Beschreibung:

Cromek, Robert Hartley, and Cromek, Thomas Hartley. IMPORTANT COLLECTION OF PAPERS RELATING TO THE ENGRAVER AND LITERARY ENTREPRENEUR ROBERT HARTLEY CROMEK AND HIS SON, THE PAINTER THOMAS HARTLEY CROMEK R.H. Cromek (1770-1812) is best remembered for what was regarded as his double-dealing with William Blake For an illustrated edition of Robert Blair's Grave in 1805 Cromek engaged Blake to produce designs, and acquired most of his 589 subscribers by exhibiting these designs in provincial towns, but then engaged Luigi Schiavonetti to produce the engravings instead, so that Blake only received 20 guineas for his work. The two men subsequently competed with each other after 1806 when Cromek engaged Thomas Stothard to paint The Pilgrimage to Canterbury and planned to produce by subscription an engraving by Schiavonetti, which, however, was delayed by the latter's death in 1810 and not completed (by others) until 1817. Blake, in the meantime, had exhibited his own Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims in 1809 and completed an engraving of it by 1810. These episodes apart, Cromek was, in his short life, a highly active engraver, editor and publisher, whose notable publications included Reliques of Robert Burns (1808), Select Scottish Songs...by Robert Burns (1810), and Allan Cunningham's Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song (1810). As secretary of the Chalcographic Society, Cromek also had ambitious plans for producing engravings of British art by a Society for the Encouragement of the Art of Engraving – a scheme which Blake excoriated in his private notebook – but it came to nothing and both societies were dissolved in 1811. His son Thomas Hartley Cromek (1809-1873) enjoyed a moderately successful career as a painter and draughtsman, especially during his period in Italy in the 1840s, specialising in views of Rome, Florence and Greece. He ceased painting by 1861 because of ill health and turned to writing in defence of his father. The present collection comprises the following