Trailblazing Women of the Georgian Era by Mike Rendell

Author:Mike Rendell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Women
ISBN: 9781473886070
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2018-03-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Mary Darly – print shop owner

It is a strange quirk of history that there is so little known about the life of Mary Darly; there is no record of when and where she was born, or married, or died – and yet she occupies a pivotal role in the evolution of caricatures. Her efforts, jointly with her husband, helped create the phenomenon of the print shop, a place where crowds clamoured to see the latest prints. Her premises were in all senses ‘one-stop shops’ – where the drawings were made, the copper engravings prepared, then printed, and then displayed for public consumption. The shops also sold artists materials such as stencils for use on silk, paper or linen; pastels; and ready-made paints. In addition, the Darlys offered lessons to the public in how to draw facial likenesses. Indeed, the public were encouraged to submit their drawings so that engravings could be prepared, and the resulting prints were then exhibited and offered for sale.

One exhibitor was the distinguished politician George, 4th Viscount and 1st Marquess of Townshend. A former soldier, Townshend impressed Horace Walpole, who wrote about him in 1757: ‘His genius for likeness in caricatura is astonishing.’ In 1756 the Darlys had begun publishing Townshend’s drawings as small sixpenny prints, the size of playing cards. The first of these was The Pillars of State, satirising the Duke of Newcastle and Henry Fox, and the same year saw his much-discussed attack on the Duke of Cumberland, under the title of Gloria Mundi. For ten years from 1756, prints by Townshend and others were republished by Mary as pocket-sized annuals under the general title A Political and Satyrical History of the Year…. In time, the term ‘caricature’ came to be used to describe this type of political print.

Biographical details are few, but Mary is shown as flourishing between 1759 and 1781. However, it is difficult to distinguish between the achievements of Mary, and those of her husband Matthew Darly. Whereas in his early days as a printer of architectural books he had signed his plates as ‘Matthew’, ‘Mathias’ or ‘Matt’, by the time the husband and wife team moved into making fashion caricatures, both deliberately abbreviated their signatures to ‘M Darly’. In effect, it was a recognition that they were a partnership of one – their individual contributions were indistinguishable and irrelevant.

There is one area where Mary’s separate identity is apparent – in the advertisements for the business, which use words such as ‘authoress’ and ‘inventress’. In 1762 Mary published the first manual on how to draw caricatures, under the title of A Book of Caricaturas: on 59 Copper-Plates, with Ye Principles of Designing in that Droll & Pleasing Manner, with Sundry Ancient & Modern Examples & Several Well Known Caricaturas. It contained an introductory commentary of a single page, plus three pages of instruction, followed by fifty-nine examples of face shapes. As the title page stated, the book provided guidance in drawing caricatures and set out Mary’s offer to publicise

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