“Mr. Shuter, Mr Quick, and Mrs Green in the characters of Hardcastle, Tony Lumpkin, and Mrs. Hardcastle”, a mezzotint by Robert Laurie

Robert Laurie after Thomas Parkinson, Mr Shuter, Mr Quick, and Mrs Green in the characters of Hardcastle, Tony Lumpkin & Mrs Hardcastle, mezzotint, 1776.
Robert Laurie after Thomas Parkinson, Mr Shuter, Mr Quick, and Mrs Green in the characters of Hardcastle, Tony Lumpkin & Mrs Hardcastle, mezzotint, 1776.

This charming mezzotint (1776) by Robert Laurie is an engraving of Thomas Parkinson’s painting of the same year, Mr. Shuter, with Mr. Quick, and Mrs. Green, in a scene from She Stoops to Conquer. Parkinson was a known theatrical painter, and Laurie the owner of a successful engravings and publishing business located in Fleet Street, London, an area still associated with the British printing trade. She Stoops to Conquer (1773) is a five-part comedy by Oliver Goldsmith. The scene depicted in Laurie’s mezzotint takes place in the first scene of Act V. After a series of misunderstandings and mistaken identities, the play rollicks towards its conclusion with the union of two happy couples. But, not before the larrikin son Tony Lumpkin has tricked his mother Mrs. Hardcastle into believing she is lost in the countryside, and her husband, Mr. Hardcastle, is in fact a brigand out to rob and kill her.

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Methods of intaglio printing: Engraving versus etching

Intaglio printing is the opposite of relief printing. This term encompasses a variety of print-making methods in which an image is created as incised sunken lines on a printing plate, rather than as raised ones. Studying the art of printmaking, it is necessary to grasp the difference between engraving and etching, two techniques of intaglio printing. While deceptively alike to the untrained eye, both in name and look, these two methods developed from different processes, were mastered by differing artists, and create dissimilar effects on the finished print.

Marcantonio Raimondi, after Rapael, The Judgement of Paris, (1510-20), engraving.
Marcantonio Raimondi, after Rapael, The Judgement of Paris, (1510-20), engraving.

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Searching for ‘reality’ in art online

Alone on the stage, the ghost light shines to the empty auditorium. The ghost light is a feature of the theatre, rooted, like so much tradition, in lore and superstition. ‘Some say the ghost light is used to scare away ghosts, but more often the light is used to appease ghosts,’ writes the Melbourne Theatre Company. ‘During the COVID-19 pandemic, theatres around the world have placed ghost lights on their empty stages. For now, these shining beacons symbolise the art form’s survival.’

The ghost light, Melbourne Theatre Company.
The ghost light, Melbourne Theatre Company.

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Castle drawings by Charles Henry Ashdown

Castles, those formidable stone monoliths that dotted the countryside serving as homes and fortresses, form one of the most enduring images of the Middle Ages in Western Europe. While many now lie in varying states of ruin, few symbols of the medieval period capture the imagination of the modern person to such an extent. One envisions how they must have looked in the midst of their glory days, some eight hundred years ago.

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