Beschreibung:

ROWLANDSON, THOMAS Original unpublished watercolor of Death and the Highwayman, intended for the English Dance of Death, about 1815. Sepia ink and watercolor, 5 7/8 x 9 1/2 inches (15 x 24 cm), signed "Rowlandson" (l.l.). Mounted to old album leaf which is now tipped to the back mount, matted and framed. A possible small restoration in the sky at upper left, though this may be an existing defect in the paper over which Rowlandson worked; examined through a lens, there is evidence of this. The highwayman--a very unheroic figure--having murdered a young woman for some paltry possessions, (a pathetic bundle of belongings lies before her body), is seized by the hair by Death, who gestures fiercely with his dart towards a nearby gibbet, from which a body already hangs. A powerful and compelling design, this was not used in the published book. Drawings intended for this masterpiece of English illustration are rarely encountered. Sold with a levant folder once holding the drawing with Fitz Eugene Dixon's bookplate; a catalogue slip within notes that it was listed for sale by the Philadelphia Print Shop in the 1980s. Provenance: American Art Association, Jan. 6 and 7, 1937 Sale of the Collection of Fitz Eugene Dixon, . Literature: Wark, Robert S. Rowlandson's Drawings for the English Dance of Death, Huntington Library, San Marino, California, 1986, pp. 176-177, illustrated as no. 89. C