Lot Essay
Each album contains a number of portrait drawings stuck onto its pages, thirty-one in one, thirty-five in the other. Fourteen are with some form of identification and the sitters include Varley's brother-in-law William Mulready, R.A. queried, but with a further inscription 'not a doubt about it/...geg[?]'; Nicholas Pocock the marine painter; Mr. Hewlet of Bath, flower painter; Mr. Mason, architect; Mr. Blore, architectural draughtsman; Mr. Green of Ambleside, engraver and draughtsman; and 'Girtin's Brother'. Ladies include a Mrs Boyd.
A portrait of John Fleetwood is dated 1796, and a drawing of 'Mr. E. Scot Senr.' is inscribed 'Done in the Camera lucida/June 16.1810/by J. Varley'; one of 'Mr. Holford of Hampstead' as 'sketched with the graphic Telescope June 3rd. 1812'. The Graphic Telescope, patented in 1811, was a development by John Varley's brother Cornelius of the camera lucida, introduced by Wallaston in 1807 and itself a development of the camera obscura. These were devices for the direct copying of outlines from nature, the Graphic Telescope using mirrors to give the illusion that the actual image could be seen and traced on the drawing paper (see J. Gage, A Decade of English Naturalism, 1819-1820, exhibition catalogue, Norwich Castle Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1969-70, p.16, Cornelius Varley's design for his telescope repr. on cover, and M. Butlin, 'Blake, the Varleys, and the Graphic Telescope', William Blake: Essays in Honour of Sir Geoffrey Keynes, ed. M.D. Paley and M. Phillips, Oxford 1973, pp. 299-304, portrait drawings by Cornelius and John Varley repr. pls. 75-7)
A portrait of John Fleetwood is dated 1796, and a drawing of 'Mr. E. Scot Senr.' is inscribed 'Done in the Camera lucida/June 16.1810/by J. Varley'; one of 'Mr. Holford of Hampstead' as 'sketched with the graphic Telescope June 3rd. 1812'. The Graphic Telescope, patented in 1811, was a development by John Varley's brother Cornelius of the camera lucida, introduced by Wallaston in 1807 and itself a development of the camera obscura. These were devices for the direct copying of outlines from nature, the Graphic Telescope using mirrors to give the illusion that the actual image could be seen and traced on the drawing paper (see J. Gage, A Decade of English Naturalism, 1819-1820, exhibition catalogue, Norwich Castle Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1969-70, p.16, Cornelius Varley's design for his telescope repr. on cover, and M. Butlin, 'Blake, the Varleys, and the Graphic Telescope', William Blake: Essays in Honour of Sir Geoffrey Keynes, ed. M.D. Paley and M. Phillips, Oxford 1973, pp. 299-304, portrait drawings by Cornelius and John Varley repr. pls. 75-7)