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THOMAS HART
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The Mysterious Mezzotints of Thomas Hart |
London. Printed for
Thos. Hart, as Act
directs, 7th Sepr.
1776.
The
American Revolution
Institute
of
the Society of the
Cincinnati |
- The image is titled The Hero returned from Boston, by
Thomas Hart.
- The name of the publisher, Thomas Hart, is associated with a series of fictitious portraits of
10 American leaders, including George Washington (including one on horseback and one on foot), John Hancock, Israel Putnam, David Wooster, Horatio Gates, Charles Lee, Esek Hopkins, Benedict Arnold, John Sullivan, and John Paul Jones, dated between 1775 and 1779.
- These prints, all of which are mezzotints, are attributed to publishers Thomas Hart, C. Shepherd, and John Morris
and all the portait subjects were considered 'rebels.'
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Mezzotint is a tonal printmaking process that creates images with smooth gradations of light and shade by roughening a metal plate with a tool called a rocker, then scraping and burnishing it. The roughened, untouched areas hold the most ink and print as the darkest tones, while scraped and burnished areas are polished to retain less or no ink, printing as lighter shades. This technique produces a rich,
velvety black and was popular in the 18th century, particularly for reproducing paintings, before being revived in the 20th century.
(Assistant)
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Anonymous engraving |
- Historians have come to the conclusion that none of these prints bears any real resemblance to its subject, despite the publishers’ effort to persuade customers that they were authentic likenesses,
however, that is not true.
- The word went out that these portraits were mostly fraudulent, turned out quickly to meet public demand for images of the leaders of the American rebellion.
- All of the prints may, in fact, have been produced for the London market in Augsburg, a German city that was a center of commercial print production.
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Their style—the markedly heavy features, large eyes, dark shadows, and treatment of details of clothing and accoutrements—is characteristic of Augsburg engravings.
(americanrevolutioninstitute.org)
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Mysterious woman |
-,Even more curious, the names of Thomas Hart, C. Shepherd, and John Morris seem to be fictitious as well.
- With one exception, their names are not associated with any other prints.
- The only plausible explanation for the use of these
fictitious names is that the true publishers wanted to profit
by selling images of the American Revolutionaries but
preferred not to be closely associated with this artwork.
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Which were, after all, heroic images of traitors who had taken up arms against the king.
- The name Thomas Hart is associated with George Washington through a 1797 land transaction, where George Washington and George Clinton sold land to Thomas Hart and three others.
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The Hero returned from Boston is the outlier among the odd prints published by the fictitious Thomas Hart. It is the only etching, with aquatint or otherwise, associated with Hart’s name. The Hero returned from Boston is also the only one of the Hart prints in which the subjects are not named. Who is the hero returned from Boston? And who is the woman clinging so provocatively to him?(americanrevolutioninstitute.org)
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Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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