Recitator Acerbus: P.14855-R

Titles

Recitator Acerbus

Maker(s)

Printmaker: Unknown
Draughtsman: Kent, William (After)

Entities

• Print

Categories

• Print

Description

Etching on laid paper. Scene within an etched border of a man standing in a landscape, hill with trees at the far left and stream in the right middleground. The man has enlarged facial features - nose, chin and lips - and is seen in three-quarter profile facing right, leaning forward slightly and reading from a manuscript held in his left hand. In the background on the right, a winged ass leaps over a barrel on the ground which empties its contents into the stream. The ass is visibly farting in the direction of the figure. Etched title below the border at lower centre: 'Recitator Acerbus'. The sheet has been trimmed around the edges, although the lower part with platemark remains and is inscribed in pen and ink at lower left: 'W. Kent delin.' and in faded pen and ink in a different hand at lower right: 'Mr Bryan of Bury St. Edmunds / 1740'. A further inscription and verse in pen and ink in a third hand, signed with initials 'D.B.R.B.' which has been annotated in the same hand as the inscription at lower right, thus: 'D[r] B[asset] R[r] B[alsham]': 'Whose picture's this? Painters & Poets have an Equal right / These to draw what they will & those to write. / Happy ye Painter's art could he but show it, / By a sad face the doggrel of a Poet. / Lo! here 'tis done, each handy hobbling feature, / describes at once the hobbling of his metre. / 'Tis he! ye Lilliputian Count Briançon / A close-stool Phiz fit for a close-stool Chanson.'. An inscription in pen and ink on the verso, written before the sheet was cut down, details the origins of the image. This has been transcribed onto the verso of the artist's board onto which this print is laid down in a curator's hand which is seen elsewhere on the verso of the artist's boards onto which many of the 'Cambridge Amateurs' prints are laid down: 'Dr Basset Rector of Balsham in Cambridgeshire made / these verses under him in MS. He used often to be at Horseheath, / Cambridge where his Figure & Poetry were a standing Joke. / This Print was designed for Mr. Bryan of Bury St. Edmund's & was very like him: it was sketched out one Evening at Hockeril[l] [near Bishop's Stortford] by Mr. Kent, who had seen the original that Day at Horseheath Hall in / Cambridgeshire, & his Figure striking his Fancy, he drew it out by memory; which was thought by my Lord Montfort [owner of Horseheath Hall] & others so very resembling that they subscribed a Crown a peice [sic] & / had it engraved: I was one of the Subscribers: this was abt. 1738.'. The identity of the author of this inscription is unknown, although a graphite inscription in a different hand below the transcription on the verso of the board states: 'This note appears to be by the Revd W. Cole'. Two further inscriptions in pen and ink on the verso of the print are in a different hand and relate to the print collector, Joseph Gulston: 'N.14216'; 'D/5'.

Notes

History note: Ex. Collection Joseph Gulston

Legal notes

Unknown