?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 200 - $ 300
CRUIKSHANK, GEORGE. Autograph Letter Signed, "GeoCruikshank," with two small graphite drawings, on the verso. The letter, to "Dear Sir," explaining that a small wood engraving would be ineffective, as would representing women on a treadmill, and, in a postscript, "I saw Mr. [Joseph?] Sleap yesterday, and knowing what I was about to write to you requested me to inform you that the plates will be finished in a few days." The drawings, each a series of sketches. The first, showing a man peering over a table surrounded by sitting figures or body parts, with the holograph captions: "Moxhay" and "Archaeologist." The second, showing the heads of three people whose hats are in the shape of dwellings with tiny people visible in the windows and doors, with two holograph captions: "The Head of the Table, the Head of the Family" and "D J Coulton, Britannica." 2 pages, 9x7 1/4 inches, written and drawn on the recto and verso of a single sheet; minor soiling at all edges, horizontal fold. [London], 11 January 1845
"My having had to attend to . . . bringing out my 'Table Book,' must plead as an excuse for not giving an earlier answer to your letter . . . requesting . . . a vignette on the title page of your forthcoming work. "I . . . assure you, that a woodengraving, from the smallness of the size, would be very ineffective and indeed unless some particular point of bad conduct on the part of the officials of the prison--or the fact of some accident occurring to some of the prisoners--the mere representation of females on the treadwheel would go for nothing. I speak . . . having been engaged . . . in an attempt to get up something (graphically) against this system of discipline as regards women, when it was first brought into use and we decided that nothing could be done in that way without gross exaggeration--a thing, I am sure, quite contrary to your desires . . . ."
