A Dawkins family copy, rebound with new endpapers, retaining a nineteenth century bookplate of “Henry Dawkins Esq.” a descendant of the collaborator, and extra-illustrated with a copy of James McArdell’s mezzotint portrait of James Dawkins after James Stuart, plus a folded copy of the engraving after G. Hamilton’s famous depiction “James Dawkins and Robert Wood First discovering Sight of Palmyra”.
Offered with it, and from the same Dawkins family provenance is the original pencil and pastel portrait by James Stuart (one of only three known portraits by him) from which the mezzotint was taken. It is mounted on a larger piece of paper with the background continued by another hand, seemingly so as to enlarge it for an over-size frame designed to match others in a set. See “The British Art Journal”, vol 8 No 2, 2007 (https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/bitstream/handle/1805/8023/James%20Stuart%20Portrait.pdf?sequence=1) for a lengthy discussion of this portrait, and its suggestion that the sketch was for an unrealised portrait commissioned by the Society of the Dilletanti. It was offered as lot 2 at Christie’s on Feb 28 1913, when it was bought back by a family member.
“The discovery of Palmyra at the end of the seventeenth century resulted eventually in one of the most famous antiquarian publications of the following century, Robert Wood’s Palmyra…one of the most superb examples of contemporary scholarship….with magnificent engravings from drawings by his companion artist, Giovanni Battista Borra…” hailed as a masterpiece of the period. (Sarah Searight, The British in the Middle East, London, 1979, pp. 72-74.)
In the same work Searight quotes Horace Walpole, ‘Of all works that distinguish this age, none perhaps excel those beautiful editions of Baalbek and Palmyra…The pomp of the buildings has not a nobler air than the simplicity of the narration.’
“This is one of the most important architectural source books of the Eighteenth century. Robert Wood (c. 1717-1771) first visited the Levant in 1742. In 1750, accompanied by John Bouverie, James Dawkins, and the Italian artist Giovanni Battista Borra, he made a protracted journey through Asia Minor and Syria, eventually reaching the ruins of Palmyra and Balbec in 1751. Dawkins produced the official account of the tour, while Wood did the work on the topography and inscriptions. The plates were engraved by P. Fourdrinier, J. Müller and T. Major from drawings by Borra.” (Sotheby’s/Navari)
Public Advertiser (issue 5778) 1753 May 5th:
“This is to give NOTICE, THAT since the Engravings of the Ruins of PALMYRA have been finished, no Time has been lost in printing the Plates, but as it has been thought proper to commit the Care of Printing to one Person (which might have been done cheaper and more expeditiously if divided among several Hands) it makes it necessary to defer the Publication till November next; it is hoped that the Subscribers will excuse a Delay, in which the Publisher has no other View, than that of making the Work more perfect.
A Proof copy of the Work is to be seen at A. Millar’s, Bookseller, in the Strand.“
Public Advertiser (issue 5931 [sic]) 1753 November 23rd:
“This Day is published, Price Three Pounds Ten in Sheets, THE RUINS of PALMYRA, otherwise TEDMOR in the DESART. This work contains 59 Plates of the Ruins, and three of inscriptions, chiefly in the Greek and Palmyrian Languages — with large Explications — To which are prefixed, The Publisher’s Account of the Undertaking — An Enquiry into the ancient State of Palmyra, and a Journal of the Passage thro’ the Desart.
For the Use of Foreigners, the above Work is faithfully translated and elegantly printed in French. — The same Plates serve for both Languages, and the Impressions are equally good.“
Blackmer 1834 [citing the first French edition of the same year].
