thumb|George Vertue, portrait by [[Jonathan Richardson (1733).]]

George Vertue (1684 – 24 July 1756) was an English engraver and antiquary, whose notebooks on British art of the first half of the 18th century are a valuable source for the period.

Life

Vertue was born in 1684 in St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, his father, perhaps a tailor, and mother are noted as "Roman Catholic". At the age of 13, he was apprenticed to a prominent heraldic engraver of French origin who became bankrupt and returned to France. Vertue worked seven years under Michael Vandergucht, before operating independently. He was amongst the first members of Godfrey Kneller's London Academy of Painting, who had employed him to engrave portraits. It was there that he became a pupil of Thomas Gibson, a leading portrait painter.

Vertue had a deep interest in antiquarian research, and much of his labour was given to this subject. From 1713 on, Vertue was a keen researcher on details of the history of British art, accumulating about forty volumes of notebooks. He was a member of the Rose and Crown Club, with William Hogarth, Peter Tillemans and other artists and connoisseurs, and kept some records of it. His travels to sites across England, with enthusiasts such as Edward Harley (Earl of Oxford), Lord Coleraine<!-- Henry Hare, 3rd Baron Coleraine --> and others, were recorded in Vertue's highly detailed drawings and notes. In 1717 he was appointed official engraver to the Society of Antiquaries, the same year as its formal foundation, and the only engraver to be made a Fellow of the Society (FSA). Most of the illustrations in Vetusta Monumenta, up to his date of death, are his work.]]

As official engraver to the Society of Antiquaries, with works relating to this field of natural history, Vertue was prolific: Richard II at Westminster; a view of Waltham Cross; the shrine of Edward the Confessor; are notable mentions from his works in Vetusta Monumenta

He executed a series of nine Historic Prints in 1740, imitations of works from the Tudor period, these included Visit of Queen Elizabeth to Blackfriars (miscalled the Procession to Hunsdon House); Henry VII and his Queen, with Henry VIII and Jane Seymour; The Cenotaph of Lord Darnley; and Edward VI granting a Charter to Bridewell Hospital. The copperplates of these were acquired by the Society of Antiquaries, and reprinted in 1776.<!-- get date: "they were again reprinted more recently" --></blockquote>

<!-- VERBATIM PD text: One of his latest undertakings was a set of ten plates of Charles I and the sufferers in his cause, each plate containing two portraits, with characters taken from Clarendon and other authors. Vertue died on 24 July 1756, and was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey, where there is a mural tablet to his memory. His wife, Margaret Evans, to whom he was married in 1720, survived until 1776. His collections of coins, prints, &c., were sold by auction in May 1757. During the last forty years of his life Vertue was industriously gathering materials for a history of the fine arts in England; and the invaluable series of notebooks in which he set down all the information he could obtain respecting English artists of all periods, including his own, were purchased from his widow by Horace Walpole, who compiled from them his ‘Anecdotes of Painting in England.’ The volumes passed at the Strawberry Hill sale to Dawson Turner [q. v.], and are now in the British Museum.

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Notes

References

  • George Vertue, "Notebooks", The Volume of the Walpole Society, XVIII (1929–1930), XX (1931–1932), XXII (1933–1934), XXIV (1935–1936), XXVI (1937–1938), XXIV (1947; Index), XXX (1951–1952; Index).
  • Ilaria Bignamini, "George Vertue, Art Historian," The Volume of the Walpole Society, 54 (1988), 2–18.
  • Images of works