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Annibale Carracci; after
Overview
This print is based on a drawing attributed to Annibale Carracci. It looks deceptively like a wash drawing itself, and the game is given away when we realise it comes from a series of 70 plates entitled Prints in Imitation of Drawings. The genius behind this was Arthur Pond (1701-1758), an artist, printseller and connoisseur, who spent two years in Italy on his grand tour, in the company of scholar Daniel Wray and the then famous poet John Dyer. His mediocrity as a painter anchored him in the lower tier of London practitioners, and his main successes occurred with pastel portraits in imitation of the Venetian artist Rosalba Carriera and the Swiss Jean-Étienne Liotard. But Pond's greatest impact on English art and taste resulted from his printmaking and publishing in partnership with the Knapton booksellers, and as an art dealer. His single-minded promotion of the continental old masters, and of Italian art of all eras, earned him a comfortable fortune, prestige, and the enmity of both George Vertue and William Hogarth, insular champions of English art. In partnership with the landscape etcher Charles Knapton, Pond etched and published Prints in Imitation of Drawings (1735–6), depicting Dutch and Italian old master drawings in British collections, and Caricatures (1736–42), popularising the drawings of the Roman artist Pier Leone Ghezzi.
The Latin inscription 'E Musaeo Ricardi Mead' is an affected way of denoting the distinguished ownership of the original drawing, Dr Richard Mead (1673-1754). Mead was the leading member of the medical profession and chief physician to George II. He was also a significant collector of paintings, rare books, classical sculpture, gems and zoological specimens.
Source: Louise Lippincott, 'Pond, Arthur', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004)
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art February 2017