Lot 521
BARLOW Francis, illustrator. Aesop
Auction: 1 February 2005 at 11:00 GMT
Description
An album of 74 text engravings from Barlow's Aesop, most probably cut from the London edition of 1687, which contained 32 plates and 110 illustrations in the text in total. Some of the engravings have been cropped in the cutting. One is torn with loss at the corner, and there are others with some fraying or slight tears, though generally no loss. Mounted in a veLlum bound album, probably 18th century.
Note: Francis Barlow was renowned for his pictures of country life and sport. His Aesop "is one of the chief English illustrated books ... that makes him the father of English book illustration" (Hodnett). Hodnett describes the engraving of the fisherman which we illustrate as making clear that "that river fishing can never be much more elaborate than it seems in the idyllic scene of the single fisherman with a pole in Barlow's Aesop ... .the book is one of the first of the long line of British illustrated sporting books ... It is also one of the first of English illustrated books to use the English countryside in an intimate way that will become the idiom of countless later books."