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Summary
Author: (Houses of Parliament)
Title: Catalogue of the cartoons sent in, pursuant to the notices issued by Her Majesty’s Commissioners on the Fine Arts, for exhibition in Westminster Hall.
Publication: London, William Clowes for HMSO 1843.
Price: £100
Reference: 11578
Full Description
4to. vii + (1) + 27 + (1)pp. Sewn as issued, spine and outer edges abraded. First and last pages lightly stained or soiled, a little old light staining elsewhere.
When the Houses of Parliament were rebuilt following their destruction by fire in 1834, it was decided that the public parts of the new buildings should be decorated with fresco paintings, and in April 1842 the newly established government Commissioners on the Fine Arts invited artists to submit cartoon drawings of possible designs, illustrating “subjects from British history, or from the works of Spenser, Shakespeare or Milton”. The 140 drawings submitted were exhibited in Westminster Hall in the summer of 1843, and were recorded in the present catalogue, printed at government expense. In it the measurements of each cartoon drawing are given, and also the explanations of the drawings provided by the artists, but only the prize-winning drawings are credited to named artists, and the public was evidently left to guess the identities of those responsible for all the other drawings. In a subsequent version of the catalogue, issued in 1844 under a slightly different title, all the competing artists were named, but the present catalogue is the one that was distributed while the exhibition was open to public view.