John Simon (engraver)

For other people named John Simon, see John Simon.
John Simon
Born
Jean Simon

c. 1675
Normandy, Kingdom of France
Died22 September 1751(1751-09-22) (aged 75–76)
London, Kingdom of Great Britain
Nationality
Known forMezzotint prints

Jean Simon, anglicized as John Simon (also spelled Simons;[a] c. 1675–1751) was an English mezzotint engraver and print publisher of French Huguenot birth, particularly known for his portraits. Notably associated with the German-born portrait painter Godfrey Kneller, Simon had an active career that spanned at least three and a half decades, and was regarded as one of the mezzotint medium's most prolific masters of his generation, along with the older contemporaneous engraver John Smith.[4]

Life

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Born Jean Simon c. 1675 in Normandy,[5] he was said to belong to a Huguenot artist family that was connected to the protestant church at Charenton-le-Pont near Paris. In Paris, he studied line engraving.[6] Early in the 18th century,[b] Simon moved to London and began working in mezzotint, quickly adapting to the market demands;[8] his earliest known prints were published from Cross Lane, Long Acre, during the middle years of Queen Anne's reign.[11] In c. 1708–1709, Simon gained the attention of Godfrey Kneller, who fell out with his principal engraver, John Smith. Until the dispute with Smith was settled, Simon obtained several of Kneller's commissions.[12] This assured Simon's reputation, allowing him to become a founding member of the Academy for Artists in Great Queen Street, set up under Kneller's patronage in 1711.[13] In his notebooks, George Vertue listed Simon among leading mezzotint engravers working in London, along with Smith, John Faber the Elder, John Faber the Younger, and George White;[14] from Vertue's notebooks, it is also known that Simon was an associate of the renowned Rose and Crown Club.[15]

From early in his career, Simon began working extensively for the prominent print seller Edward Cooper (fl. 1682–1725). Particularly noted was a c. 1707–1710 publication by Cooper of a set of mezzotints by Simon after the Raphael Cartoons in Hampton Court Palace, devoted to the 2nd Duke of Devonshire.[16] After Cooper's death in 1725, Simon succeeded him as chief publisher of Michael Dahl's paintings.[17] Beside from Cooper, Simon was employed by such notable publishers as Thomas Bowles II (c. 1689–1767) and John Overton (c. 1639–1713); since c. 1720, he mostly published his own prints from a series of addresses around Covent Garden. After at least three and a half decades,[18] Simon retired from active printmaking c. 1742, nine year before his death on 22 September 1751;[c] his remaining stock of plates was sold in November 1761.[21]

Work

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Simon was a prolific printmaker,[d] particularly noted for portraits made after Kneller, Dahl, Thomas Gibson, Thomas Murray, Philippe Mercier, Enoch Seeman, and others.[25] Subjects of Simon's portraits represented all points of the political spectrum, including the Duke of Marlbourough, Robert Walpole, Francis Atterbury, Lord North and Grey, the 10th Earl Marischal, and the Duke of Ormond; similarly, portraits of members of the then reigning House of Hanover were balanced by those of exiled members of the House of Stuart. Simon also engraved sets of the Four Mohawk Kings after John Verelst, published in 1710,[26] and of twenty-four Poets and Philosophers of England published on six plates c. 1727.[27][28] Aside from portraiture, Simon took biblical, historical, and decorative subjects; alongside the Raphael Cartoons, these include Christ Restoring the Blind Man's Sight by Louis Laguerre, Four Elements by Jacopo Amigoni, Four Seasons by Rosalba Carriera. He was also known to make prints after Antoine Watteau,[29] Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin,[30] Peter Paul Rubens, Federico Barocci, Sébastien Leclerc, and others.[31] There are mezzotints by Simon made likely of his own invention, or after that by unknown authors; these include a portrait of the Russian statesman Alexander Danilovich, Prince Menshikov;[32] The Judgment of Paris, a mythological subject;[33][34] and A Winter Evening's Conversation, a satyrical print.[35]

According to later authors, Simon had a "spare and powerful"[36] style influenced by that of Smith, yet contrasting with the latter, including cases the both worked after the same original.[37] In comparison to Smith, Simon was known to use a less close grounding of plates, with laying small cross-hatched lines;[38] In that relation, Simon's skill was regarded as inferior to Smith's in technical terms such as brightance, drawing of the figures, and details; nonetheless, Simon closely rivaled Smith in his finest works.[39] In spite of aforementioned issues, Simon's prints were esteemed among "the most successful mezzotints of their day".[40] In the 20th century, the English authors Malcolm Charles Salaman and the 3rd Baron Killanin credited Simon for bringing a "fresh artistic sensitiveness" and, overall, a French influence into the mezzotint medium, respectively.[41] Peter Pelham, a pioneering American painter and mezzotint engraver, was an apprentice of Simon in London.[42][43]

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Selected prints by John Simon

Notes

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  1. ^ In A History of Mezzotinto of 1786, James Chelsum used the spelling Simons,[1] and so do the 1826 and 1849 editions of George Vertue's A Catalogue of Engravers, published as part of Horace Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting in England;[2] the original 1765 edition of Vertue's Catalogue, as well as the subsequent 1879 edition of Walpole's Anecdotes, use the spelling Simon.[3]
  2. ^ Exact time of Simon's moving to England remains imprecise. Following Vertue's account published by Walpole, 18th- and 19th-century authors wrote that Simon settled in London "some years" before the death of Smith. In later publications, a variety of differently specified datings is given.[7] In 1990, Carol Wax attributed Simon's arrival to 1708.[8]
    In light of Simon's Huguenot background, it has been widely thought that his moving was related to persecutions that followed the Edict of Fontainebleau of 1685.[9] In a different opinion, the Hungarian-born scholar Frederick Antal names Simon among French-born printmakers brought in England by Claude Du Bosc.[10]
  3. ^ Various publications, ranging from the late 18th century to the late 20th century, date Simon's death c. 1755.[19] In the Benezit Dictionary of Artists, Simon's death is dated 1754.[20]
  4. ^ In the middle 19th century, the French librarian Charles Le Blanc (1817–1865) catalogued 195 prints made by Simon;[22] later in that century, the Irish mezzotint amateur John Chaloner Smith described 177 mezzotints by Simon.[23] Various 20th-century sources estimate about 200 prints made by Simon.[24]

References

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  1. ^ a b Chelsum 1786, p. 88.
  2. ^ Walpole 1826, vol. 5, pp. 179, 183, 260; Walpole 1849, pp. 934, 936, 978.
  3. ^ Vertue 1765, p. 133; Walpole 1879, p. 463.
  4. ^ Vertue 1932, p. 11; Allison 1947, p. 441; Whinney & Millar 1957, p. 12; Wilder 1969, pp. 124, 128; Oliver 1973, p. 174; Saunders 1995, p. 45.
  5. ^ Killanin 1948, p. 58, names Charenton-le-Pont as Simon's birthplace. Kalyazina 1977, p. 84 n. 38, states Simon was born in Paris.
  6. ^ Smith 1878–1884, pt. 3, pp. 1060–1061; Sharp 2004, p. 659.
  7. ^ Whitman 1898, p. 23, says that Simon came to London "in the early years of the century". Davenport 1904, p. 112, Vollmer 1937, p. 56, and Myers 1969, p. 182, date the arrival "about the beginning of the eighteenth century," whereas Hind 1963, p. 271, writes of "the first half of the eighteenth century."
  8. ^ a b Wax 1990, p. 28.
  9. ^ Redgrave 1878, p. 395; Smith 1878–1884, pt. 3, pp. 1060–1061; O'Donoghue 1897, p. 265; Whitman 1898, p. 23; Davenport 1904, p. 112; Salaman 1910, p. 14; Vollmer 1937; Killanin 1948, p. 58; Wax 1990, p. 28; Joubert 2002, p. 68.
  10. ^ Antal 1962, p. 151.
  11. ^ Smith 1878–1884, pt. 3, p. 1061; O'Donoghue 1897, p. 265; Salaman 1910, p. 14; Sharp 2004, pp. 659–660.
  12. ^ Vertue 1934, p. 14; Godfrey 1978, p. 29; Wax 1990, p. 28; Griffiths 1996, p. 85; Clayton 1997, p. 59.
  13. ^ Vertue 1952, p. 168, cited in Bignamini 1988, pp. 76, 81 n. 74; Clayton 1997, pp. 13, 59; Sharp 2004, p. 660.
  14. ^ Vertue 1932, p. 11; Vertue 1934, p. 8, cited in Burke 1976, p. 178; Atherton 1974, p. 44.
  15. ^ Vertue 1952, p. 35, cited in Bignamini 1988, pp. 55, 60 n. 67.
  16. ^ Clayton 1997, pp. 49–50; Sharp 2004, p. 660; Hsieh 2009, p. 907.
  17. ^ Clayton 1997, pp. 20–21.
  18. ^ Salaman 1910, p. 14 and Gohm 1978, p. 38, estimate Simon's active career as 35 years, from 1707 to 1742.
  19. ^ Vertue 1765, p. 133; Strutt 1785–1786, p. 321; Chelsum 1786, p. 88; Le Blanc 1854–1890, p. 517; Redgrave 1878, p. 395; Walpole 1879, p. 463; Smith 1878–1884, pt. 3, p. 1061; Portalis & Béraldi 1882, p. 548; Bryan 1905, p. 84; Dacier & Vuaflart 1922, pp. 23, 134; Herold & Vuaflart 1929, pp. 91, 261; Dukelskaya 1987, p. 36; Saunders 1995, p. 45.
  20. ^ Bénézit 2006, p. 1234.
  21. ^ O'Donoghue 1897, p. 265; Vertue 1934, p. 158; Sharp 2004, p. 660.
  22. ^ Le Blanc 1854–1890, pp. 517–521, cited in Bellini 1995, p. 505 and Demkin 2009, p. 36.
  23. ^ Smith 1878–1884, pt. 3, pp. 1060–1130, cited in Dukelskaya 1987, p. 36.
  24. ^ Salaman 1906, p. 82; Vollmer 1937, p. 56; Myers 1969, p. 182; Gohm 1978, p. 38.
  25. ^ Redgrave 1878, p. 395; Hind 1963, p. 271; Dukelskaya 1987, p. 36; Sharp 2004, p. 660.
  26. ^ Muller 2008, pp. 28, 42.
  27. ^ Clayton 1997, p. 62.
  28. ^ O'Donoghue 1897, p. 265; Sharp 2004, p. 660.
  29. ^ Le Blanc 1854–1890, vol. 3, p. 521; Dacier & Vuaflart 1922, pp. 23, 134; Herold & Vuaflart 1929, pp. 91, 260–262; Antal 1962, p. 35; Roland Michel 1986, p. 55.
  30. ^ Joubert 2002, p. 68.
  31. ^ Bryan 1905, p. 84; Davenport 1904, p. 113; Salaman 1906, p. 87; Salaman 1910, p. 14; Vollmer 1937, p. 56; Bellini 1995, p. 505.
  32. ^ a b Rovinsky 1887, col. 1272; Kalyazina 1977, pp. 70, 75–76, 84 n. 38; Demkin 2009, p. 36.
  33. ^ Smith 1878–1884, pt. 3, p. 1130.
  34. ^ a b Reproduced in Janik, Erika (2011). Apple: A Global History. London: Reaktion Books. ill. p. 34. ISBN 978-1-86189-848-7. OCLC 1120644112 – via Google Books.
  35. ^ Smith 1878–1884, pt. 3, pp. 1082–1083.
  36. ^ Sharp 2004, p. 660.
  37. ^ Smith 1878–1884, pt. 3, p. 1061; Whitman 1898, p. 23; Killanin 1948, p. 58; Hind 1963, p. 381.
  38. ^ Davenport 1904, p. 112; Arms 1934, p. 110; Killanin 1948, p. 58.
  39. ^ Chelsum 1786, p. 88; Walpole 1879, p. 463; Smith 1878–1884, pt. 3, p. 1061; Whitman 1898, p. 23; Davenport 1904, p. 112; Salaman 1910, p. 14; Sharp 2004, p. 660.
  40. ^ Arms 1934, p. 110.
  41. ^ Salaman 1910, p. 14: "[Simon] brought a fresh artistic sensitiveness to it, and, though less brilliant on the whole than Smith, his refinement of touch and harmonious treatment of tones gave him distinction and popularity during his thirty-five working years as an engraver in mezzotint"; Killanin 1948, p. 58: "The French influence was brought into mezzotint by John Simon…".
  42. ^ Allison 1947, p. 441; Oliver 1973, p. 174; Wax 1990, p. 91; Saunders 1995, p. 45.
  43. ^ Barhill, Georgia Bardy (1996). "Pelham, Peter". In Turner, Jane (ed.). The Dictionary of Art. Vol. 24. New York: Grove's Dictionaries. p. 335. ISBN 1-884446-00-0. OCLC 1033638207 – via the Internet Archive.
  44. ^ a b c Chelsum 1786, p. 88; Walpole 1879, p. 463.
  45. ^ Salaman 1910, p. 15; Hind 1963, p. 271.
  46. ^ a b Salaman 1910, p. 15.
  47. ^ Hind 1963, p. 271.
  48. ^ Cited in Jeffree, Richard (1996). "Lilly, Edmund". In Turner, Jane (ed.). The Dictionary of Art. Vol. 19. New York: Grove's Dictionaries. p. 384. ISBN 1-884446-00-0. OCLC 1033643331 – via the Internet Archive.
  49. ^ Whitman 1898, pp. 23–24; Salaman 1906, p. 82; Salaman 1910, p. 14; Clayton 1930, p. 124; Aliverti 1997, pp. 235, 243.
  50. ^ Salaman 1906, p. 83; Salaman 1910, p. 15.
  51. ^ Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg (2001). Эрмитаж. Музей и коллекции (exhibition catalogue). Saint Petersburg: Slavia. p. 203, cat. no. 4.36. ISBN 5-88654-159-4. OCLC 57350723.
  52. ^ Wax 1990, ill. p. 28.

Sources

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to John Simon.
  • John Simon at the National Portrait Gallery official website
  • John Simon at the British Museum official website
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