John Payne

From Notes from the Margins

John Payne (1606?-1648?) was an early modern English engraver, whose known works include the satirical The Mirrour which Flatters not and the broadside illustration Soveraigne of the Sea, as well as numerous portraits.

Contents 1 Sources 1.1 NOTES and QUERIES (1857) 1.2 Georges Duplessis, The Wonders of Engraving (1871) 1.3 Friedrich Lippmann, Engraving and Etching: A Handbook for the Use of Students and Print Collectors (1906) 2 Malcolm C. Salaman, The Old Engravers of England (1907) 2.1 National Portrait Gallery (UK) 2.2 Grove Art Encyclopedia, Oxford University Press 2.3 Encyclopedia Britannica Online 3 See also

Sources

NOTES and QUERIES (1857)

From NOTES and QUERIES: A Medium of Inter-Communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, Etc. Second Series. Volume Third. January—June, 1857. London: Bell & Daldy, 186. Fleet Street. p. 184.

"Good-bye."—The derivation of this familiar expression is generally acknowledged, "God be with you." Your readers may have met with many instances of this. But one now before me is very striking. It occurs in a curious book, The Mirrour which Flatters not, by Le Sieur de la Serre, historiographer of France; translated by Thos. Cary, London, printed for R. Thrale, 1639.

The passage (p. 73), which is addressed to "Absolute Kings, and Puissant Sovereigns," is as follows:—

"You never seate yourselves upon these thrones of magnificence, but, as it were, to take leave of the assembly; continuing still to give your last God-bwyes, like a man who is upon point to depart," &c.

A word more about this book. It contains five beautiful engraved illustrations, most of them bearing the initials J.P. (probably John Payne).

These very plates were afterwards used to illustrate a book of about the same size, Fair Warnings to a Careless World, by Josiah Woodward, D.D., London, 1707.

Woodward, who was the author of several religious tracts, and wrote a neat little history of the Religious Societies of about that date, has added to the above cuts one of Lord Rochester on his sick bed, with Bishop Burnet praying with him at the bed-side.

T.B.M.

Georges Duplessis, The Wonders of Engraving (1871)

Instead of going so far back, we will commence our study when English engraving acquired an individual character and was practised by men of talent.

We begin with John Payne, who was born in London in 1606 and died in the same place in 1648. He did not form a school or at once rise to eminence, but his engravings, executed with the graver alone, are superior to those of his predecessors. He was a pupil of Simon de Passe, a Flemish artist, who spent many years in England. John Payne executed, somewhat harshly, vignettes, ornaments, and portraits, succeeding better, like many of his fellow-countrymen, with the human face than with anything else.

--Georges Duplessis (1871) The Wonders of Engraving (trans. by N. R. E. M.). London: Sampson Low, Son, and Marston. 185.

Friedrich Lippmann, Engraving and Etching: A Handbook for the Use of Students and Print Collectors (1906)

In 1616 Simon de Passe settled in England, followed in 1621 by his brother Willem. Working the style of their father, Crispin de Passe, the two brothers exercised considerable influence on the development of the art of engraving in England. Among their associates and pupils were some noteworthy engravers of portraits and book illustrations, such as William Marshall (worked 1617-1649), John Payne (1606-01648), William Hole, Francis Delaram and Thomas Cecill. William Faithorne the elder (1616-1691) was a pupil of John Payne, and during the Civil War had studied in the Netherlands and under Nanteuil in Paris.

--Dr. Fr. Lippmann, Engraving and Etching: A Handbook for the Use of Students and Print Collectors, translated from the third German edition revised by Dr. Max Lehrs by Martin Hardie. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1906.

Malcolm C. Salaman, The Old Engravers of England (1907)

That the Van de Passe influence was far-reaching was chiefly through Simon having for his pupil one John Payne, who in turn was the master of Faithorne. These are very important links in the story of English line-engraving, and certainly Payne holds the place of merit, if not of honour, in the interval between Rogers and Faithorne. He was an engraver of talent, though he never realised his possibilities. Having learnt all that Simon Van de Passe could teach him, he studied the works of the famous foreign engravers of the day, such as Callot, Delff and Vorsterman, and, with the new ideas they suggested to him, he would look at his subjects, and, graver in hand, would think things out for himself. So his prints have distinction, and speak to us with the eloquence of personality. Evidently John Payne had the artist's temperament, else the artistic Faithorne and George Glover had hardly been drawn to his teaching. He had his periods of conscientious work, when he did the best of his day, but he also had periods when his hand guided the graver with uncertainty, or when the copper remained untouched, the commissions were left unexecuted. For his indolent disposition lagged behind his talents, and found easy refuge in the pleasures of dissipation. It is the old, old story of artistic talent, without any backbone of moral character, falling away to ruin. At his best, Payne produced prints which were a credit to the engraver's art--such things, for example, as his famous double-plate of the great war-ship "Royal Sovereign," of 1,700 tons, with 100 brass cannon, "for defence and ornament the richest that ever spread cloth before the wind;" and the portraits of Dr. Alabaster, the noted divine, after Cornelius Janssen, and Sir Benjamin Rudyard, who published his poems with Shakespeare's friend, Lord Pembroke, and was called "that silver trumpet" from the clarion tones of his oratory--after Daniel Mytens--all praised highly by that excellent connoisseur, John Evelyn. Equally worthy, too, are his Lancelot Andrews, the famous preacher, bordered in a simple decorative style, which was a welcome innovation; Nicholas Leete--a fine print; the title-page to the 1633 edition of Gerard's "Herbal"; and the Portrait of George Wither--for the "Emblems"--which moved the poet himself to self-satisfied verse. It was, of course, these best works of Payne's that procured him a recommendation to the notice of King Charles, whose appreciative favour might have made his fortune, and encouraged him to the fulfilment of his artistic possibilities. If his graver could so faithfully translate Janssen and Mytens, it should have revelled in the fine and flowing lines of Vandyck; his Charles Louis, Elector Palatine, gives only a hint of what he might have done as an engraver of that master. But Payne had all the defects of his temperament, and he neglected his chance of Court favour and artistic distinction. Idling with boon companions among the taverns, he sank in dissipation lower and lower, working only sporadically as a hack of the book-sellers, until, in 1647, when but a little over forty, his graver failed him altogether, and he died in absolute want. One of his latest prints was a portrait of Francis Hawkins, a precocious boy of ten, who translated from the French a work on "Youth's Behaviour," which had considerable vogue. To Payne, too, we owe the features of old Hobson, the famous Cambridge carrier, who gave us the proverbial "Hobson's Choice," and lives in Milton's verse; but surely it was a strange irony of circumstance that called the idle and dissolute engraver to provide a title-page for "The Christian Warfare against the World, Flesh and Devil!"

--Malcolm C. Salaman, The Old Engravers of England in their Relation to Contemporary Life and Art (1540-1800). Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, London: Cassell and Company, Limited. 1907. pp. 22-24

George Glover had real ability. A fellow pupil with Faithorne, he learnt the groundwork of his art, and learnt it well, from John Payne. Boon companion though that capable engraver was, on his good days he must have had much to teach to his two clever pupils; and Glover seems to have "bettered the instruction" even earlier than Faithorne. After the example of their master, they both looked studiously at the works of the eminent foreign engravers ....

--Ibid. p. 30

. . . Being attracted by the art of engraving, young Faithorne next became the pupil, as we have already seen, of John Payne, and early began to engrave small heads in the neat and finished manner of his master.

--Ibid. p. 35

National Portrait Gallery (UK)

John Payne (1607-1647), Printmaker

John Payne was the finest native-born engraver working during the reign of Charles I. He was probably the pupil of Dutch engraver Simon De Passe. Over fifty of his plates are known about; although they vary widely in quality, the best are outstanding examples of the art of engraving.

--"John Payne," National Portrait Gallery (UK)

Grove Art Encyclopedia, Oxford University Press

( fl c. 1600-40). English engraver. He seems to have been associated with London's leading engravers, Simon (van) de Passe and William (van) de Passe, early in his career. About fifty works are known by this versatile line engraver; and although uneven in quality, the best examples of his portraits show a degree of skill commensurate with the high standard of the oil paintings from which they derive, for example William Alabaster (1633), based on an oil portrait by Cornelius Johnson. Nevertheless he was not above producing slip-shod portrait engravings of the depressing quality of his signed Sir James Ley (c. 1620-25). A good example of Payne's work is his engraving for the title-page of John Gerard's Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes (1633 edition). The page is divided into three horizontal panels, the central one of which has a strapwork cartouche containing the book's title. Payne's masterpiece is the large broadside engraving of the Soveraigne of the Sea (1637; London, N. Mar. Mus.; see SHIP-DECORATION, fig. 2), a remarkably detailed profile view of a royal vessel commissioned by its captain as favourable propaganda for the navy and to encourage the continuation of 'ship-money', a controversial tax of the time. Payne's reputation among his contemporaries was high, although George Vertue suggests he was idle and neglected his career. According to Vertue ('Note-books', Walpole Soc., xxix, 1947 [index]), William Faithorne, the finest English engraver of the later 17th century, was Payne's apprentice (date unknown). There are examples of Payne's work in the British Museum, London, and elsewhere.

--"John Payne," Grove Art Encyclopedia, Oxford University Press, reprinted via Answers.com: John Payne

Encyclopedia Britannica Online

William Faithorne (born c. 1616, London, Eng.--died May 13, 1691, London), English engraver and portrait draftsman ... A pupil of the painter Robert Peake the Elder and of the engraver John Payne, Faithorne was captured during the English Civil Wars, imprisoned, and exiled. Returning from Paris to London in 1650, he became a print seller, printer, and engraver. . . .

--"William Faithorne," Encyclopedia Britannica Online

See also

• Answers.com: John Payne