Lot Essay
The present watercolours closely follow the work of Samuel Dixon of Dublin (d. 1769), who was famous for his Foreign and Domestick Birds, a collection of embossed bird and flower pictures issued between 1748 and 1755. These pictures incorporated a technique which Dixon called basso relievo, whereby parts of the design were raised by means of a copper plate and then coloured in gouache. Dixon's first basso relievo set of twelve formal flower arrangements was advertised in Faulkner's Dublin Journal, 26 April 1748, which invited the 'Nobility and Gentry' to purchase these pictures that were 'not only ornamental in Lady's chambers but useful to paint and draw after or imitate in shell or needle work'.