Note 146 — A BOOK FOR A RAINY DAY

Francesco Bartolozzi, R.A., was an original member of the Royal Academy, and he engraved its diploma. His rapid rise, and his appointment to be engraver to the King at £300 a year, were disturbing to Sir Robert Strange, who treated him with misplaced contempt. “Let Strange beat that if he can,” exclaimed Bartolozzi, on executing his “Clytia.” Unfortunately he was improvident, and his studio became a manufactory of facile chalk studies, to many of which he put only the finishing touches. After a brilliant career in England, he went to Lisbon, where he was knighted, and died there in 1815, in his 88th year.