Breaking up the ‘Agamemnon’, No. 1

Early in 1870 P.G. Hamerton asked Haden to etch a plate for his new arts magazine The Portfolio. Haden replied on 3 July 1870:

Yesterday, in the belief that I had lost the power of working on copper in the open air, and with a load on my conscience as to a request of yours that I would furnish an etching for the “Portfolio,” I went out and made, or rather tied to make, a free-handed drawing (on the plate sous entendu) of the hull of the Agamemnon … I had thought of making the sun set behind the old hulk and the distant cupolas of Greenwich, and of using the sinking luminary as typical of the departing glories of both, and I will try to do this yet if, when you have taken off the impressions you require, and you will let me have the plate back again – reserving the second state for the new book which I hope one day, but not yet, to publish. Be so kind as to let me know whether you feel inclined to accept a crude performance of this sort…

P.G. Hamerton, ‘Mr. Seymour Haden’s Etchings’, Scribners Monthly, vol. 20, no. 4, August 1880, pp. 586-601. As cited in Richard S. Schneiderman, A Catalogue Raisonné of the prints of Sir Francis Seymour Haden. London, Robin Garton Ltd., 1983, p.594.

1. Sir William Drake, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etched Work of Francis Seymour Haden. London, Macmillan and Co., 1880. (128)
2. H. Nazeby Harrington, The Engraved Work of Sir Francis Seymour Haden, P.R.E. Liverpool, Henry Young & Sons, 1910 (145)
3. Richard S. Schneiderman, A Catalogue Raisonné of the prints of Sir Francis Seymour Haden. London, Robin Garton Ltd., 1983 (133)

1. British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, London, England, UK
2. Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
3. Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
4. Cornell University, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, New York, USA
5. Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan, USA
6. Collection of D.S. Whitelegge, England, UK
7. Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA (2 impressions)
8. Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
9. Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois, USA
10. Liverpool Medical Institution, Liverpool, UK
11. Collection of Louise Combes Seeber, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
12. Madison Art Center, Madison, Wisconsin, USA
13. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
14. Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona, USA
15. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
16. The Art Museum, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
17. St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri, USA (2 impressions)
18. Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, USA
19. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK

See Schneiderman for locations of other states.

1. Rodney K. Engen, Dictionary of Victorian Engravers, Print Publishers and Their Works. Cambridge , Chadwyck-Heley, 1979
2. Garton and Co., British Printmakers 1855-1955. Wiltshire, Garton and Co., 1992
3. Kenneth M. Guichard, British Etchers 1850-1940. London, Robin Garton Ltd., 1977
4. Ian Mackenzie, British Prints: Dictionary and Price Guide. Woodbridge, Antique Collectors’ Club, 1998