Current Location: In storage
Titles
Valentine card
Maker(s)
Publisher:
S. Marks & Sons
Entities
Categories
Description
4to-sized thin, white wove paper printed with a decorative woodcut border incorporating a bee motif at all four corners. The border has been delicately tinted with a grey wash. A hand-coloured woodcut at the centre shows a couple making music together on a garden bench whilst Cupid, hovering in a cloud to the left, pulls back his bow to fire an arrow at the couple. The seated female figure appears to be playing a colascione, an instrument associated with the Italian commedia dell'arte in the 16th century and which was adopted in France and Germany during the 18th-century as a bass continuo instrument (i.e. as a bass line accompaniment to a melody as sung by the male figure in this woodcut). It is therefore an unusual inclusion in a 19th-century English print and indicates that maybe the woodcut composition was either imported from Germany or influenced by 18th or 19th-century German engravings showing this instrument being played. Verses above and below the central image: "Dear Valentine, my love, my friend, / To thee these lovely lines I send: ...". Printed at lower centre: "London S, Marks and Sons.". The inside pages are blank. From a series. One of 7 prints of a similar style bought at auction. A clipping from the sale catalogue is pasted to the album leaf below P.14346-R-63: "Old Valentines - continued / 752 Coloured Sentimental Examples - 7in / all, 4to size, 1 pubd. By A. Park, of Fins- / bury, the others by S. Marks and Son, / each with blank fly-sheet, and coloured / woodcut borders, nice state, 185 - 17s 6d / ...". There are two examples by A. Park in the group. One of these was most likely bought by Glaisher at a later date and positioned by him alongside the exisiting print. See also: P.14346-R-63; P.14346-R-64; P.14346-R-65; P.14346-R-67; P.14346-R-68; P.14346-R-70. The V&A also holds examples of these prints with bee motif woodcut borders that were produced by S. Marks: See E.2046-1953 and E.2062-1953, which have been given a date of circa 1850.
Legal notes
Bequeathed by Dr J. W. L. Glaisher, 1928
