints and premises—went under the hammer in June 1818. The auction catalogue lists, under ‘Sets of Plates and Works’:

Sixteen Views of the South Seas, —Drawn and Etched by James [sic] Webber, Esq. R.A. Draftsman on board the Resolution, Captain Cooke [sic], with a description of each view; one volume folio. The Drawings are in the possession of the Board of Admiralty. With 130 copies of the Descriptions; and about 440 odd prints, coloured, plain, and etchings. 8 We do not know who bought lot 221: the principal, though not exclusive, purchaser at the sale was Hurst and Robinson who intended to carry on as ‘Successors to John & Josiah Boydell.’ 9 Certainly, however, the purchaser issued the folio in ca. 1820 without changing the date of either letterpress or plates, indeed, without even changing the Boydell pressmark. We have, therefore, Boydell Webbers which are not entirely by Boydell—all of which was very inconsiderate toward later historians such as Mr Murray-Oliver and

NOTES 1 ns 2 (October 1969), 74-79 2 Carl Braun, ed, (orig ed 1913; reprint, Nadeln, Lichtenstein, 1967), 111, 409-10 3 St. George’s Church, Hanover Square, London. Baptismal Records 4 Interestingly, several nineteenth-century connoisseurs thought some of the prints were lithographs and made Webber the discoverer of that process. See

F. Romang, ‘Johann Waber’, Sammlung Bernisher Biographien, herausgegeben von dem Historischen Verein des Kantons Bern (Bern, 1896), 11, 302-03, for a report of the controversy in Kunstchronik, Beiblatt zur Zeitschrift filr bildende Kiinste und zum Kunstgewerbeblatt for 1887-88 5 But see note 7 6 See Dictionary of National Biography under John Boydell and Josiah Boydell; Thomas Balston, ‘John Boydell, Publisher: “The Commercial Maecenas”,’ Signature, ns 8 (1949), 3-22 7 An Alphabetical Catalogue of Plates . . . which Compose the Stock of John and Josiah Boydell (London, 1803), pp 59-60. (Victoria and Albert Museum Library, London). Since these were probably Webber’s own prints, it is possible, even probable, that some were coloured by Boydell’s firm, qualifying my earlier statement that all Webber’s etchings were coloured by his own hand. This may account for the diversity of colouring noted by Mr MurrayOliver 8 A Catalogue of More than Five Thousand Copper Plates . . . Comprising the Entire Stock of Messrs. John and Josiah Boydell, Deceased. (London, 1818), p 43. (British Museum Print Room Library) 9 James Greig, ed, The Farington Diaries by Joseph Farington, R.A. (8 vols; London, 1922-1928), VIII, 210