Valentine card: P.14414-R-100

Titles

Valentine card

Maker(s)

Printmaker: Gilks, Edward
Designer: attributed to

Entities

• Valentine card

Categories

• Print
• Album

Description

Design for a valentine on white wove paper mounted onto a slightly larger sheet of white wove paper with a hand-coloured edge in red. A lithographed border design with scrolls hand-coloured in gold ink (unfinished) and pink wash. A hand-coloured, lithographed centrepiece design featuring putti pulling back a pink 'curtain' to reveal a pair of embracing lovers sitting in a leafy glade. Two lozenges contain lithographed verse: 'I have marked - / A thousand blushing apparitions start, / Into thy face, a thousand innocent shames / In angel whiteness, bear away those blushes ...'. The verse is taken from Shakespeare's _Much Ado About Nothing_, Act 4, Scene 1. Although unsigned, this design is almost certainly by British lithographer, Edward Gilks. P.14414-R-100 is one of three designs for lithographed valentines from the same series by Gilks which are mounted across the same double page in album P.14414-R. All three display scrolling borders and two lozenges/medallions at lower centre containing verse. See also P.14414-R-99 and P.14414-R-103. P.14414-R-100 is one of a number of designs for valentines by Gilks which are mounted together as a group in album P.14414-R. Other designs by Gilks are contained in album P.14346-R. As Gilks emigrated to Australia in 1852, this design is most likely to have been produced either during Gilks's apprenticeship in London to Thomas Dean, between 1836-1843 or between 1844-1850 when he was in partnership with his brother Thomas, a wood-engraver, based at 4 Fenchurch Building, Fenchurch, London.

Legal notes

Bequeathed by Dr J. W. L. Glaisher, 1928