Featured Monkeys Fowling

Can you post a closeup so it's easier to get a handle on the printing method? It looks to me like it's an engraving with either hand-painted color or color added via chromolithography. If it's the former, it's probably 1870s or earlier and worth more, if the latter, it's most likely circa 1880s.

If you can't post a closeup, then look for whether the color is continuous, with no dots, or has irregularly sized and positioned dots. If by any chance you see tiny, regular dots (which isn't likely), then it's a more recent offset lithograph reproduction.

If you list it for sale, putting "anthropomorphic" is a good keyword for the title.

 

Probably @springfld.arsenal ???

 

Pat, I'll wait for daylight tomorrow before taking another photo but I think it is hand coloured. Been up since pre dawn and I've just settled down with a nice shiraz

 

Sounds good. If it *is* hand-colored, then my slightly-educated guess would be mid-19th century.

 

I can't find any record of publisher being in business after 1830. Perhaps someone else will have more luck.

Debora

 

Many thanks, seems the Wisehearts were a long time in Dublin and we will need to date the print using a different method

 

The gun being fired is a flintlock, the artist has even included the detail of a puff of smoke from the pan. These locks were obsolescent in the 1820s-30s with the introduction of the percussion cap, so if a flintlock was the choice of a wealthy gentle-ape, think Regency period.
I assume wealthy is intended because the lighter top hat may be intended to depict beaver skin which found favour with hatters for top hats and was very expensive.
The red and blue tints are so typical of hand coloured prints of the period they are almost a label. You'll also rarely find an example without some over or under colouring where the line is not exactly met.
Hand coloured prints have usually at most 4 colours, these things needed to be coloured quickly and reasonably cheaply. The chromolithograph process opened the gates to true multicolour printing and looks quite different. In my opinion, done well the chromo was the best colour print process of all.

 

we will need to date the print using a different method

Is it on laid paper or wove?

PS I'd say probably Wishert would be how it sounded.

 

Af, many thanks!

I dont think the paper is laid, so later.

 

Agreed on all counts. I love chromos.

 

It's called a singerie, though that doesn't seem to me to be a common term.

https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-singerie-monkeys-acting-as-humans-in-art/

Wove paper was introduced in 1757, an English innovation. It quickly became popular.

My guess on this is 1st half 19th C. In the manner of Rowlandson/Cruikshank. (That covers a pretty good stretch.)

 

Thankyou, the link is fascinating!

 

I thought wove paper wasn't much in use until around 1840 or so. Is that wrong?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wove_paper

 

Ah, my memory was faulty.

 

Thank you. Was noticing that searching for Wiseheart was also sometimes turning up Wishart.

 

Monkeys Fowling lists the publisher simply as Wiseheart. At some point the firm became John Wiseheart & Son. His first son was born in 1828. Unless he added & Son while the boy was still a child, allowing for the possibility that junior might have become a partner at the age of 16, that would put them forward to at least 1844., and put the Monkeys to some time before.

 

Close up, print is behind glass