Restoration developments
As in many aspects of British
culture, the Restoration consolidated rather than overturned the innovations of the
revolutionary decades. Stent continued his entrepreneurial activity, and another
advertisement of his wares dates from 1662, while similar advertisements, offering a range
of products like those of Stent and his successor, John Overton, were issued by rival
dealers such as Thomas Jenner and Robert Walton, thereby encouraging a healthy competition
which doubtless further simulated demand. Ogilby’s publishing activities also thrived, with
an even more lavish Aesop than that of the 1650s and a whole series of comparable ventures.
Here, too, there was competition, since a parallel Aesop was produced by the talented
engraver of birds and animals, Francis Barlow, who also continued to produce sets of natural
history scenes.
Genres like the engraved portrait also
flourished as never before, particularly at the hands of engravers like William Faithorne
and Robert White. From the 1670s onwards, the use of line engraving was complemented by the
introduction of a new technique, that of mezzotint, which was predominantly used for
portraiture, though genre scenes also proved popular. By the 1680s, Isaac Beckett emerged as
the leading mezzotint artist, and he was succeeded in this role by John Smith, who continued
to produce mezzotint portraits until well in the 18th century.
This is also a period when new genres in printed images emerged. Among the most notable are scientific books like Robert Hooke’s Micrographia (1665) with its detailed engravings of substances and creatures under the microscope, including the highly magnified flea—sadly not currently available on our database. There are also lavish sets of architectural engravings like David Loggan’s Oxonia Illustrata and its Cambridge equivalent, while genre works of this period include Laroon’s popular Cries of London. Other developments included an increasing currency of political satires, not least in connection with the Popish Plot and other political events of the late Stuart period: indeed, at this point visual satire acquired a potency which looks forward to the age of Gillray a century later.