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FROM THE ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION: Sterne's "Tristram Shandy " was a favorite book with our fathers and grandfathers, when works of fiction were far less superabundant than they now are: in those days they were rare, now we are so inundated with them that to keep pace with the torrent, even where there is inclination so to do, is impossible; and no one scarcely, at the present time, ever thinks to revert to the novel of the past century. But "Tristram Shandy " has some amusing scenes in it, and Mr. Leslie has here very humorously illustrated one.
The Widow Wadman is most desirous to make a breach in the heart of Captain Shandy, or Uncle Toby, and finds a suitable opportunity for commencing operations, as she sees him seated one day in his summer house, or " Sentry-box," in which hangs a plan of the Siege of Dunkirk.
"I am half distracted, Captain Shandy,' said Mrs. Wadman, holding up her cambric hand-kerchief to her left eye, as she approached the door of my Uncle Toby's Sentry-box-'a mote- or sand-or something-I know not what, has got into this eye of mine-do look into it, it is not in the white.'
"In saying which Mrs. Wadman edged herself close in beside my uncle Toby, and squeezing herself down upon the corner of his bench, she gave him an opportunity of doing it without rising up-'Do look into it,' said she.
"I see him yonder with his pipe pendulous in his hand, the ashes falling out of it-looking, and looking - then rubbing his eyes) - and looking again, with twice the good-nature that ever Galileo looked for a spot in the sun.
"I protest, Madam,' said my uncle Toby, 'I can see nothing whatever in your eye.' 'It is not in the white,' said Mrs. Wadman ; my uncle looked with might and. main into the pupil."
The expression of these two faces is wonder- fully felicitous; the enquiring look of the captain and the archness of the widow could not be rendered with more natural unaffectedness. "Uncle Toby" is a portrait of Bannister, the celebrated comedian. The picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1831.
BIOGRAPHY OF ARTIST: Charles Robert Leslie (b Clerkenwell, London, 19 Oct 1794; d London, 5 May 1859). English painter and writer. The son of Robert Leslie, an American of Scottish descent who worked in London (1793-9), he received his earliest artistic training in Philadelphia, PA. At first he was self-taught, but in the course of a seven-year apprenticeship to the publishers Bradford & Inskeep (1808-15) he decided to become a professional artist. In March 1811 he achieved fame with a small sketch of the visiting English actor George Frederick Cooke as Shakespeare's character King Richard III. His talent was further recognized that year when the Pennsylvanian Academy of Fine Arts raised £100 to pay for him to study in Europe for two years. Leslie arrived in London in December 1811 with a letter of introduction to Benjamin West and immediately entered the circle of American history painters around West that included Washington Allston, Charles Bird King and Samuel F. B. Morse. From Allston in particular he learnt the colouristic and painterly skills that distinguish his mature work. These practical lessons complemented his studies at the Royal Academy Schools in London, which he entered in March 1813. For the next five years he worked as a history painter while painting portraits for a living. His best portraits from this period are those of John Quincy Adams and of his wife Louisa Johnson Adams (both 1816; Washington, DC, State Dept, see 1980 exh. cat., figs 135, 136), though ultimately the pose of the sitters and the warmth of the palette derive from Thomas Lawrence.
Please note: the terms used in our auctions for engraving, etching, lithograph, plate, photogravure etc. are ALL prints on paper, and NOT blocks of steel or wood or any other material. "ENGRAVINGS", the term commonly used for these paper prints, were the most common method in the 1700s and 1800s for illustrating old books, and these paper prints or "engravings" were created by the intaglio process of etching the negative of the image into a block of steel, copper, wood etc, and then when inked and pressed onto paper, a print image was created. These prints or engravings were usually inserted into books, although many were also printed and issued as loose stand alone lithographs. They often had a tissue guard or onion skin frontis to protect them from transferring their ink to the opposite page and were usually on much thicker quality woven rag stock paper than the regular prints. So this auction is for an antique paper print(s), probably from an old book, of very high quality and usually on very thick rag stock paper.
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