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Alexander Bell, the engraver, Edinburgh c. 1745c. 1750

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Date

c. 1745c. 1750

Description

A pencil and watercolour drawing of three seated figures, two men and a woman on the right. The figure at the centre is drawn in pencil only, the man in profile on the left in a grey coat with yellow trim and the woman in profile in a red dress and bonnet. The seated female figure is very similar, in reverse, to the figure in RCIN 914407. The costume is the same as that in RCIN 914334, indicating a date of about 1746-50, when Sandby was in Scotland. He made several drawings of seated figures in domestic interiors ( for example RCINs 914406, 914407); this drawing is presumably unfinished. Oppé catalogued the drawing as 'R. Bell the engraver, Edinburgh' and 'Sir Samuel Chambers'; these descriptions are probably taken from an earlier mount, copied from an earlier one. Paul Sandby met the engraver Alexander Bell in Edinburgh in about 1750 and was introduced to etching. A Sir Samuel Chambers cannot be identified at this date. In his biography of the Sandby brothers (1897) William Sandby lists one of the sitters as the French printmaker and silversmith Hubert-Francois Gravelot (1699-1773), but Gravelot returned to France in 1745 after a period in London.
Alternate title: 'R. Bell, the engraver, Edinburgh'
Descriptive Medium: 'Pencil, pen and ink and watercolour', 'pencil, pen and ink', 'watercolour painting'