A Rare Georgian Mezzotint Engraving “Industry”

"Industry"
Mezzotint
Published By Carington Bowles
London, Circa 1789

Measures:-
49.5 cm x 37.5 cm (Framed)

Provenance:-
Stencil from an unidentified Christie's sale verso

Full margins. Lettered with the title "INDUSTRY" beneath and publication lines "London Printed for & Sold by Carington Bowles", "No. 69 St Paul's Church Yard, London" / "Published as the Act directs" (undated in the plate) and with the publisher's reference "591" lower left. Either side of the title the following lines of verse:

"See the well instructed Fair,
Train’d by fond maternal care,
Cultivate an useful art,
And to Beauty Grace impart.

Industry, the source of wealth,
Guide to happiness and health,
Trains her for domestic life,
Pleasing omen of a Wife. -"

This print is exceptionally rare. It appears in Carington Bowles' sale catalogue for 1790 (p. 108 no. 476), under 'Ladies in Fashionable Dresses', which Bowles extended to include a further 29 plates priced 2s. plain, 3s. coloured. The British Museum has a single copy trimmed to just outside the platemark, acquired only in 2010 as part of the collection of Hon Christopher Lennox-Boyd. Unlocated in any other institutional collection, Yale etc, but a copy was mentioned in an article in The Connoisseur Magazine of 1904.

Beautifully framed with a simple, restrained dark oak moulding, a sanded and gilded inner slip with an egg and dart border.

Provenance:-
Stencilled number verso. Probably a late 19th/early 20th Century Christie's stencil.

Literature:-
The BM copy illustrated an article entitled "The Sister Arts: Textile Crafts between Paint, Print and Practice" in "The Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies" (February 2020).