Colonial America
Outstanding 1721 Hand-Colored Engraved Print titled, "A Monument Dedicated to Posterity in Commemoration of Ye Incredible Folly Transacted in the Year 1720."
c. 1721, Hand-Colored Engraved Print titled, "A Monument Dedicated to Posterity in Commemoration of Ye Incredible Folly Transacted in the Year 1720.", after French Artist Bernard Picart, by Bernard Baron, British, never folded Choice Crisp Extremely Fine or better.
This beautifully Hand-Colored vivid Engraved Satirical Print measures about 15.5" x 12" and it evokes Speculation Mania on Exchange Alley, London's principal banking street. This engraving modifying an image by the Amsterdam-based artist Bernard Picart. Here, British artist Bernard Baron has adapted Picart's Dutch references for an English audience. Part reportage, part allegory, this print portrays hordes of investors engaging in acts of intrigue, theft, and violence.
The Goddess "Fortuna," whose wheel is shown trampling over an honest merchant, doles out both stock shares and afflictions; the words "Sorrow," "Madness," and "Prison" appear in the air around her. A nobleman is shown having his pocket "picked" by a child. Some of the figures hauling a cart that contains "Folly" (distinguished by her fool's cap) have images of Indigenous Native American Indians, some with East Asian appearances: being personifications of far-flung Colonial ventures. Overhead, beside a bubble-blowing Devil, the Goddess "Fame" trumpets fake news of easy money. This rare engraving is accompanied by an early Photostat copy with a description listed under the period heading "George I", and in a researcher's hand reading: "This is the entry in the British Museum Catalogue for your Print." Exquisite in sharpness and details, with bright vivid colors, deeply impressed into the heavy print paper showing the embossed outer plate impression.