Q&A

Hello! :)

I reaserched on he internet for you. I managed to find the name ''Lizars SC'' on a website called www.antiqbook.de/boox/hein/23511.shtml. It didn't really have much information but I think it may confirm its an antique. Sorry if I havn't been much help...

William Home Lizars (1788-1859)

Born in Edinburgh in 1788, William Home Lizars was the son of Daniel Lizars, a well known copperplate engraver and printer. Lizars was first apprenticed to his father then, from 1802 to 1805, studied under John Graham at the Trustees' Academy in Edinburgh, an institution established in 1760 to teach drawing and design for use in manufacture. Lizars sought to establish himself as a painter, frequently exhibiting both portraits and genre paintings between 1805 and 1815. In 1812, he sent two pictures, 'Reading the Will' and 'A Scotch Wedding' to the Royal Academy in London, which met with great success. They were engraved by Charles Turner and may well have influenced the identically titled works by Sir David Wilkie (a contemporary of Lizars at the Trustees' Academy). In the same year, however, the death of Lizars's father forced him to abandon painting.

In order to support his mother and family, he was compelled to take over the family printing and engraving business.

Corson P.13330Lizars, who had extensive experience already co-producing book-plates with his father, first made an independent reputation by producing notes for local banks. In 1818, he was employed, together with Andrew Geddes, William Allan, and the Revd. John Thompson, to make a pictorial record of the Regalia of Scotland following their rediscovery by a Royal Commission headed by Scott (see the page on Andrew Geddes's Discovery of the Regalia of Scotland). He went on to work prolifically for the book trade. An early success was J.G. Lockhart's Peter's Letters to His Kinsfolk (1819), a satirical guide to the Edinburgh literary world for which Lizars engraved the portraits including a derivation of Raeburn's 1808 portrait of Scott.

His work covering a wide variety of genres: landscapes for such publications as Views in Lancashire after N.G. Phillips (1822-24) and Feldborg's Denmark Delineated (1824); anatomical plates for his brother John Lizars, and natural history for J.J. Audubon's The Birds of America, 1827-30. He contributed extensively to the growing number of publications catering for the Scottish tourist trade (that had received such an impetus from the success of Scott's novels), notably Picturesque Views of Edinburgh, The Picture of Scotland, and The Scottish Tourist. For the latter, he engraved an image of Scott's Abbotsford home (click on the image, above right).

He constantly experimented with new techniques and, in 1821, perfected a method of etching away the background of a copper plate to produce a relief surface similar to that in a wood engraving. In 1826, he was a founder member of the Royal Scottish Academy and in 1834 was elected an Honorary member. He died 30 March 1859 in Jedburgh

http://www.artoftheprint.com/artistpages/lizars_william_home_hipparchiajaniramale.htm

http://www.lowryjames.com/cgi-bin/lowry/galleryresults.html?searchfield=cat8%20keywords%20cat6&searchspec1=Rare%20Prints&searchspec2=Natural%20History&searchspec3=Jardine%20(Entomology)