[An Original Hand-Coloured Aquatint Engraving From] SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S Collection of Etruscan, Greek, and Roman Antiquities.... ]

Naples, 1766-1776. A single aquatint plate drawn and engraved after the original pieces in the Hamilton collection. An aquatint printed as a black background over terracotta with highlighting in light gray/white. The image shows three figures, one a warrior draped in animal skins carries a club, stands before another figure with a thin staff who stands next to a flaming brazier. A third figure, with a shorter staff, walks way from the scene. Printed on a single folio sheet measuring larger than 18" x 12", the image approximately 12" X 7.75", now very handsomely presented in cream mounting approximately 24 by 18 inches with ornate gilt framework design around the leaf, glazed and now under archival glass in a very attractive frame of gilded red wood and black enamel. In all a very impressive display. Very fine and in an excellent state of preservation. A BEAUTIFUL AND IMPRESSIVE PLATE FROM A MASTERPIECE OF CLASSIC ART RENDERINGS AND PUBLICATION. Hamilton served as British envoy to the court of Naples where he began collecting Greek vases and other antiquities immediately upon arriving at his post. In 1766–67 he published a volume of engravings of his collection entitled A Collection of Etruscan, Greek, and Roman antiquities from the cabinet of the Honble. Wm. Hamilton. A further three volumes were produced in 1769–76. Josiah Wedgwood the potter and porcelain maker drew great inspiration from the reproductions presented in Hamilton's volumes.
While widely recognized for their beauty, the reproductions from Hamilton's vases have become evidence of the irreconcilable problem of neoclassicism in the Romantic period. Significant changes in the way the vases were engraved over a span of thirty or forty years demonstrate how an immutable collection of objects is subject to radical shifts in representation in response to the social and artistic styles of the time.