Rare. There are two examples of this print in the British Museum but we have not located any other copies. “It is curious that impressions of this engraving are excessively rare in England, and that those which are met with, are, according to our experience, usually poor” (Whitten, Quaker Pictures, see below). The publisher of this engraving, John Bowles (c.1701-1779) was the younger son of Thomas Bowles I, and brother of Thomas Bowles II. This print may well a new impression of a (?Dutch) plate which Bowles acquired, this would explain the slightly worn appearance of the plate in most copies.
A well-preserved impression of a rare and contested print showing a Quaker meeting with a woman ministering to a large assembled group including William Penn and George Fox.
Writing in Quaker Pictures in 1892, Wilfred Whitten noted that Egbert van Heemskercke’s original painting on which the present (and a number of other) prints was based, “should be better known, for it may fairly be called the great historic picture of primitive Quakerism.” (p.19) Whitten goes on to describe the present engraving of this painting - referred to as the “Bull and Mouth Meeting” (after the famous early Quaker meeting place - and notes that the many figures in the scene are most likely portraits of real Quakers and that much of the attire is correct. Whitten points out the recognisable figures of George Fox, leaning to the left of the main woman, and William Penn and the Duke of York (later James II) who are shown in the lower right-hand corner of the picture. Whitten writes:
“We are well aware that some Friends have difficulty in regarding this picture as anything else than a caricature. We think, however, that the caricature is only slight. The attitudes of the worshippers, the unmistakeable likeness of George Fox, of William Penn, and of the Duke of York, the careful rendering of costume, the chamber itself, and the glimpse of the London chimneys through the diamond-paned window, the broad stream of sunlight that is pouring upon the worshippers (showing that the artist sought beauty in his subject) - **these circumstances and the whole spirit of the work, are we think, persuasive evidence that we have a serious representation of a dramatic scene in the history of the first Quakers”** (p.20-1)
Harry Mount, more recently, in his essay, “Egbert van Heemskerck’s Quaker Meetings Revisited” (Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes , 1993, Vol. 56 (1993), pp. 209- 228) has slightly cautioned against seeing the image as an accurate representation of real Quakers although concedes that, “Heemskerck’s depictions of Quaker meetings seems to have been quite accurate in a number of respects. His portrayal of Quaker dress tallies with the range of garments recorded in contemporary household accounts and recommended in documents issued by Quaker Meetings.” (p.227)
Provenance: George Francis Carline (1855-1920), oil and watercolour painter, ink inscription “Geo: F. Carline / Lincoln / 1887” on the blank verso of the sheet.
