Description: "Langdale Pikes," watercolor,
signed l/r, inscribed verso,
6.75" x
9.5" unframed.
Condition:Very good condition.
Biography: GREEN, VALENTINE (1739-1813), British engraver,
was born at Halesowen. He was
placed by his
father in a solicitors office
at Evesham,
where he remained for two years;
but ultimately
he decided, on his own responsibility,
to
abandon the legal profession
and became apupil
of a line engraver at Worcester.
In 1765
he migrated to London and began
work as a
mezzotint engraver, having taught
himself
the technicalities of this art,
and quickly
rose to a position in absolutely
the front
rank of British engravers. He
became a member
of the Incorporated Society of
Artists in
1767, an associate-engraver of
the Royal
Academy in 2775, and for some
forty years
he followed his profession with
the greatest
success. The exclusive right
of engraving
and publishing plates from the
pictures in
the Dsseldorf gallery was granted
him by
the duke of Bavaria in 1789,
but, after he
had issued more than twenty of
these plates,
the siege of that city by the
French put
an end to this undertaking and
caused him
serious financial loss. From
this cause,
and through the failurt of certain
other
speculations, he was reduced
to poverty;
and in consequence he took the
post of keeper
of the British Institutior in
1805, and continued
in this office for the remainder
of his life.
During his career as an engraver
he produced
some four hundred plates after
portraits
by Reynolds, Romney, and other
British artists,
after the compositions of Benjamin
West,
and after pictures by Van Dyck,
Rubens, Murillo,
and other old masters. It is
claimed for
him that he was one of the first
engravers
to show how admirably mezzotint
could be
applied to the translation of
pictorial compositions
as well as portraits, but at
the present
time it is to his portraits that
most attention
is given by collectors. His engravings
are
distinguished by exceptional
richness and
subtlety of tone, and by very
judicious management
of relations of light and shade;
and they
have, almost without exception,
notable freshness
and grace of handling.
