Print of the Month - March 2016
Printed c.1837 by George Baxter using his patented Baxter Process.
This is an illustration in Baxter’s book "The Pictorial Album or Cabinet of Paintings."
The book contained 11 prints together with descriptions and poetry.
It was published shortly after Baxter patented his process and was an advert for this new process and George Baxter's work as well as a desirable book for the drawing room.
The print is after a painting by W. Westall, A.R.A.
The book describes the view: - “A pillar of even stones on each side gives the mouth of the cave so regular an appearance, that it seems as if it were the measured masonry of man.
And yet what could have tempted him to build, where none can live? No - man raised it not - nor have his footsteps often dared to penetrate that dark and dreary vault.”
Print size 14 x 9 cm.
Printed on tinted paper.
The mother of Professor Flinders Petrie, to whose son we owe so much of our knowledge of ancient Egypt, was the daughter of Capt. Flinders, who discovered this promontory, as stated in the lettering on the print.
He died when his daughter was only two years old, after having spent seven years as a prisoner in the hands of the French.
He was a native of Lincolnshire, as were also his lieutenant on the Investigator, and a midshipman, one John Franklin the subject of another Baxter print.
Under the print in the centre, engraved in three lines, are the above title, and “Discovered by Capt. Flinders in H.M.S. Investigator, 1802. Printed in Oil Colours by G. Baxter (Patentee), from a painting by W. Westall, A.R.A.” Below that is "London, Chapman & Hall, Strand."