Romantic Circles Gallery
Gallery Editors:
Theresa M. KelleyJacob Leveton
The image depicts a broad, flat plain, interrupted at its further end by a grey body of water. In the distance, a low mountain range looms in vague, dark contours against the sky, nearly touching the... 1792 |
A single large pyramid stands covered in vegetation, crowned by a small, exposed temple. The pyramid is surrounded by a variety of trees and bushes, and is fronted by a small clearing. Two men stand... Delineator: Norman, Benjamin Moore 1843 |
George III is portrayed as Prospero the wizard in his long black cloak, holding a book bearing the words “justice” and “integrity” and a long, whip-like wand. He stands on a landmass labeled “Albion... 11 August 1798 |
“Plate XIX” features eight figures to accompany the text entitled “Of Optics.” Figure 1 illustrates the manner in which light travels through a multiplying glass to the eye. Figure 2 diagrams the... Delineator: Ferguson, James Author: Ferguson, James 1764 |
This image presents the same view as the first in the gallery, with some alterations (the over-slip attached to the illustration constituted by these two images has been lifted). We still have a view... Author: Repton, Humphry Collaborator: Repton, John Adey 1 February 1816 |
c. 1816-17 |
The illustration depicts a man sleeping in bed with his mouth open; he wears a nightcap, and only his face is visible above the covers. A miniature sultan, with a dark visage and an immense moustache... 1836 |
Lucifer and his fellow angels are cast out of Heaven, falling into a deep chasm with sheer rock walls textured by what appears to be tree roots. The chasm is illuminated by light from the opening... Author: Milton, John 1826 |
This foldout guide to the "Moving Diorama of Venice" is divided into three large panels showing a series of "highlight" views of Venice, as if seen from a passing gondola. Ignoring the distance that... Author: Thomson, David Purdie 1841 |
Dressed as nursemaids with patriotic ribbons, Prime Minister Henry Addington, Lord Hawkesbury, and Charles Fox gather around Britannia as an oversized baby squeezed into a crib, the top of which... Delineator: Gillray, James 4 December 1802 |
At the corner of Little Maddox Street and New Bond Street, a smirking and red-cheeked Lord Sandwich approaches from behind and fondles a young barrow woman selling carrots. The woman’s body is... Delineator: Gillray, James 3 December 1796 |
The poem’s narrator gazes upon the ruins of Pompeii and imagines what took place on the date of the eruption. The narrator describes a crowded street that is instantly engulfed in a cloud of ash... 1848 |
In the center of the image, a nude male figure sits on the edge of a bed, one leg resting on the floor. He looks up at a female figure who stands between his legs undressing, untying the strings of... Delineator: Calvert, Edward 1831 |
Sir Joseph Banks’ journal entry depicts his and William Hooker’s arrival at Mount Helca’s main crater, Raud-Oldur. They stand in a green patch of vegetation to pitch their tents—one of the few areas... 1811 |
A viscountess sits between a portrait of a peasant woman breastfeeding a baby, the frame of which reads “Maternal Love,\" and a window revealing a carriage waiting outside, its attendant holding its... Delineator: Gillray, James 15 February 1796 |
On a page located near the halfway point of an album that was kept between 1827 and 1841 by a Miss Catharine Eliza Lowe, several lines handwritten in black ink accompany a blue ribbon and a... |
Carefully annotated sketches such as this one, which served as a basis for explanations of how hot air balloons were filled, were included in books such as Tiberius Cavallo’s 1785 The History and... Author: Cavallo, Tiberius 1 January 1785 |
Across the upper half of this album page a map has been created in black ink and brown wash. Identified at the top of the page as a “Map of Matrimony,” it charts the imaginary terrain... |
Engraver: Rooker, Edward, Rooker, Michael Angelo 1775 |
Two cocks are fighting on the left side of the cockpit; one foot of each feeder is visible at opposite ends of the fighting table, (usually constructed as a large table enclosed by a raised rim of... Delineator: Hogarth, William 5 November 1759 |
The four-stepped, low-rising Pyramid of Cholula, covered in sparse vegetation, stands in a flat valley, surrounded by distant mountains. A stairway leads up from the base of the pyramid to the small... Delineator: Humboldt, Alexander von 1816 |
George IV, pictured as a guard, stands before a door, holding a pole with an evidence bag which reads "BEWARE of the Report of a BAD HOUSE." From the house's open window, Queen Caroline holds a torch... Delineator: Cruikshank, George 1820 |
This image, Plate 16 of Bell's illustrations, depicts the inner ear. Bell describes it as such: "These are the mastoid cells. They are thought to strengthen the effect of the sound, by reverberating... 1830s |
1826 |
1826 |
The ruins of the Castle of Las Navas stand at the top of a hill that crests at the very center of the composition. This focal point is flanked on both the right and left registers with dense foliage... Author: Swinburne, Henry 1808 |
At the center of this page an unknown artist has painted in watercolor two pink roses growing from a single stem--one almost in full bloom, the other just beginning to bud—and entwined it... |
1824 |
The engraving depicts the lower room of the “Old Ashmolean” building at the University of Oxford. Various natural specimens, including a giraffe and a dodo, are evident, as well as two groups of... Delineator: Delamotte, William Alfred 1 December 1834 |
"Plate 57" features seven illustrations to accompany Book III of A Compleat System of Opticks, which describes the science behind a variety of optical and image-making machines, including a... Author: Smith, Robert 1738 |
This page of watercolor painting and cut paper work is found in an album compiled around 1822 and 1823 in honor of a certain Miss [Louisa?] Gilman. At the page’s center is a footed vase, classical... |
1783 |
A man sits while a woman examines his head. The right side of the image shows a mapped skull placed on a table. 1826 |
This print depicts Dr. Syntax with his hostess, the beautiful bluestocking, Mrs. Omicron. She sits half reclined on a couch in a pose suggesting the famous portraits of Madame Recamier. Syntax reads... Author: Combe, William 1 November 1820 |
The landscape contains a winding river that passes by a group of ruined castles in the distance. In the foreground is a mass of trees on the left and groups of bushes and small trees in the center... 1770 |
On this album page, a hand-colored engraving images three kinds of flowering plants. Miniscule numbers are placed beside each of three, with the numbers keyed to the plants’ names and their... |
A man in a long cape and cloth cap holds a cane in his right hand and a large letter “B” in his left as he walks. He has a beard and moustache, and a rimmed black hat hangs from his neck. Author: Smith, John Thomas 1817 |
In the center background, a man-made structure—appearing, though distant, to be composed of walls and towers—crests an imposing promontory. To the right of this bluff a high, wooded hill rises to the... Delineator: Gilpin, William Author: Gilpin, William 1798 |
The engraving depicts the exterior of the “Old Ashmolean” building at the University of Oxford. We see it at a slight distance, with a good view of the street on which it is stationed. Three figures... Delineator: MacKenzie, Frederick 1 December 1834 |
Within the elaborate frame printed on one page of the E. Boyes album by the book’s manufacturer, someone has pasted in shiny blue foil so as to form a second frame. This surrounds an arrangement... |
c. 1779-80 |
The Grand West Entrance to Jedburgh Abbey is at the perfect center of the composition. The sequence of intricately carved arches framing the comparatively small, rectangular door creates a tunneling... 19 September 1846 |
A view of the ruins of Uxmal depicts the House of the Nuns (on the left) and the House of the Dwarf (on the right). The House of the Nuns is a short, wide, one-story building with a series of small... Delineator: Catherwood, Frederick 1841 |
This image gives a view of a fork in the road, along which pedestrians and carriages travel. The road is lined with two-story buildings; hanging meat in a window and large signs suggest a commercial... Author: Repton, Humphry Collaborator: Repton, John Adey 1 February 1816 |
The art historian Pramod Chandra describes the subject of this image as follows:
A painter wearing a pince-nez and surrounded by vials of paint, brushes, and other tools is busy at work... 1800 |
Preserving dried flowers and a scrap of wallpaper, this page is found in the album that was kept over many years by the salonnière and painter Elizabeth (Eliza) Aders. The pasted-in piece of... |
This plate offers seven profiles (or cross-sections) of fragments of the coast of north-west America, as if seen from a passing ship or small boat, which range from Cape Mendocino (the westernmost... Delineator: Skyes, J., Alexander, William 1798 |
The image shows a man sitting up in bed, lifting one hand, as if explaining something. Clothes are drawn in an elaborate fashion with a close attention to such details as buttons and wrinkles. The... 1818 |
The work depicts a “building designed in imitation of the ruins of a church or chapel…intended to be placed, as those houses generally are, by the side of a piece of still water…or built by the side... Author: Papworth, John Buonarotti |
c. 1790s |