Add MS 47790-47793

AUTOBIOGRAPHY, ETC., OF JAMES NORTHCOTE, R.A. (b. 1746, d. 1831); completed circ. 1829. Autograph, with pencil corrections by the author. Vols. I, II cover the period up to his return from Italy in 1780. Continuous narrative ceases at circ. 1790 in Vol. 111 with a memoir of Sir Joshua Reynolds (ff. 58-98b). The volume concludes (ff. 170-193) with an autograph list of Northcote's paintings complete to 1829. Northcote also inserted some illustrative material, including drawings by himself and others, among which are sketches (Vol. III, ff. 81, 83b, 105) of and by Jacques Louis David, the French painter, probably executed at Rome in 1777-1779. The bulk of the text, with some account of the provenance of the manuscripts, is printed in Stephen Gwynn's Memorials of an Eighteenth Century Painter (James Northcote), 1898. For other papers of and relating to Northcote see Add. MS. 42524. Four volumes. Paper; ff. i+93, i+79, i+205, 34. Folio. 1829-1886. The autobiography was given by the writer to Sir William Knighton, lst Bart. (d. 1836), and in 1885 it came into the hands of Edward Whittaker Hennell who had it re-bound by Zaehnsdorf in red morocco, gold-tooled, in three volumes, heavily grangerized. The additional illustrative material inserted includes engraved portraits and views, together with (Vol. III, ff. 83-86b) fragments of autograph lecture notes by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Another volume containing an index of illustrations, together with a number of engravings of Northcote's paintings, was added (Vol. IV). The collection originally included two further volumes of Northcote material now missing (see a note by Hennell, Vol. 1, f. 1, and Vol. IV, f. 7b). Bookplate of Hennell in Vols. I-III.