Anecdotes of painting in England : with some account of the principal artists and incidental notes on other arts
Horace Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting in England, printed by Thomas Farmer at his Strawberry Hill press in 1762, was written for readers of art history and collectors of English painting, with engraved portraits of British artists drawn partly from George Vertue's notes. The pictures are small copperplate engravings of men in oval or rectangular frames, many in periwigs and draped cloaks, with inscribed names and secondary portrait roundels set below. A designer might take from them the formal conventions of early eighteenth-century portrait engraving: oval vignettes, carved stone surrounds, and tonal line-shading for fabric and hair.
