Book Description

The Huntington collection of drawings by Thomas Rowlandson is generally regarded as the largest and most comprehensive at present in a public museum. The collection offers an unrivaled opportunity for the study of this prolific artist's range of interests and the development of his technique. As a line draftsman and humorist, Thomas Rowlandson was probably the finest England has ever produced. Certainly he had a wider command of comic devices and comes closer to exploiting their full potentialities than any other British artist. He is also wonderfully inventive in discovering and expressing the comic aspects of a great variety of everyday situations. His reputation as a humorist, though, should not obscure his achievement in other fields: he is a charming landscapist and genre artist, and a skillful portraitist. All these facets of Rowlandson's work are well represented in this volume, which reproduces and catalogues all of the Huntington drawings, including those from A Tour in a Post Chaise and The English Dance of Death, both previously published by the Huntington. In his introductory essay, Robert Wark discusses Rowlandson's art and illustrates the various aspects of his work by relating them to selected drawings that are reproduced in full color. The book will be of immense value to the student of art history, and the layman will be delighted by the vigor and sheer virtuosity of Rowlandson's work.