Female Romantic Grace by One of Bartolozzi’s Best Pupils
CHEESMAN, Thomas.
No. I. Six Heads Drawn and Engraved, by T. Cheesman. [London,] T. Cheesman, No. 40 Oxford Street; and to be had of J.F. Tomkins, New Bond Street, Published February 10, 1797.
Folio (c. 540 x 420 mm), 6 stipple-engraved plates (c. 430 x 330 mm) of female heads, all but the first protected by tissue-guards; each image lettered ‘T. Cheesman delint et sculpt / London, Pubd by Thos Cheesman, Feby 10th 1797’ below; dampstain to upper right corner and lower margin, edges creased, with a few small marginal tears and minor chipping, otherwise a good copy; stitched in the original blue wrappers, octagonal printed paper label to upper wrapper with title and imprint, with manuscript addition ‘& E. Orme Conduit St, corner of George St’ below the imprint.
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No. I. Six Heads Drawn and Engraved, by T. Cheesman. [London,] T. Cheesman, No. 40 Oxford Street; and to be had of J.F. Tomkins, New Bond Street, Published February 10, 1797.
First and only edition, extremely rare, of this complete series of six heads of young women wearing head scarves by ‘one of Bartolozzi’s most outstanding pupils’.
A draughtsman, painter and stipple engraver who worked predominantly in London, Thomas Cheesman (1760–c. 1834) a trained, like many other engravers of his generation, in the studio of Francesco Bartolozzi (1727–1815), who was working in London at the time (a portrait of Cheesman attributed to Bartolozzi can be found at the National Portrait Gallery, NPG 780). ‘Cheesman has often been described as one of Bartolozzi's most outstanding pupils. If this was, indeed, the case, then it is probable that a number of early works by the pupil may have been signed off by this master and thus remain submerged within the corpus of Bartolozzi’s work. Furthermore, Bartolozzi’s influence long remained a defining feature of Cheesman's work. As the stipple engraving Adelaide (1792) shows, Cheesman's training with Bartolozzi encouraged him to develop a heightened sensitivity to literary and sentimental subjects’ (ODNB).
Cheesman produced some plates after favourite old masters, as well as taking commissions from modern artists including Benjamin West, George Romney, and John Trumbull, whose painting of George Washington was turned into a famous stipple-engraving by Cheesman in 1796. In the later 1790s and early 1800s Cheesman translated a number of religious, literary, or sentimental subjects into stipple-engravings. The present collection, the first in a number of engravings of heads of women and children of similar style and size, published by Cheesman in groups of four, five, or six, particularly between 1799 and 1801, includes six head-and-shoulders portraits of young women wearing a variety of headscarves, depicted in a neoclassical style very much influenced by Romanticism. Evidence of this can be found particularly in the last engraving in this set, depicting a young woman glancing towards the viewer, her head and shoulders directed to the right, wearing pearl-drop earrings and a turban with a jewel and plume at the forehead, with tresses of wavy hair escaping around her neck.
After his partnership with Mariano Bovi and Michael Benedetti, engravers and printsellers in Titchfield Street, ended in 1790, Cheesman resided at 40 Oxford Street, and afterwards changed his address to 71 Newman Street and finally to 28 Francis Street. Between 1830 and 1834 Cheesman was employed at the behest of the Society of Dilettanti to document all the sculpture in the British Museum. He submitted his last exhibition piece to the Society of British Artists in 1834, after which nothing more is heard of him.
No copies in the US. OCLC finds a single copy, at the Berlin Art Library. We have been able to locate one further set as loose plates at the British Museum (1978,U.1823; 1953,0214.70; 1953,0214.73; 1953,0214.72; 1953,0214.71; 1953,0214.74), without the original wrapper and printed label.
