British Sportsman 7 Plates

Per Wikipedia: Samuel Howitt (1756/57–1822) was an English painter, illustrator and etcher of animals, hunting, horse-racing and landscape scenes. He worked in both oils and watercolors.

Howitt worked both in oils and water-colours, for the most part confining himself to sporting subjects and illustrations of natural history, which were carefully executed, spirited and truthful. These, as Howitt represented in his New Work of Animals, were “drawn from the life” and published so as to “assist the pencil of the designer who has not had an opportunity to pay the same attention to this branch of the art”. However, notes in one sketchbook containing watercolours of apes and monkeys indicate that, while some there certainly were viewed in private menageries, others were studies of stuffed specimens from William Bullock’s museum and the British Museum.

Howitt was closely associated in his art with Thomas Rowlandson, whose sister he married, and his works did, at one time, often pass for those of his brother-in-law; but, unlike Rowlandson, he was a practical sportsman, and his scenes were more accurately composed. He was a clever and industrious etcher, and published a great number of plates similar in character to his drawings, and delicately executed with a fine needle. He also produced a number of caricatures in the manner of Rowlandson.

Howitt was particularly noted for the illustrations in (Captain) Thomas Williamson’s Oriental Field Sports (1807), based on sketches made by the author in India . He also illustrated several other works: Thoughts on Hunting (London: D. Bremner, 1798); The British Sportsman (71 plates, 1800); Miscellaneous Etchings of Animals (50 plates, 1803); British Field Sports (20 coloured plates, 1807); The Angler’s Manual (12 plates, 1808); A New Work of Animals (100 plates, 1811); Groups of Animals (24 plates, 1811); Foreign Field Sports (110 plates, 1819).