YOUNG’S 282 ETCHINGS OF THE FAMOUS STAFFORD COLLECTION

YOUNG, John. A Catalogue of the Collection of Pictures of the Most Noble the Marquess of Stafford… Containing an Etching of Every Picture… by John Young. London: Hurst, Robinson (W. Nicol), 1825. Two volumes. Folio (11 by 15 inches), contemporary full dark blue straight-grain morocco gilt, raised bands, all edges gilt. $850.

First edition of Young’s illustrated catalogue of the famous Stafford Collection of Italian, Dutch, French and English masters (including Da Vinci, Raphael, Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, Poussin, Le Nain, West, Gainsborough and Turner), with mezzotint frontispiece portrait of George Granville, second Marquis of Stafford, and 282 etchings on 103 folio sheets of paintings at Cleveland House.

John Young was engraver to King George IV and "Keeper of the British Institution," parent of the National Gallery. In this capacity, Young was commissioned to document the Stafford Collection of art at Cleveland House, London. The first Marquis of Stafford, Granville Leveson-Gower, married Lady Louisa Egerton, daughter of the first Duke of Bridgewater, thereby acquiring the enormous industrial fortune of the Bridgewater family. The family's status increased again spectacularly in 1785 when Egerton's nephew George Granville, the second Marquis of Stafford, married Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland, adding almost a million acres of land to the family estates. An enthusiastic art collector, Granville was described by his contemporaries as a "leviathan of wealth." "Given Stafford's links with the British Institution, he would have been viewed as a kind of godfather figure to the new institution when it emerged and thus virtually expected to make a magnificent present to it. Bearing this in mind, it is not so surprising then, that when the National Gallery was founded in 1824, the Marquis of Stafford was among its first benefactors, donating Rubens's 'War and Peace' in 1828" (National Gallery). This collection of 282 Stafford paintings includes works by Rembrandt, Da Vinci, Veronese, Van Dyke, Rubens, Carracci, Raphael, Caravaggio, Correggio, Tintoretto, Titian, Del Sarto, Poussin, Le Nain, West, Gainsborough, Vernet, Turner, and Ruysdael. Text in English and French.

A near-fine copy, with only sparse foxing to plates, light rubbing to extremities of contemporary morocco, inner hinge reinforcement to Volume I.