A week of Gillray and Hogarth at the Lewis Walpole Library
I would like to thank all those involved and especially the organizers for an absolutely fascinating few days at the Lewis Walpole Library in Farmington, Connecticut. I was invited for a very interesting and lively study day devoted to James Gillray, followed by seminars led by my old friend Sheila O’Connell and the great and immensely knowledgeable caricature dealer Andrew Edmunds. Together with our friend the Rowlandson expert Nick Knowles we had enormous fun going through the fabulous Hogarth and caricature collections there and I learned a great deal by comparing notes with these friends and by making new friendships and learning of new material and for me new expertise on new angles with fellow enthusiasts from the new world. The featured image was a new discovery (for me) and the library is a wonderful working environment:
We had a few notable celebrations – not least when Andrew Edmunds’s delightful restaurant deservedly won the Evening Standard’s best wine list award. Please don’t go there – it is small and hard enough to get into already.
Sheila and I then went on for a week of onerous and difficult research into caricature and the history of the American Revolution:
I really did spend most of my time in New York in the Public Library looking at Gillray, honest!