Richard Earlom
British, 1743 - 1822
English printmaker. Taught by Giovanni Battista Cipriani, he worked in mezzotint, etching and occasionally stipple. His mezzotints of flowers and still-lifes, such as Roses for the Temple of Flora (1805) by Robert John Thornton (?1768–1837) or the Fruit Piece (see Wessely, no. 145) after Jan van Huysum, are also found printed in colours or coloured by hand. Earlom’s most influential prints were a set of outline etchings combined with mezzotint of the volume, then belonging to the Dukes of Devonshire, of Claude’s drawings of his own landscape paintings (now London, BM). The prints were published in 1777 by John Boydell in two volumes as the Liber Veritatis, a name that subsequently came to be applied to the drawings. A third volume of prints of Claude drawings from other sources was added when the first two were reprinted in 1819 (w 149–448).
As well as working extensively for Boydell, Earlom also made prints for Robert Sayer (1724–94), Robert Laurie (d 1836) and John Whittle (d 1818). In the 1770s he mezzotinted drawings by Joseph Farington of the collection of Old Master paintings that had been formed at Houghton Hall, Norfolk, by Sir Robert Walpole. In 1795, half a century after Hogarth had published his prints of Marriage à la Mode, Earlom mezzotinted the same subjects. He also mezzotinted the Iron Forge and the Blacksmith’s Shop after Joseph Wright of Derby, and important views of the life class and early exhibitions at the Royal Academy by Charles Brandoin (1733–1807) and Johan Zoffany (w 101–2). Chaloner Smith lists 50 of Earlom’s portrait prints. Earlom assisted Robert Laurie with mezzotinting two works after George Stubbs, Labourers and Gamekeepers (see Lennox-Boyd, Dixon and Clayton, nos 87–8), which appeared under the pseudonym Henry Birche.
Elizabeth Miller. "Earlom, Richard." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T024430 (accessed May 1, 2012).
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