Valentine card: P.14346-R-L4

Titles

Valentine card

Maker(s)

Publisher: Unknown

Entities

• Valentine card

Categories

• Print
• Album

Description

Loose inside album P.14346-R between nos. 3 and 4. Aquatint and etching with hand-colouring on 4to-sized embossed white wove paper (front paper only). From 'The Despondent Lover' (or 'The Unrequited Love') series. The border is lightly embossed with a design of leaves and flowers with a gap at upper centre where the lines of verse have been etched: "Cease thy frolic fingers play / Along each ivory key / Conscious it shrinks less fair than they / Cease and listen unto me / Hush every breeze and every rill / In truth I'll ever love thee still." An inner etched border with hand-colouring of a design featuring putti, mermen and candelabra surroundes the central image which shows a man holding the right hand of a woman seated at a spinet. This is the same number from the series as P.14346-R-5, which is complete, having both front and back papers. Frank Staff says of the series: 'The central picture of each shows a delightful aquatint, beautifully coloured and finished by hand. Although some of the scenes depict young ladies in grief, and one shows a jilted lover, not all of them are unhappy. ... The set numbers fourteen in all, which was recognised as the regular "valentine dozen".' The series was originally published in the 1830s, it is presumed, by Joseph Addenbrooke. However, according to Frank Staff: 'It has been noted that a set of this series is known on paper watermarked '1828', with Addenbrooke's name imprinted. Some time later, it seems likely that the plates came into someone else's possession, who filed off Addenbrooke's name from them and reprinted the entire series on un-watermarked paper. This could explain the plentiful supply still available and the comparatively worn state of the embossing on some copies.' See, Frank Staff, _The Valentine & Its Origins_, Lutterworth Press, London, 1969, figure 64, p. 60 and pp. 62-3. The Glaisher examples are on un-watermarked paper and without a maker's stamp and are most likely later reprints. See also a print of this number from the same series held at the Museum of London: A28549116, which is identified as a later reprint and dated 1870-1885. The Museum of London holds examples of these prints, which are later reprints made by Jonathan King and they date them circa 1870-1885.

Legal notes

Bequeathed by Dr J. W. L. Glaisher, 1928