The Copper-Plate Magazine by [George Kearsley] - 1774-78

Very good volume of 17 numbers of this rare 18th century art magazine.

With calligraphic title page and 50 (of 51) copperplates after artists such as Paul Sandby, C. Monnet, Charles le Brun, Philippe de Champaigne, Giovanni Casanova, Charles Eisen, etc., engraved by Joshua Collyer, William Walker, Charles Grignion, Michael Angelo Rooker, T. Cook, J. Hall, W. Sharp and others.

"In each number of which will be given a Portrait of some Celebrated Personage, some interesting Historical Subject and some curious Perspective View executed by the most capital artists of Great Britain and calculated to enrich the Cabinets of the Curious or to ornament the Apartments of Persons of Real Taste."

Each number had three plates, a portrait, a historical or mythological scene and a bucolic landscape. Missing one plate (of Perseus), never bound in.

The portraits include writers, philosophers, scientists, statesmen, clergy and aristocrats such as Geoffrey Chaucer, Alexander Pope, Racine, Moliere, Corneille, Sir Samuel Garth, Sir Walter Raleigh, Cardinal Wolsey, Cardinal Richelieu, Jean de la Fontaine, Michel de Montagne, John Baptist Colbert, Pierre Bayle, Albrecht von Haller, Edward Russell, Earl of Orford, etc.

Published by George Kearsly (or Kearsley), 1758-1791, a publisher, bookseller and printseller located at 46 Fleet Street. He was arrested for issuing Wilke's North Briton in 1763 but later discharged. After the Copperplate Magazine which ran from August 1774 to January 1778, he published the Virtuosi's Museum in monthly numbers from February 1778 to January 1781. He was succeeded by his son, George, who ran the business from 1794-1813.

In full diced leather binding with gilt spine, some scuffing and scratching to boards, marble endpapers, scattered toning and foxing to the text and plates, but all copperplates with crisp deep impressions. A very good run of this rare series.