INTRODUCTION

I.  BRITISH  DRAUGHTSMEN
li  is,  perhaps  important  to  insist  that  this  is  an  exhibition
ot  British  graphic  art,  and  not  of  British  painting.  The  collection
illustrates  the  qualities  and  the  defects  conditioned  by  these
restriction.  Though  notable  omissions  may  be  detected,  ii  represents
  in  great  diversity  and  with  approximaie  completeness
most  of  the  eminent  British  artisfs  from  1750  to  the  present  day
who  have  distinguished  themselves  as  draughtsmen  or  engravers.
Some  of  our  most  illustrious  painters,  like  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,
George  Morland  or  Sir  Henry  Raeburn,  may  be  compared  in  this
one  respect,  though  hardly  in  any  oiher,  with  Velazquez  and  Frans
Hals,  that  drawings  by  their  hands  hardly  exisf.  In  private  possession,
af  any  rate,  autheniic  drawings  by  Reynolds,  or  by  his  famous
successor  in  the  presidential  chair  of  the  Royai  Academy,  Sir  Thomas
Lawrence,  are  difficult  io  find.  The  same  is  true  of  their  unacademic
predecessor,  William  Hogarth:  as  a  painier,  one  of  the  great  names
of  British  art;  as  a  draughisman  and  etcher,  esteemed  but  rare;  as
an  engraver,  out  of  fashion,  and  consequently  as  hard  to  find  in
safisfacfory  specimens  as  a  breed  of  dogs  that  is  no  longer  the
mode.  For  drawings  by  Hogarth,  Reynolds  and  Lawrence  the
student  must  go  to  the  British  Museum,  which  is  debarred  by  law
from  lending  to  another  country.
The  period,  about  1730—1760,  of  which  Hogarth  is  the  typical
artist  and  to  which  Thornhill,  his  father-in-law,  alone  among  the
draughtsmen  represented  in  this  collection  belongs,  is  the  earliest
in  which  British  art,  tili  then  slow  and  backward  in  its  growth,  can
be  said  to  have  emancipated  itself  from  foreign  influences.  The
great  portrait  painters  in  England  of  the  two  preceding  centuries,
Holbein,  Van  Dyck,  Lely,  Kneller,  had  been  foreigners;  the  most
famous  decorative  painters  had  been  Verrio  and  Laguerre;  only  in
miniature  painting  had  Englishmen,  in  the  seventeenth  Century,
achieved  conspicuous  success.  The  most  eminent  English  engraver,
Faithorne,  had  been  trained  in  the  school,  and  imported  into