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Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> The distinction of these gentlemen caused a great deal of satisfaction to the young Cosway and to the second prizewinner in his section (of ?4 for a nude male figure of a river god) John Smart (c.1742-1811) who was to become Richard’s closest competitor as a fashionable ‘painter-in-little’. They also had the gratification of being recognized by a Society which attracted patrons from the most eminent and influential groups in the kingdom: artists (Reynolds and Hogarth) bankers (the Drummonds and the Couttses) and such diverse citizens as William Pitt David Garrick Horace Walpole Samuel Johnson Edward Gibbon and John Julius Angerstein (whose collection of paintings became the nucleus of the National Gallery). To these young hopefuls success and patronage in the world of art were inseparable and they (and their sponsors) had good cause to celebrate recognition from such a charmed circle. Cosway does not appear on the Society’s prize list for 1756 (when John Smart was awarded first prize in his section – a feat which he repeated in the following two years). His name reappears in 1757 (second prize for designs of composition of ornament) in 1758 (second prize for a drawing from the Dancing Faun) and in 1759 (premium for a drawing from the Fighting Gladiator). His outstanding success came a year later in the Society’s competition for ‘drawings of human figures from living models at the Academy of Artists in St Martin’s Lane the work to be done in chalks.” Still only seventeen in a section which was open to men under the age of twenty-four he carried off the prize of 30 guineas in a most triumphant manner and with a drawing of the highest possible merit’ as the Society’s records affirm. 1760 was also the year in which Robert Edge Pine (1742-90) the history and portrait painter gained the Society’s first premium of 100 guineas in another group for his Surrender of Calais Joseph Farington (SP)