COURTESANS OF LONDON
HOLLAR, Wenceslaus, attributed.
[Portraits of celebrated Courtezans.]
Nineteenth century?
8vo, 10 engraved portrait plates (c. 100 x 62 mm) on wove paper; pale dampstain to head, else very good in mid-nineteenth-century crushed red morocco, gilt, joints rubbed; bookplates of Charles Francis Adams Jr and Robert S. Pirie.
A famous series of portraits depicting Restoration-era London courtesans, long attributed to Hollar, but that attribution rejected by Pennington and New Hollstein.
The first mention of the series comes in print dealers’ catalogues of the early nineteenth century, though the British Museum has an example on laid paper that may be earlier; it was also issued later in the nineteenth century with an undated title-page as Portraits of celebrated courtezans from the original copper plates engraved by W. Hollar in the reign of Charles the Second, and it seems to be from that printing that the present set derives. Each portrait is accompanied by a disguised name and indication of the cost of their services: ‘Elia F–k / 10 Guis a time’, ‘Betsy Ch–r / a Treat & a Peace / fresh cull’, ‘Mugn W–r / a Tramper / a Pint & a Hog’. Some of the images are copied from Hollar’s Theatrum mulierum (1643), though quite heavily reworked. Whether the portraits depict real Restoration sex workers, and whether the series was printed ‘from the original plates’ or entirely a confection of the under-the-counter nineteenth-century print trade, has yet to be established.
Provenance:
1. Charles Francis Adams Jr (1835–1915), grandson of John Quincy Adams and great-grandson of John Adams, with his 1905 bookplate to the front pastedown.
2. With the bookplate of Robert S. Pirie (1934−2015), whose collection began with a copy of Donne’s Pseudo-Martyr (1610) purchased from Quaritch for £65 and grew to be ‘one of the finest private libraries of English literature, not just of our time but of all time’ (Stourton).
Pennington 1944A; New Hollstein R148–157.