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Capt. Paul Jones, From an Original Drawing taken from the Life, on board the Serapis.
London: Thos. Macklin, No. 1, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Oct. 22, 1779. Engraving, 8.5” x 5.625”; sheet size, 10.325” x 7.25”. CONDITION: Very good. An engraved portrait of the “father of the American Navy,” made just a month after his victory over the HMS Serapis. This full-length portrait, described by the Society of Cincinnati as “slightly satirical,” shows a sword-bearing Captain John Paul Jones aboard the British man-of-war Serapis, during his victory at the Battle of Flamborough Head. On the night of September 23rd, 1779, Jones, commanding the aged French merchantman the Bonhomme Richard, led his crew into battle against the new HMS Serapis, a state-of-the-art English warship captained by Richard Pearson. The Richard, equipped with a mix of new and used cannons, “including twenty-eight 12 pounders, six old 18 pounders, and six 9 pounders,” was intended to escort convoys and engage in occasional raids upon merchant vessels. Facing the fifty new guns of the Serapis, the odds seemed against Jones as the Richard immediately came under fire. To further dishearten Jones’s men, shortly after engaging the Serapis, two of the heaviest cannons aboard the Richard exploded, killing the gunroom’s crew and tearing a hole in the ship. Not so easily dissuaded, Jones insisted that his crew push on, opting to fight hand-to-hand rather than risk any more self-inflicted damage. With fires raging above and below decks aboard the Richard, midway through the battle, “Gunner’s Mate Henry Gardner emerged from below, where the water had risen to chin level…Assuming Jones and the first lieutenant were dead, he began calling for quarter to the British ship. That was enough to distract Jones from his cannon. The captain flew into a rage and chased Gardner and others who had joined him across the deck, finally flinging his pistol at Gardner and knocking the man unconscious. Aboard the Serapis, Pearson heard the call and asked whether it was true: was the Bonhomme Richard ready to strike its colors. The U.S. Navy’s version of the fight has Jones insisting he had barely begun to fight at this point in the battle…A few minutes later, an American crewman managed to crawl across the yards to the Serapis and dropped a grenade into an open hatch.…sending a thunderous explosion through the Serapis.…every bit as devastating as the detonation of Richard’s two 18 pounders at the beginning of the battle…with both ships on the verge of sinking…Pearson…with his mainmast tottering over the deck…finally decided that the carnage had to end. He pulled down his flag and gave John Paul Jones his most memorable victory in the war” (Sterner). Engraver Thomas Macklin (1752–1800) rose from humble beginnings as an Irish cabin boy to become a prosperous printseller and picture dealer. Dealing out of his storefronts in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Fleet street, his first major success was a print of the Rear Admiral Richard Kempenfelt, which sold seven thousand copies in 1782. Having learned stipple engraving from Francesco Bartolizzi in the late 1770s, a decade later he began the Poet’s Gallery project, commissioning a hundred paintings illustrating the work of significant English poets. These paintings served as the model for Macklin’s published engravings over the course of five years. An exorbitantly expensive project, with only six iterations (of four prints each) being produced, the paintings represented works by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Henry Fuseli, Thomas Gainsborough, and others. Concurrent with the Gallery project, Macklin began producing an illustrated folio Bible, which was completed a mere five days before his death. A celebration of the thriving English book-arts, the Macklin Bible contained new typefaces and paper, and was illustrated by seventy-two engraved prints and many more vignettes based on historical paintings by Reynolds, Fuseli, Louthenberg and many others. The list of subscribers was headed by the king, queen, and prince of Wales. It cost £30,000 to produce the 703 published copies. OCLC records just one copy, at the Society of the Cincinnati. REFERENCES: Sterner, Eric. “‘I Have not Yet Begun to Fight!’ or Words to that Effect (September 23, 1779),” at Emerging Revolutionary War Era online; Henkels, Stan V. The Hampton L. Carson Collection of Engraved Portraits, or American Naval Commanders and Early American Explorers, Navigators, also American Sea and Land Battles, part iv, (Philadelphia, 1905). p. 6, entry 4300; Background on Macklin drawn from Dictionary of National Biography online.
Item #5246
Price: $1,800.00
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