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    Return to "Archer" is linked to these Works 58 items
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    Studies & Designs: View of a Seashore with a naked Giant lying in the…

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    Studies & Designs: View of a Seashore with a naked Giant lying in the…
    Studies & Designs: View of a Seashore with a naked Giant lying in the…
    Studies & Designs: View of a Seashore with a naked Giant lying in the…
    National Museum Wales, Cardiff
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    Artist
    John Whessell (c.1760-1806) after Wilson
    Title
    Studies & Designs: View of a Seashore with a naked Giant lying in the right Foreground surrounded by tiny Figures
    Date
    Published 1811
    Medium
    Soft-ground etching on India laid paper
    Dimensions
    Metric: 97 x 148 mm
    Imperial: 3 13/16 x 5 13/16 in.
    Collection
    National Museum Wales, Cardiff. To license image, click here.
    Accession Number
    NMW A 10964
    Wilson Online Reference
    E60/8A
    Description
    View of a seashore with a gigantic naked figure lying in the right foreground, surrounded by miniature people - all within an etched rectangular border
    Provenance
    Thomas Henry Thomas Bequest 1916
    Signature/inscription
    Lettered below the image: Wilson del | Whessell Sc
    Mount inscriptions
    [1] Lower centre, pencil: 35
    [2] Lower right, pencil: Landscape with figures
    Subject
    It has been suggested that Wilson's inspiration for this curious composition came from Swift's Gulliver's Travels or alternatively the description by the ancient author Philostratus (Imagines, II, 22) of Hercules among the Pygmies (see Bibliography, J. K. Welcher & R. Joseph and R. Halsband respectively).
    Related Drawings
    D53/13 Studies and Designs done in Rome in the Year 1752, p. 13
    D96 Gulliver Bound by the Lilliputians, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven
    Related Prints
    E60/8 John Whessell after Wilson,Studies & Designs: View of a Seashore with a naked Giant lying in the right Foreground surrounded by tiny Figures, The British Museum
    Critical commentary
    From a set of small soft-ground etchings by Whessell made after Wilson's drawings in a sketchbook at the Victoria & Albert Museum (D53-D53/81). The present one is taken from p. 13 (D53/13). In 1811 the etchings were published by the Oxford-based publisher, Robert Archer in more than one format.
    The political satire, Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift was first published in 1726 with the title, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of several Ships. Immediately popular, it was amended in 1735 and remained a universal favourite throughout the 18th century and beyond. The present print may illustrate Part 1, describing Gulliver's first voyage, when he is washed ashore after a shipwreck and finds himself the prisoner of a race of tiny people, less than 6 inches tall, who are inhabitants of the island country of Lilliput. Alternatively the subject may be the classical one of Hercules among the Pygmies, which would accord witrh Wilson's known familiarity with ancient authors and explain the gigantic figure's nudity.
    Previous Cat/Ref Nos
    16.182
    Bibliography
    Archer 1811, p. 25; J.K. Welcher & R. Joseph, 'Gulliverian Drawings by Richard Wilson' Eighteenth Century Studies, vol. 18, no. 2 (Winter, 1984-1985), pp. 170-85; R. Halsband, 'Comments on "Gulliverian Drawings by Richard Wilson"', Eighteenth Century Studies, vol. 19, no. 2 (Winter, 1985-1986), pp. 254-56.
    Condition/Conservation
    Proof state

    Work of Art

    Drawings

    • Studies and Designs done in Rome in the Year 1752, p. 13
    • Gulliver Bound by the Lilliputians, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven

    Versions

    • John Whessell (c.1760-1806)after Wilson, Studies & Designs: View of a Seashore with a naked Giant lying in the right Foreground surrounded by tiny Figures, The British Museum

    Biographies

    • John Whessell (Active 1760-1799)
    • Robert Archer (1811)

    Documents

    • Robert Archer, Studies and Designs by Richard Wilson, done at Rome in the Year 1752
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