The Quaker's Meeting.

£3,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

Rare. There are two examples of this print in the British Museum but we have not located any other copies. “It is curious that impressions of this engraving are excessively rare in England, and that those which are met with, are, according to our experience, usually poor” (Whitten, Quaker Pictures, see below). The publisher of this engraving, John Bowles (c.1701-1779) was the younger son of Thomas Bowles I, and brother of Thomas Bowles II. This print may well a new impression of a (?Dutch) plate which Bowles acquired, this would explain the slightly worn appearance of the plate in most copies. A well-preserved impression of a rare and contested print showing a Quaker meeting with a woman ministering to a large assembled group including William Penn and George Fox. Writing in Quaker Pictures in 1892, Wilfred Whitten noted that Egbert van Heemskercke’s original painting on which the present (and a number of other) prints was based, “should be better known, for it may fairly be called the great historic picture of primitive Quakerism.” (p.19) Whitten goes on to describe the present engraving of this painting - referred to as the “Bull and Mouth Meeting” (after the famous early Quaker meeting place - and notes that the many figures in the scene are most likely portraits of real Quakers and that much of the attire is correct. Whitten points out the recognisable figures of George Fox, leaning to the left of the main woman, and William Penn and the Duke of York (later James II) who

• Year: 1723

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