Lot 60
Clerk, John, of Eldin
A Series of Etchings Chiefly of Views in Scotland
Estimate: £400 - £600
Auction: 19 September 2024 from 10:00 BST
Description
With Additional Etchings and Facsimiles from his Drawings. Edinburgh: for the Bannatyne Club, 1855. Large folio (50.5 x 31cm), original maroon quarter roan, printed paper label to front board, xxx pp., lithographic portrait frontispiece after Henry Raeburn, mezzotint portrait (both on india paper, mounted), 55 etched or tinted lithographic plates (numbered 1-55 but many containing multiple separately printed images), one further unnumbered plate, tissue-guards, binding worn and sunned, staining to front endpapers and to gutter of frontispiece, spotting to pp. xxviii-xxix from old laid-in etchings
Footnote
Second edition, greatly enlarged, number 98 in the Bannatyne Club series; it was first published in 1825 with 28 plates only. John Clerk of Eldin (1728-1812), 'a true child of the Enlightenment' (ODNB) is best remembered today for his Essay on Naval Tactics (1790). 'Clerk was an exceptional amateur artist. His wealthy background afforded him the luxury of entertaining numerous careers, including medicine and business, and he also showed a considerable interest in geology. In the 1740s he began sketching alongside his brother-in-law, Robert Adam, and the artist Paul Sandby. Clerk travelled extensively throughout Scotland, recording a wide range of landscapes and ancient buildings. His sketches of Edinburgh and the surrounding areas are highly personal representations of his native countryside' (National Galleries of Scotland, online). The Bannatyne Club was an antiquarian printing society founded in Edinburgh in 1823 by Sir Walter Scott on the model of London's Roxburghe Club.
